Nokia N 97 - Review

Nokia N 97
(Review)

You have browsed internet on a desktop, then on laptop now it can come in your pocket as it is. Yes, Large 3.5 inch display of Nokia N97 where both Flash and Java are supported will not disappoint you. QWERTY keyboard can take care of easy messaging, blogging, chatting and e-mailing while 32 GB internal mass memory to store your precious information and multimedia content, isn't that great !

Nokia N 97 is the first touch screen device from Nokia Nseries. Propagating the concept of personalized home screen that gives direct access to your favorite applications or Internet content namely news services like NDTV, India Today and Reuters, social networking sites like Facebook, hi5 etc. or YouTube in the form of widgets.

The slide-out QWERTY form factor is very convenient while messaging or watching a video. The 16M color resistive horizontal touch screen with 640 x 360 pixels resolution is wonderful. Although the latest displays in the market boast of WVGA resolution. But consider brightness, contrast and sunlight legibility, then Nokia N97 is clearly a winner. The resistive touch screen demands the use of the stylus which is provided along with handset but unfortunately there is no stylus compartment where it can fit in. You can dangle it or just carry in your pocket separately.

All plastic body has fingerprint resistant elegant finish which keeps the weight (150g) in control. The three-row QWERTY keyboard is spacious and quick once you get used to the layout. D-pad is located on the left of the keyboard and space key on the right.

Just below the touch screen on the phone front, you have touch sensitive call and end keys, but menu key is a normal button on lower left corner. The right side of the phone has the usual volume keys and the dedicated shutter key. The left side hosts the stereo speakers, a micro USB slot and the screen lock key. The 3.5mm standard audio jack is on top of the Nokia N97, along with the power key. The bottom features the lanyard eyelet. On the back you have the 5 mega pixel camera lens with dual LED flash.

Processor & Memory
At the heart, Nokia N97 is equipped with ARM 11 434 MHz processor, 128 MB RAM and a 32 GB internal mass storage. Apart from this you have hot-swappable memory card slot under the battery cover that supports up to 16GB microSD cards and has fastest data transfer rate. The Operating System is Symbian OS v9.4, Series 60 rel. 5.

Well, we had heard that Nokia N97 gets hanged quite often. We also faced the same problem initially but you can take our tip on this, keep the primary memory (RAM) free and store most of your applications on the 32 GB mass storage (this can be compared to a computers hard disk) then the phone will never hang up.

The new S60 5th edition User Interface is good in itself but not the best. The widgets are the buzz these days. Icons are organized in a 3 x 4 grid or a list which can be reordered. Screen orientation can be set to change automatically. Opening an item in any of the listed submenus requires two presses - one to select and another to confirm the action which is different from other touch phones. Although icons in menu as against the list needs only one touch. Also there is difference while scrolling lists and scrolling icons. Thumb scrolling is a convenient option in most touch phones but here you would prefer side scrollbar. You can have up to 5 widgets at a time displayed on the home screen. The widgets can access websites, services, contacts, inbox, calendar, music player, FM radio or any application on the home screen.

Messaging:
Nokia N97 supports all message types like SMS, MMS and email. They all share a common predictive editor. QWERTY keyboard is very convenient for messaging. It has three rows and you need to use function key for accessing the numbers and symbols. There is a dedicated editor for instant recording of audio messages. Also available is handwriting recognition. Email client is also very good. You just need to enter your username and password and the phone downloads all required settings of any public email service. Multiple email accounts and various security protocols are supported. There is also support for attachments and signatures.

Applications:
Nokia N97 is loaded with many useful or interesting pre-installed applications like Nokia Drawing that lets you draw using different colors and thickness of a pencil. World Traveler offers weather, world clock, currencies and world map. AccuWeather for Nokia N97 is a Widget, which provides users with weather information for global locations including current conditions, forecasts, satellite images and temperature. Apart from the pre-installed ones, you can choose from as many as 525 applications from integrated access to Nokia's Ovi Store where some applications are free while others are paid.

Internet:
Browsing internet on this phone is the main attraction. You can have personalized home screen with widgets hat connect you directly to your favorite people, applications or internet content. The web browser of Nokia N97 is pretty good. Rendering of the web page is excellent as both Flash and Java are supported. The Page Overview option facilitates navigation. Scrolling can be done by sweep gestures and zoom by tapping on the screen.

Organizer:
The organizer with a touch-friendly user interface has most of the usual stuff like Calendar with different views, to-do list, reminder etc. Then you have Mobile Office where you can open Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents but you can not edit them. Active notes is an advanced application for managing notes where you can attach pictures, sound or video to memos. Also included are a unit converter, calculator and voice recorder. You can set up as many alarms as you want with name, time and repeat option and can also snooze the alarm by simply flipping the phone which is a nice use of built-in accelerometer.

GPS:
Nokia N97 has a built-in GPS receiver. The handset can acquire a satellite lock from cold start in about 5 to 8 minutes. Large screen render the maps well. Panning and zooming maps is fast. Nokia Maps 2.0 Touch is preinstalled which offers extensive map coverage for free but you need to pay for features like traffic information or city guides etc. There is voice guided navigation feature as well but you will have to buy the necessary license.

