After having owned and used the Nokia N82 for a long period of time, I decided to get a Nokia N97. Before talking about my personal experience through this transition, I’d just like to sum up the major hardware differences between these two phones and explain how this affects my user experience.
Phone Hardware
The N82 is a candybar phone with a 2,4 inch display running on a 240×320 resolution. It has 100 Mb of internal memory and a micro sd slot for putting in more storage. The processor is a Dual ARM 11 332 MHz processor with dedicated 3D hardware accelerator. This phone runs on the S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 of Symbian.
Then N97 is a side-sliding qwerty phone with a 3,5 inch display running on a 360×640 resolution. Internal memory is 73 Mb with a built in mass storage of 32 Gb and you can expand that further with a micro sd card. The processor is a ARM 11 434 MHz without any dedicated a 3D hardware accelerator. It runs on the S60 5th Edition of Symbian.
Obviously, using the same applications on both these handsets reveals that application icons and fonts are smaller on the N82 versus on the N97. Also you get to see more information on the N97 than the N82.
Internal memory compared by plain numbers shouldn’t be of any concern as the N82 only has 27 Mb more than the N97. Unfortunately, it is a concern as applications such as OVI Maps, N-gage and Nokia Messaging eat up the internal memory on the N97, not to mention the fancy widgets that come preinstalled on it.
In terms of processor power, the N82 only seems slightly faster than the N97 when accessing the menu and the 3D hardware acceleration is most notable when playing certain games. Both provide equally good quality when playing the same media files.
Comparing the keypad on the N82 against the qwerty keyboard on the N97, the first one makes more noise while typing, while the latter makes less. This also naturally means that there is less feedback when typing on the N97 and I personally find that the feedback is decent enough to distinguish if a key was pressed or not. Normal use lets you operate the N97 without the qwerty keypad and using only the touch screen means that this handset is very quiet if you turn off the touch screen vibration.
Software
Having jumped over one evolution of Symbian S60 means that I’ve missed major improvements such as the settings for “destination”, quick change of font size on the handset and the compactness of icons into more logical categories, all of which were introduced in S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2. While the N82 basically has one icon for each thing such as settings, profiles, application manager and bluetooth (thus having these separated), the N97 packs them nicely into one icon called Settings where you can access them all. Very conveniently, you’ll find that Settings is the place to go by if you want to configure something. With Destinations on the N97 it becomes simple to stay connected without the hassle of choosing access points each single time. On the N82 this can only be solved by using third party application such as Smart Connect.
While compactness of the menu has a very logical approach, it brings up some minor issues. As someone not too familiar with the S60 5th edition, the normal approach for turning on bluetooth would be to navigate through the settings – connnectivity – bluetooth – on to switch on the bluetooth. A total of 7 keypresses from the home screen. (5 if you don’t count the two double click for selecting and then confirm). There is a trick here which is to hold your finger by the battery indicator. This will bring up the time and the connectivity icon. Choosing the connectivity icon saves you two keypresse or you can choose to have a slot assigned for bluetooth on the shortcut widget. While this works and lives up to the phrase “all roads lead to Rome” it’s not immediately intuitive to hold your finger by the battery icon to get to Connectivity. After all what does battery have to do with wifi or bluetooth connection?
On the N82, you had shortcuts on your homescreen, but on the N97 this is called widgets. You can have a Facebook widget or email widget on the homescreen to pull down updates through a connection. The downside is that each time you loose a connection or restart your phone it will ask you for connection and access. When it finally works however, too little information is shown and it becomes easier to simply launch the full fledge application instead. I therefore ended up having mainly “shortcuts” on my N97 as this widget thing became too gimmicky.
If there is really one thing I miss which was really convenient on the N82, it must be the easy uninstall of applications. With a simple press on the c button (delete) the application that was highlighted would be uninstalled. On the N97 you have to go into settings – application manager to do so. It’s more safe proof and clearly the N97 is not for the power users. That said, the N97 offers more choices in terms of customizing application rights and especially Java applications. Here you can go into Suite Settings to define whether a java application should be allowed to access the net, send messages and so on, which equates into less annoying notification pop-ups coming from java applications. Java applications are also better handled in the N97 than on the N82: whereas I occasionally experienced some that would stop working on me on the N82, I have yet to find one that does the same on the N97.
Multimedia
Out of the box the N82 chunks down the most video formats and plays m4v files without a problem and the N97 does not. While this is perhaps not of the biggest concern for other users it is for me as some of the shows I come across in the podcasting application are in this format.
Another thing that bugs me in the multimedia department is the weirdness of the Music Player on the N97. For one it can’t be launched by pressing play on the Nokia Wired Headset (AD-54, HS-45) that comes in the package. Continuing on the mystery of the wired headset that comes with the handset it provides some static noise when used with the N97. This static noise is like a little beep that can be heard when you press a button on the handset. Secondly there is no way to stop the music in the music player except using this headset, you can only pause the music from the music player and not even the music player widget let’s you stop the music. This is not that crucial but on the v11 firmware, it leads to an error when trying to delete the track you were listening to. Third is that when the handset is connected to a computer the Music Player suddenly stops despite you choosing to connect via PC Suite mode.
Using the same headset on the N82, the Music Player is launched when you press Play, and the static noise is not heard. Also, attempting to transfer files to the N82 while listening to music works flawlessly.
All is not bad on the N97 and the percent indicator when deleting songs comes very handy giving you an idea on how long it will take to delete songs from your handset. (It’s not too accurate though). And connecting my Jabra BT8040 Headset to it works seamlessly without having to input the pairing code. Despite both having the same music player I like the music player on the N97 most as you can simply skip through an audio file by dragging the status bar. Comparing the loudness between the N82 and the N97, the latter one has the lowest output when the equalizer on both is set to minimum. Personally I prefer to listen to music not on the maximum (I’ve had my share when I was younger).
Conclusion
So is the transition from the N82 to the N97 for the better? I would say yes, mainly because of the combined qwerty and touch interface. Having a touch interface gives the N97 a fresh feel to it and the keyboard lets me keep what I’ve been used too for a long time, namely physical keys.
There are quirks such as the S60 menu system not being optimized for touch screens. This again forces you to use a dual control mechanism where choices are partly done on the touch screen while others are done via the keyboard. It’s strange in the beginning but makes sense after some use.
What you essentially are upgrading to is a bigger screen and more storage, but giving up on the Xenon flash for pictures ang gaining the LED flash video light. Your typing speed will also increase as you get used to the keyboard. However, the fact that internal memory is low on the N97 can be a significant drawback on productivity such as not being able to have many applications running. Other things such as the GPS taking a longer time to lock can also be a no-go for some. Then again the N82 wasn’t perfect either before a couple of firmware upgrades and the upcoming 2.0 firmware for the N97 will hopefully bring significant changes to many of my described issues.
Did you also make a move from the N82, or N95, to an N97? What kind of drawbacks did you find in your transition and would you rate the experience as a good one or a bad decision?
