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In the mean time Nokia surprised everyone with the touchscreen slider N97. It’s like an iPhone or a Storm. But dare I say... better? Nokia saw what people want nowadays and adapted. After trying out their first touchscreen on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, the Nokia brainiacs where ready for the next big thing. The Nokia N97 will certainly be the flagship smartphone of Nokia for quite a while. Here are some of its features, which will make you choose it:
a 3.5 inch widescreen 16:9 touchscreen
haptic feedback
full QWERTY slideout keyboard
5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss Tessar lens and dual LED flash
up to 32 GB of storage
up to 16GB additional memory via microSD
Symbian S60 5th Edition
up to 37 hours of music / up to 4.5 hours of video
A-GPS and GPS
HSDPA, Wi-Fi, USB 2.0, stereo Bluetooth connectivity
a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Nokia N97
Verdict
| Pros: | 32GB onboard storage,Wi-Fi & GPS,TV Out Web browser has full Flash and Java support |
| Cons: | No Divx or Xvid Support,Still the Same Symbian with no Extra Features |
| Outline | The news is never good or bad, it's what you make of it.It has almost all contemporary high-end weapons and Symbian smartness in it. |
Nokia N97 Specs:-
2GNetwork---------->GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3GNetwork---------->HSDPA 900 / 1900 / 2100
Available------------>Available. Released 2009, June
OS------------------->Symbian OS v9.4,Series 60 rel.5
CPU------------------>ARM 11 434 MHz processor
Dimensions-------->117.2 x 55.3 x 15.9 mm, 88 cc
Weight-------------->150 g
Display-------------->TFT resistive touchscreen, 16M colors
Size----------------->360 x 640 pixels, 3.5 inches
Internal------------->32 GB storage, 128 MB RAM
Cardslot------------->microSD (TransFlash), up to 16GB
WLAN--------------->Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, UPnP technology
Java---------------->Yes, MIDP 2.1
Camera------------->5MP,2592x1944 pixels,Carl Zeiss optics,
Secondary---------->Yes VideoCall
Video--------------->Yes,30fps
Bluetooth----------->Yes, v2.0 with A2DP
Infraredport-------->No
AudioJack---------->3.5 mm audio jack
USB----------------->microUSB v2.0
Battery------------->Li-Ion 1500 mAh (BP-4L)
Stand-by----------->Up to 432 h (2G) / 408 h (3G)
Talktime----------->Up to 9 h 30 min (2G) / Up to 6 h (3G)
Price --------------->475 USD approx
Reviews
The Nokia N97 isn't exactly a showstopper when compared to design. It doesn't quite have the wow factor of the distinctive Palm Pre and like the T-Mobile G1 and HTC Touch Pro2, the N97 is a bit of a handful at 4.6 inches tall by 2.1 inches wide by 0.6 inch thick and 5.29 ounces. It doesn't quite have the high-quality build of the Nokia E series and we're a bit weary of the flimsy battery cover, but overall, the smartphone has a solid construction and is a nice departure from the Nokia N95 and N96, especially with the addition of a touch screen and full QWERTY keyboard.
The scrolling experience was also less smooth on the N97 since flicking your finger to go through long lists or pages results in jerky and short movements. In addition, like the Nokia 5800, we found that some menu items respond to a single tap, while others require double-taps. We would prefer a uniform system since this often led to confusion and was just annoying.
All that said, we do appreciate the new widget-based home screen on the Nokia N97. Similar to the Samsung TouchWiz interface found on the Omnia, this feature gives you the freedom to customize the N97's home screen and lets you see more information at a glance as well as have one-touch access to your apps.
You can have a maximum of eight widgets on the screen at one time, and it's easy to remove or rearrange them. By default, our review unit's home screen featured widgets for Facebook, AccuWeather, contacts, a shortcut bar to messages, the Web, maps, the media player, and more. There is a task manager that lets you see all your open apps and switch between them, but the multitasking capabilities are nowhere near as sophisticated as the Palm Pre's. However, we do prefer Nokia's interface over TouchWiz since it had better organization and didn't limit you to certain widgets. You can also personalize your phone with various themes, wallpaper, and more.
There's a power button and a 3.5mm headphone jack on top of the device. On the left side, you'll a find a Micro-USB port, a lock switch, and the stereo speakers. The right side has a volume rocker that also doubles as zoom in/out buttons and a camera capture key. The camera is located on the back and both the lens and flash are protected by a sliding cover.
The Nokia N97 comes packaged with a travel charger, a Micro-USB cable, a wired headset, a stylus, a cleaning cloth, software CD, and reference material. For more add-ons, please check our cell phone accessories, ringtones, and help page.
Features
There's no denying that the Nokia N97 is one feature-packed smartphone. It comes with a whopping 32GB of internal flash memory, which can be expanded to 48GB via the expansion slot, and Nokia preloads the device with a number of extra apps, including a dedicated YouTube player, Qik (for sharing videos from your phone), Boingo Wi-Fi service, Psiloc World Traveler, AP News, and Guitar Rock Tour. The N97 also supports the recently launched Nokia Ovi Store where users can peruse the large catalog of Symbian apps and download them to the device. This is, of course, on top of S60 platform staples like QuickOffice for viewing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents, Adobe PDF, a file manager, and other PIM tools, such as a Zip manager, a calculator, a notepad, a measurement converter, a clock, and a voice recorder.
The N97 doesn't come with the new Nokia Messaging app like the Nokia E75, but there's still plenty of e-mail support. The smartphone can synchronize with Microsoft Exchange and it works with Lotus Notes, IMAP4, POP3, and SMTP accounts and comes with a full attachment viewer. Unfortunately, there aren't any instant messaging clients on the phone, which is too bad given the full QWERTY keyboard and all.