Camera:
Nokia N97 has 5 MP camera with a maximum resolution of 2592x1944 pixels. With Carl Zeiss optics and the dual LED flash the results are pretty good but well, there are upto 8 mega pixel phones in the market. The camera settings include white balance, exposure, sharpness and contrast along with color tone effects. Geo-tagging is also available. But some latest features like face detection, smile detection, face retouching and blink prevention etc. are not there on Nokia N97. The picture gallery of Nokia N97 allows sweep gestures but no kinetic scrolling. Portrait and landscape mode is automatic but zooming is slow. Images can also be geo-tagged to specific locations and shared instantly with friends or uploaded online via Ovi Share, Twitter, Flickr or Facebook.

Video:
Watching a video on the Nokia N97 is fun due to the large screen. The built-in video player is good but only supports very limited codecs. No DivX and XviD support. The 16:9 and DVD quality video capture is just fine. Nokia PC suite has a built-in application that automatically converts all kinds of video files to the format and resolution the phone supports. There is also support for services like Share on Ovi for immediate sharing over HSDPA and WLAN.

Music player:
The music player is good along with touch optimization. Music library is sorted by artist, album, genre and composer and searching tracks by gradual typing is possible. You can also create your own playlists. Adding tracks is easy. There is hardly any audio format that is not supported. Album art is an added feature. Player can also be minimized to play in background. The audio quality is great. In addition Nokia N97 offers full support for the Nokia Music Store and continuous playback time of up to 1.5 days.

FM radio & transmitter: The FM radio has an easy interface and can automatically scan available stations in your area. It also has RDS support and automatic scanning for an alternative frequency. The radio station name gets displayed on the screen with RDS readings printed in a line at the bottom. The inbuilt FM transmitter allows you to stream the music on your phone to any standard FM radio receiver nearby at a frequency of your choice.

Connectivity:
All latest connectivity options for data transfer are supported like USB and Bluetooth version 2.0 with A2DP. Wi-Fi with UPnP support. All types of network connectivity like - GPRS, EDGE and 3G with HSDPA.

Games:
Sorry, there are no preinstalled games. It seems Nokia forgot to load some in the seriousness of their business. But you have enough memory ( 32 GB ) on board and can download as many games as you want. Also the N-series smart phones have full support for N-Gage games.

Features at a glance:

Network Compatibility	2G - GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 3G - HSDPA 900 / 1900 / 2100
Dimensions & weight	117.2 x 55.3 x 15.9 mm, 88 cc Colors - White, Black
Display	3.5 inches, 360 x 640 pixel 16M colors TFT resistive touchscreen Proximity sensor for auto turn-off Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate Handwriting recognition
Keyboard	Full QWERTY keyboard
Sound & Music	MP3 ringtones, Vibration Speakerphone with stereo speakers Stereo FM radio with RDS, Visual radio FM transmitter 3.5 mm audio jack Music player - MP3/WMA/WAV/eAAC+ Video player - WMV/RealVideo/MP4
Processor & Memory	ARM 11 434 MHz processor 128 MB RAM 32 GB internal mass storage microSD (TransFlash), up to 16GB Symbian OS V9.4, Series 60 rel. 5
Internet	GPRS Class 32 EDGE Class 32 Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, UPnP technology Browser - WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML, RSS feeds
Connectivity	Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP USB v2.0
GPS	Yes, with A-GPS support; Nokia Maps
Camera	Primary - 5 MP, 2592x1944 pixels, Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, LED flash, Video - VGA@30fps Secondary - VGA@15fps
Messaging	SMS, MMS, Email, Push Email, IM
Games	N-gage + downloadable
More features	Digital compass TV-out Voice command/dial Document viewer (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF) Video and photo editor Flash Lite 3 T9
Battery	Li-Ion 1500 mAh (BP-4L) Stand-by time: Up to 432 h (2G) / 408 h (3G) Talk time: Up to 9 h 30 min (2G) / Up to 6 h (3G) Up to 40 h music

Disadvantages:

The S60 5th edition UI is not at par with competing touch phones
5 MP Camera is also less for such high segment phone
No DivX or XviD support
No office documents editing
stylus should fit into the phone

Advantages:

32GB onboard storage - best in class
Card slot with microSDHC support, supporting upto 16GB
128 MB of RAM
Full QWERTY keyboard
Slide-out form factor is very good for messaging as well as watching video
Large horizontal screen is a delight
5 MP autofocus camera with dual-LED flash and lens cover is good enough
3G compaibility
Wi-Fi
GPS with A-GPS (plus 3 months of free voice-guided navigation via Ovi Maps)
Digital compass
3.5 mm audio jack
TV out
Stereo FM Radio with RDS
FM transmitter
Browser has full Flash and Java support

So, Nokia N97 is a commendable handset in the segment of smart QWERTY touch screen All-in-ones.

Games: Sorry, there are no preinstalled games. It seems Nokia forgot to load some in the seriousness of their business. But you have enough memory ( 32 GB ) on board and can download as many games as you want. Also the N-series smart phones have full support for N-Gage games.

Games:
Sorry, there are no preinstalled games. It seems Nokia forgot to load some in the seriousness of their business. But you have enough memory ( 32 GB ) on board and can download as many games as you want. Also the N-series smart phones have full support for N-Gage games.