Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and the millions watching all over the world, are you ready? Let’s get ready to rumble!
Hey, this is LP from TechnoBuffalo. Today, we have something a little different, 12 rounds of heavy weight smartphone action. Welcome to our smartphone smack down. In the white corner weighing in at 150 grams, Nokia’s new N series device, the N97. In the black corner, HTC’s very own flagship device weighing in at 178.5 grams that is, the Touch Pro2. Killers stop kidding around. I got to mention that I am a fan of both HTC and Nokia. I’ve had a list of dozen Nokia phones in the past and I’m going on my third HTC device right now. So, I have absolutely no reason to play favorites.
Round one, fight. Design is pretty much always a factor when buying cellphones because you definitely want to have a flashy device to show off to your business buddies and friends. The N97 has a very distinct Nokia quality about it. It's pretty much in line with the previous N-series devices. The only great about the device is that it resembles the 5800 Xpressmusic quite a lot. You can get the Xpressmusic device for 300 bucks while this device costs more than double.
The Touch Pro2 is also a very good looking device. It’s sleek and streamline but the—people have confused this for an iPhone. I’ve already lost account but these are small—because both devices are very good looking. And when it comes down to looks and design, it’s pretty much always a matter of taste anyways. Some people like coffee and some people prefer of cocoa. That’s how it goes. So, this round is a tie, decide for yourself.
Round two, fight. When talking about device, they’re in constant use, build quality is definitely important. I mean, it can get annoying to wake up after a night on the town and finding your cellphone and your pocket in pieces. It's happened to me a couple times. I wonder if tequila had anything to do with it. Anyways, both of the devices are made out of titanium, well, not really. But it will be a kind of cool to have a phone that can handle and enter into the earth atmosphere but these devices are made out in plastic. Despite this, they both feel solid in the hand. Both have a good slide out mechanism but the tilting screen on the Touch Pro2 has a slight trickle to it while the mechanism on the N97 is very solid. So, the slight edge goes to Nokia in this round.
Round three, fight. This round maybe a very important designing factor for most because this part relates to the unique selling proposals of both devices, the QWERTY keyboards. Looking at the keyboards is quite obvious how this run will turn out. The tilting screen on the N97 is taking a whole lot of space away from the keyboard itself, leaving space for only three rows of keys. Eventhough I like typing with the N97, the Touch Pro2 keyboard is definitely in a league of its own. The keys are bigger, more elevated, and spaced out comfortably. And the rows are misaligned like on a regular keyboard. And the Touch Pro2 also supports a dedicated row of keys for the numbers. And I would say the typing is about 30% faster on the Touch Pro2. The N97 gets owned pretty badly in this round.
Round four, fight. When comparing the screen spec wise, both have their advantages. The N97 has broader color range but the screen on the Touch Pro2 has bigger resolution. Being the keen out resolution whore that I am, the advantage in sharpness is somewhat noticeable on the Touch Pro2. Small text in details looks slightly sharper on the Touch Pro2. The Touch Pro2 seems also to have a slight edge and break this in contrast. Looking at the devices side by side, the advantage in colors is not apparent as you might think and I really can’t see the massive difference in color count on the N97. Better contrast in higher pixel density gives the Touch Pro2 the points in this round.
Round five, fight. Both devices have resistive touch screens which react to physical pressure while HTC has plenty of touch screen devices under its built. This is only the second touch screen device for Nokia. Well, I think the former update improved touch screen sensitivity on the N97, it still can compete with the Touch 2. Pressing buttons and icons just needs a bit of more pressure and I would say that the sensitivity on the N97 is somewhat similar to the last generation of HTC devices. The Touch 2 is a clear winner in this round.
Round six, fight. If you watch my N97 review, you might remember that I wasn’t too impressed with the Symbian S60 5th Edition interface. They could have customized the interface for the N-series device because as it is now, it's not quite enough to justify the high price tag. The Touch Pro2 runs on Windows Mobile 6.1 which can be a bit clunky at times. Luckily, HTC has added their custom user interface on top of the operating system. TouchFLO 3D 2 is very functional and easy to use. And you don’t have to be McGiver to operate the main functions although it would be a kind of cool to McGiver though. Anyways, when comparing the two UI’s, the TouchFLO 3D 2 stands out. It looks sleeker and run smoother although the Symbian has its pros as well. If you’ve used the Nokia device before, you’ll probably find yourself at home using the S60 5th Edition interface. Also a very good feature on the N97 is the widget-based home screen which can be customized to suit your everyday needs.
