- Demystifying The Nokia N97
- Demystifying The Nokia N97 – The Typing Experience
- Demystifying The Nokia N97 – The Form Factor Experience
- Demystifying The Nokia N97 – The Ovi Experience
- Demystifying The Nokia N97 – The Widget Experience
- Demystifying The Nokia N97 – The Connected User Experience
- Demystifying The Nokia N97 – The Power User Fiasco
- Demystifying The Nokia N97 – The E71 Fan Experience
After having played with the Nokia Nokia N97 for a couple of hours some weeks ago, I was finally able to get my hands on a review unit for an extended period of testing. I’ve had this white Nokia N97 for a bit over 3 days now and you bet that I’ve been using it quite extensively as my main device, in order to answer some personal and general questions. So is it the best handset ever, is it a true flagship, do I still want to buy it, what have people around me been saying about it, how does the battery life stand against the E71, is the keyboard ok, … ? I was planning on covering all of these in a series of videos later on (I’m a bit over my head in my Masters final now), but because I know that many of you are impatient regarding the N97, I wanted to give you a sneak peak of what I think of it.
The qwerty keyboard is just fine and unlike what some reviewers are saying, the spacebar placement is good. It’s easier to criticize Nokia these days than to actually try typing 3 sentences and see that with just that many words, the thumb becomes accustomed to the spacebar placement. I have some (small and major) issues with the keyboard, but these aren’t related to the dpad, tactile feedback or the spacebar.
The touchscreen is as good as a resistive screen will ever be. Queue in a long debate on whether or not capacitive is better than resistive. For now, the screen technology is WAY down on my personal priority list when it comes to picking a new device. The N97′s screen is good, reactive, and a pleasure to use.
Battery life on the other hand, is one area where I’m not really impressed. Yes, it boosts the same battery as the E71 but I have yet to replicate my E71 usage and come out with anything but a dead battery.
Kinetic scrolling is implemented in the browser, but also in the widgets which use the same WebKit engine as the browser if I understand correctly. Well, whether or not they use the same engine is irrelevant at this point, what is relevant is the fact that kinetic scrolling works inside widgets too.
Speed and reactivity are a lot better than the Nokia 5800. The N97 is snappy and fast. That removes the processor issue. But it doesn’t eliminate the little RAM nor the small internal memory issues.
Widget implementation is fine for a first release but a LOT has to be done in order to improve the experience in terms of personalisation, connectivity, basic background processes,…
Build quality is phenomenal for an Nseries, and for a non-candybar Nseries at that. My friend dropped it while testing it with the keyboard open (yes, my heart dropped at the same second), but it came out just fine. Even the battery cover didn’t pop out.
Touchscreen input methods are present so you can use T9 as well as handwriting while the slider is closed in order to input text. You just don’t have the mini-qwerty and the fullscreen qwerty for input. I wonder why people are annoyed about this, after all a real physical qwerty is there for a much better text input experience.
S60 5th has been optimized more compared to the Nokia 5800XpressMusic. There are a lot of areas where the 3 quick access keys are assigned functions that weren’t implemented in the 5800, which makes using the N97 even more finger friendly. But organising the menu is one area where the 5800 is better than the N97.
This is a quick taste of my thoughts on the N97. I know that these cause more questions than they give answers, but expect me to cover all of the aspects explained here in very intricate details later this week. If you have any questions, any particular aspect of the N97 that you want to see in a video, or any specific comparisons with the N82, 5800 or E71 that you want me to address, please post a comment below. I only have the N97 for a few days but I will do my best to answer your questions.
