Yesterday I shared with you 7 things that I really love about the Nokia N97. Obviously it wasn’t a comprehensive list, but rather a top list of the things that stand out to me the most. In like form, today, I’ve got a list of things that I really, really hate about the Nokia N97. Some of these are able to be fixed with a firmware update (and I’m told that one is coming very soon), while others are hardware issues that simply cannot be addressed.
1. Pitiful amount of RAM. RAM is the amount of memory the phone has to run applications – not store them. Pitiful amounts of RAM make it difficult to multitask successfully, and that’s a shame. On boot, the Nokia N97, with homescreen widgets running, shows about 44MB. If I start to use the phone, with things such as Nokia Messaging, Gravity, and various system apps opening in the background, it doesn’t take long to reach 10MB or less of avaliable RAM. There are two facts that correspond with this. FACT #1 – it’s entirely possible to run multiple applications simultaneously on the N97, and they’ll likely be able to free up more RAM with future firmwares. FACT #2 – having less than ~70MB of RAM available on a $700 ‘flagship’ smartphone is inexcusable. Period.
2. Partial predictive text on the QWERTY keyboard. One of the biggest complaints I had on the 5800 XpressMusic was a complete lack of predictive input on its fullscreen QWERTY keyboard. I’m glad to see that the N97 at least is able to offer word suggestions, but even on the highest setting, it isn’t auto-capitalizing I’s, or adding apostrophe’s to contractions, things that the E71 and E75′s predictive input was able to do, and that other smartphones, such as BlackBerries and the Sidekick, do.
3. The microSD card slot is underneath the battery cover. I realize with 32GB of internal storage, a vast majority of N97 owners won’t need or use a microSD card, but it’s still lame to stick it underneath the battery cover. To be clear, you don’t need to remove the battery to get to the card slot, only the battery cover. Still lame.
4. No visualizations in the music player. For whatever reason, the visualization option in the music player application has been removed. Other Nseries, such as my N79, have 4 visualizations – album art, spectrum, circles, and equalizer. The N97 has zero.
5. Where are the widgets? There are a few widgets pre-installed on my N97, but unfortunately, not many. Also, there’s no sign of the Rocket widget that won the N97 Widget contest, nor the runners up, all three of which were supposed to be in the Ovi Store. What happened there, Nokia?
6. Ships with old software. Upon boot, I was disturbed to notice that while Ovi Store was pre-installed, I had to send the installation SMS for Nokia Messaging – after almost being tricked into using the embarrassing default email client. Also, Maps 2.0 is still on this thing – when Maps 3.0 has been available to internal parties for a while. I also had to download Photo Browser, and a few other things that should have already been here.
7. Numerous software glitches. For starters, I (and at least one other person that I know of) had to manually edit every one of my contacts, as for some reason, the N97 decided to tinker with their names by copying the first name into the last name field, so I ended up with John John Smith. Communication Center wouldn’t edit it, had to manually do each one ON THE PHONE. Also, many users are reporting time-out glitches with the backlight.
As with the things that I love, this is certainly not a comprehensive list. If you’ve already got the Nokia N97, what things have you come across that drive you mad? Tomorrow, we’ll continue with a more typical review, looking at various hardware aspects of the Nokia N97. Keep an eye out for Rita’s musings, as well, as she’ll take a slightly different approach to testing this smartphone out.
Sidenote: Many of you are wondering about battery life – I’m having a difficult time accurately measuring this, thanks to AT&T’s crappy network. For the past week or so (before I got my N97), the signal strength in my office has been horrid – so that the phone is *constantly* either switching between EDGE and 3G, or searching for one or the other. It does not have to do with the N97′s reception – I’ve tested with other phones and am having the same issue. I’ll be doing some tests outside my apartment over the next few days, to get a more accurate and realistic battery life measurement. Sorry for the delay on that.
