Nokia N97

The Nokia N97 is the tip of the spear in Nokia's smartphone lineup. It is the most powerful, smartest and fully featured phone of the company. It is also the first Nokia phone to make use of a large touch-display and that alone has raised the expectations from die hard Nokia fans that have refused to switch over to the iPhone. And Nokia has put quite a lot of work and thought in the N97. I had a first look when Nokia was still developing the N97 and I was looking forward to get my hands on the final product. In this review, I will tell you how I used it, and how well it did. Does the Nokia N97 live up to the hype?



Rushing a review is great to get links, but not the best way to get a good feel for something, so I used the Nokia N97 for a few weeks, mainly as a smartphone with Exchange support. Web browsing was tested regularly to read news and check various sites. Facebook was accessed via the Facebook application included in the phone.

Phone Highlights

3.5" Touch Display
32GB internal storage + 16GB optional storage vis flash card
5 Megapixel Carl Zeiss Lens
GPS
WIFI, Bluetooth
3.5G
FM Radio


For many things (but not all), the Nokia N97 can be used as a pure touch phone. The company has done an "ok job" on the tactile user interface. It's mostly intuitive, except for the setup menus (I question their logic). Nokia uses a double-tap system to avoid accidental clicks vs. drag interpretations (see video). For example, in the menu, if I want to go to my contacts, I need to click once to select "contacts", then click a second time to actually launch the application. Depending on your tastes this can be great or annoying.


Homepage Widget (Well Implemented)

Widgets are popular these days. Samsung and Sony Ericsson (Xperia) are big believers of Widgets, but the N97 has the best homepage widgets implementation that I have seen so far. On many phones, widgets are messy (like the OMNIA), but Nokia has done a good job at maximizing the use of screen space. I like the default homepage that includes Facebook, but I noticed that the widget was often out of sync with the real-time content (this is true for Exchange as well). That should be fixed. It would also be nice if we could interact with the widgets directly from the homepage, like updating a Facebook status or a Tweet from the homepage.

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