Brief Overview

The Nokia N97 introduces the concept of ’social location (So-Lo)’. With integrated A-GPS sensors and an electronic compass, the Nokia N97 mobile computer intuitively understands where it is. The Nokia N97 makes it easy to update social networks automatically with real-time information, giving approved friends the ability to update their ’status’ and share their ’social location’ as well as related pictures or videos.

The Nokia N97 supports up to 48 GB of storage, including 32 GB of on-board memory, expandable with a 16 GB microSD card for music, media and more. This is complemented by excellent music capabilities, full support for the Nokia Music Store and continuous playback time of up to 1.5 days. The Nokia N97 also has a 5-Megapixel camera with high-quality Carl Zeiss optics, 16:9 and DVD quality video capture, and support for services like Share on Ovi for immediate sharing over HSDPA and WLAN.

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Detailed review below:

Typical of the Nseries lineup, the N97 is bloated with connectivity features. You have HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth stereo A2DP and built-in GPS for navigation. There’s also a built-in digital compass though we didn’t get to do a test run of the feature.

Although the N97 is based on the same S60 5th edition platform as the earlier 5800 express Music, t features a new home screen with placeholders for up to five widgets. You can rearrange these mini applications, though we find this layout works better when the screen is in landscape mode. This gives you an overview of the selected widgets at one glance as opposed to in portrait mode where you may have to scroll down.

Some of these apps are able to go online, so they can download updates such as the weather or a Facebook status update in real time. This will likely take a toll on the battery, although the consolation on paper is that the N97 ships with a large 1,500mAh cell, so it’s unlikely the battery will die on you midday. The N97 also has a faster ARM11 434MHz processor compared with the 369MHz chip on the 5800 XpressMusic, so we could see performance bumps there.

Aside from the home screen feature, the interface remains similar to the 5800 XpressMusic. Which means the N97 also inherited the single- and double-tap idiosyncrasies and inconsistent scrolling. The 3.5-inch resistive touchscreen is larger than the 3.2-inch one on the 5800 XpressMusic, though both have the same 360 x 640 resolution. In comparison, the HTC Touch Pro2 has a 3.6-inch 800x 480 display. The reason Nokia gave for using a resistive- over a capacitive-type panel was to cater for different market characteristics. For example, in some countries, people prefer to use a stylus to write. You can’t do that with a capacitive display. It would then be logical for Nokia to have leeway for a stylus compartment on the N97. It didn’t. Instead, the pointing device will be an accessory that’s bundled with the unit.

Ithe hands, the N97 feels rather light for its size. We find it a little more pocket-friendly than the HTC Touch Pro2 that also has a slide-and-tilt screen. The difference is the screen on the N97 locks into only one position when open, whereas on the Touch Pro2 the display can either be flat or lifted up at an angle. If there was one takeaway from the N97 demo, it would to be the company’s emphasis on the “emotional” aspect of the sliding mechanism. Whatever it is, we never felt it, but at least it did translate to a quality experience.

The N97 comes with a generous 32GB of onboard memory and the phone has been tested to be compatible with microSD flash media up to 16GB. So theoretically, you can have 48GB of data at your fingertips. There’s also a 5-megapixel camera with VGA capture at 30fps and an FM transmitter. The front-facing shooter has a resolution of up to 640 x 480 pixels and records videos at 176 x 144 pixels.

The keyboard on the N97 was a major disappointment for us. Although the keys were sufficiently spaced apart, this was flush with the surface. As a result, we couldn’t get a decent feel of the pitch of each button. The spacebar, which is located toward the right on the bottom row of the keyboard, also made typing awkward.

Source: Cnet