July 10th 2009 07:12 am
Nokia N97 is not your most wanted phone
N97 in potrait and landscape mode
Nokia did its first touch screen phone few months back with its 5800 XM. It’s a budget phone I would say. Packed with a bunch of features at a decent price tag, it was a hit among young people. Problems were reported many. A month or two later, many were selling this phone as second hand. The phone was ugly. The UI (user interface) and the phone itself is not very beautifully designed. I wouldn’t recommend this phone if you’re the flashy type. Nokia made a move to introduce the first N-series touch screen a month ago. It was called N97. Design wise, it was better than 5800 XM of course. Touted as a miniature PC on your palm. It claimed to feature computer-like features and very internet friendly too. Nice to hear from a marketing term, lets dig out more of this phone.
The Nokia N97 features a bigger screen compared to its predecessor, the N96. At 3.5″ coupled with a resistive touch technology, the N97 proved to be an improvement over N96. It was a bit disappointment as Nokia should have implement capacitive touch sensitivity like the one in Apple iPhone. You have to apply some pressure for the resistive touchscreen to get the input, and it’s not as responsive as capacitive touchscreen. Moreover, Multitouch was not possible in N97, thanks to the resistive touch technology.
The N97 features the new widget home interface
The keyboard is a welcome feature. It offers a QWERTY keys to type SMS and email conveniently. However, I found the key to be a bit small. Each keys were 1mm separated apart. For those with big fingers, typing text using the slide out keyboard is bit of cumbersome as you might mispress the keys when you are typing. One thing that makes this keyboard feels awkward is the spacebar placement. It was placed at the lower right of the keyboard. Many wouldn’t used to this placement as we already used to the standard lower middle placement of the spacebar.
Another dissapointment was its camera. This 5MP Carl Zeiss camera is not an improvement over N96, Nokia should have offered a better camera for this flagship phone as Samsung and Sony Ericsson already unveiled 8MP camera phones since a while ago.
The Nokia N97 features a new widget based front end. There is a placeholder where you can place it with some available widgets like Facebook, weather forecast, news, email and phone profiles. Nokia did some homework at this, and they deserve some applaud.
Symbian S60 is a very matured OS. Nokia loves it, S60 is everywhere in the N-series phones including this N97. However, for touch screen phones, S60 looks bad. S60 is not build for touch screen phones, it feels very inconsistent. Some menu will need a double tap while some only need a single tap. This inconsistency was inherited from 5800 XM, and I don’t know why Nokia didn’t do anything with it for this flagship phone.
Performance wise, this phone performs just slightly better than N96 in terms of processing speed. Bundling with a 1500mAh battery, this phone should last longer as proven with other 1500mAh phones from Nokia like the E71. However, I find myself having to charge this phone daily. I used it mostly on texting, listening some mp3 using an earphone, check my mails via the wifi and make some calls. It lasted only 8-10hours which I found it not amusing, I thought it will last 2 days at least, as this phone was being fed with a 1500mAh battery.
The speaker phone is not the best in its class. It was kinda soft and it was not loud enough. Nokia is good enough to provide a 3.5mm audio jack. You can attach any earphone to the 3.5mm audio jack for better sound quality. As a flagship phone, I expect Nokia to do more for its speaker phone.
Summary of features for N97:
- Connectivity: Quad band, GPRS, EDGE, 3G, HSPDA, WLAN
- 3.5inch resistive touch screen display
- QWERTY keyboard
- 5MP camera
- 3.5mm audio jack
- 1500mAh Litihium battery
The build quality for this phone is very firm. The aluminium build for this N97 casing is good enough to survive a drop to the floor ( you wouldn’t do that for this pricey phone ). The keyboard slide out with a cool “snap” sound which you can show off to your friends and surrounding people. Pricing at RM2,480 ( around USD700), this phone is not for everyone. It offers only a slight improvement over N96 coupled with a buggy interface. It was a big dissappointment for N-series lover as the N9x series is the best in its class every year when a new model unveiled ( N90, N93, N95, and N96). At this price tag, there are better phones out there like the Samsung i8910HD and HTC Magic. I am being nice to Nokia for giving a 2.5/5 rating for this phone. Hope they build a better N9x for the N98 in the future.
1 Comment »
Anonymous on 12 Jul 2009 at 3:04 am #
a very nice and short but detailed review indeed. Have u tried the Ovi store? how is it compare with the apple store? by the way, from my opinion, N97 is a great product if you got constant internet connection for the phone.