The Nokia Ovi Store is a definite advantage to the N97 user experience. It's definitely a good idea to have a dedicated store for downloading new features and products onto your device. There’s is not a massive amount of stuff in the Ovi Store yet but I did find this cool ringtone which they use at the newest Star Trek movie. While windows mobile devices may not have a dedicated story yet, the community support for example at XTA forums is amazing. Weighing in the two interfaces pros and cons, I have to reward this roud to the Touch Pro2.
Round seven, fight. In this round, I will be comparing the Opera Mobile 9.5 on the HTC device against the Symbian web browser on the N97. The two browsers are very similar in use. You can use your finger to flick around on the page and double tap to zoom in although the Touch Pro 2 also has a dedicated zoom bar for zooming in and out of pages. The Symbian browser does support some flash out of the box while the browser on the Touch Pro2 does not. Loading times on the browsers are about the same. The Opera browser loads some pages faster than Symbian and vice versa. A very cool feature on the Touch Pro2 is the push internet. This feature lets you set your favorite internet pages to load out of predetermined time so you won’t have to wait for your favorite sites to load. The Symbian browser has its pros as well. Navigation between open tabs and previous sites is done smartly. Render quality is descent on both browsers. I notice that when loading bigger size on the Symbian browser, the kinetic scrolling can get a bit choppy but the Opera Mobile browser is not without fault either. I had the browser actually crashing one time while making this comparison. Both browsers are descent but far from perfect. I call this one a draw.
Round eight, I mean round eight, fight. The Touch 2 supports a 3.2 mega-pixel camera and no flash. Now, the N97 supports a five mega-pixel camera with a dual LED flash. The camera on the N97 is one of the best I’ve seen on a mobile device. It has all the function you’d normally expect to see on a dedicated pocket camera. The N97 has dedicated buttons for operating the camera which is always a good thing. The camera on the Touch Pro2 is okay but it can’t compete against that camera on the N97.
Round nine, fight. Media playback is always featured in marketing slogans for these types of devices. A rock concert in your pocket or movie theater in the palm of your hand! I watch a lot of movies off the big screen and it’s not exactly the same as watching it from the 3.5 inch screen. Surely enough, both devices have nice and big screens which are well suited for watching your favorite content while commuting on a train or plane for example. When it comes down to media playback, you definitely want a device that could handle any format you pull off the net. Neither of these devices support DivX out of the box. But this isn’t too big of a deal because I would recommend getting a third party player anyways.
For example, core player that handles pretty much every format you throw out it, I said pretty much. Unfortunately, the Symbian S60 5th Edition does not support core player. In fact, I could not find the working player for the Symbian that it can handle DivX and XviD but the N97 handles the formats it supports with ease and excels over the Touch Pro2 with 3GB formats. But since I have zero movies and 3GP, I have absolutely no use for 3GP playback. I mean, I’m not going to sit around for hours converting files. Another issue I have with the 3GB format is picture quality which can get a big plot even if the N97 handles some formats with ease. The lack of codec and third party player support is the reason this round goes with Touch Pro2.
Round ten, fight. Both devices have good music playing capabilities. The speakers on the Touch Pro2 are better than the N97 speakers which also may speaker phone calls better on the Touch Pro2. But the N97 hasn’t featured that the Touch Pro2 is dearly missing, the 3.5 millimeter headphone jack. Without the jack, you won’t be hooking a device up to external speakers to show off your—collection. And in my books, that’s a big enough reason to give this round to the N97.
Round eleven, fight. Ignore the battery life promises on the spec sheets. It ain’t going happen. Both devices have 1500 milliamp batteries and battery life is about the same. If you are heavy user, you will be depleting your battery in two days. So, keep your charger handy.
Round twelve, fight. When it comes down to it, price may become a deciding factor. But rest assured no matter what, both devices will be making a hole in your wallet, the size of a descent shotgun blast. The 32GB internal storage and superior camera justify the higher price tag on the N97. So, I would call this one a draw. So that’s about it, the Touch Pro 2 took down the N97 with the final score of 94 points. I probably going to get some flock from Nokia fans but that’s okay. I still considered both devices to be good business smartphones and I expect Nokia to be up—next time around. The Touch Pro2 is now the defending champion and I’m going to need your help to choose the next challenger. Post your suggestions on the comments. Thanks for watching, LP signing out.
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