As a phone, the N97 offers quad-band world roaming, a speakerphone, speed dial, conference calling, voice-command support, a vibrate mode, and text and multimedia messaging. The phone's address book is only limited by the available memory, and the SIM card holds an additional 250 contacts. There's room in each entry for multiple phone numbers, work and home addresses, e-mail addresses, birthday, and more vitals. For caller ID purposes, you can assign each contact a photo, a group ID, or a custom ringtone. Bluetooth 2.0 is also onboard, with support for mono and stereo Bluetooth headsets, hands-free kits, audio/video remote control, object push, dial-up networking, file transfer, and more. To get online, you can use either the phone's integrated Wi-Fi or tri-band HSDPA (850/1900/2100MHz) support over AT&T's network. Nokia's HTML Web browser is quite decent, offering various page views, keyword search, and Flash Lite 3.0 support, but navigation and zooming in/out of pages definitely feels chunkier than the iPhone and Pre, which benefit from a multitouch screen.
The N97 keeps the same camera and the N96: a 5-megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens with dual-LED flash, auto focus, and up to 4x digital zoom. There are numerous advanced camera options, such as color tone, light sensitivity, exposure, and geotagging. In addition, the camera can record MPEG-4 videos at a maximum VGA resolution (640x480) at 30fps.As with Nokia's other N series devices, the N97 is also equipped with a built-in media player that supports MP3, WMA, AAC, AAC+, and eAAC+ files. The music library categorizes tracks by artists, albums, genres, and composers; you can also create playlists right on the phone and adjust the sound with the built-in equalizer. There's also support for podcasts and the phone offers Internet radio and an FM tuner. (Note that you need to use the included headset for the latter.) If you'd like to watch other videos, you can use RealPlayer to check out 3GPP and MPEG-4 files.
Performance
We tested the quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900; tri-band HSDPA 850/1900/2100) in San Francisco using AT&T service and call quality was excellent. We enjoyed clear audio on our end with good volume and very little to no background noise. Our friends were also impressed and said we sounded great (why, thank you!). We also used an airline's voice-automated response system with no problem and didn't experience any dropped calls during our review period. Unfortunately, we didn't have quite the same praises for the speakerphone. Even at the highest level, volume was weak, we had to hold the speaker close to our ear to hear our friends, and our callers said we also sounded soft. In addition, audio would occasionally cut out.
Connectivity
Smartphones are usually well-heeled in terms of connectivity. Nokia N97 makes no exception: all contemporary means of data transfer are supported.
Both USB and Bluetooth are version 2.0 and the latter naturally also sports A2DP. Wi-Fi with UPnP support is also at hand. There is no shortcut key for the Wi-Fi manager, but it can be easily found in the Connectivity menu and connecting to a WLAN network is two taps away.
All kinds of network connectivity are at the user disposal - GPRS, EDGE and 3G with HSDPA. By the way if you want to know which version of the N97 you should get - the one with dual-band 900/2100 MHz UMTS or the 850/1900 MHz variety you might want to consult our Worldwide Network Bands distribution database.
Finally, the Nokia N97 has a memory card slot, which can usually give you the fastest data transfer rates and can take up to 16GB cards.
Third-party applications for N97
Nokia N97 and Nokia 5800 XpressMusic are currently the only touch smartphones that Nokia has on the market running the new S60 5 edition UI. They do have another one - the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic in the oven but it's far from actual release.
The competition has even less choice with Samsung Omnia HD being the only available device and Sony Ericsson Satio due for release later this year. That makes the new smartphone platform quite limited and thus possibly not as attractive to developers.
Nokia however have gone through a great deal of effort to make the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic as popular as possible with careful pricing planning and the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic will spread the user interface to even wider user base.
So for now, not surprisingly, there are not many third-party applications for these N97. The Symbian S60 5th edition is just too new.
Back in the day when S60 3rd edition was first introduced the situation was pretty much the same. We had to wait a good six months before a reasonable amount of application became available.
Our Nokia N97 comes preinstalled with a load of third party applications, but most of them are simply online shortcuts or at most offer simple menus again prompting for internet browser usage. Of course several of them are very handful tools for reading news, managing and browsing images, weather forecasts, etc.
Of course, since this is Symbian we are talking about, you can also pay a visit to some of the numerous sites for software available online. 8 months was enough time for almost every one of them to make its own 5th edition section. Here is one to get you started, while a simple Google search will show you the rest.
You can download the apps straight from your phone or from your desktop computer and than transfer them as you find fit.
Finally, with Nokia Download! you can access a variety of content directly from the phone. You can choose from applications, games, graphics, news, ringtones, screensavers, themes, videos, wallpaper and more. We guess the Download! app will become obsolete once the Ovi Store gains momentum.
Final Words
All told, we have arrived at the conclusion the Nokia N97 is quite far from the “mobile computer” the manufacturer claims it to be. Device performs well in certain tasks, badly in others and is mediocre device as a whole. The second touch sensitive screen device of Nokia makes for a passable high ranking smart phone, but except for the hardware QWERTY, it is by no means better than its major rival - the Samsung OMNIA HD i8910. It´s hyped as the N-Series flagship device, but the title is not well earned, because the differences from the much cheaper 5800 XpressMusic are not that significant. We feel completely ready to jack the QWERTY keyboard in order to get a larger display, the same functionality and multimedia capabilities that times better and ultimately go for the Samsung OMNIA HD i8910. If the keyboard is vital to you, you better consider the HTC Touch Pro2, just keep in mind the latter runs Windows Mobile. If a Symbian smartphone isn’t the only thing that would buy, have in mind the Palm Pre and the Apple iPhone 3G S are two perfect alternatives.
Video Review
Nokia N97 Official Page: [Link]
Nokia N97 Manual : [Link]
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