In the next few minutes, we’re going to present our Nokia N97 Review to you. The manufacturer who owns the device is being not only atop of the range smartphone but the mobile computer as well It’s Nokia’s second cellphone with touch sensitive screen which measures 3.5 inches this time. Similarly to the Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic, the Samsung Omnia HD and the Sony Ericson Satio, the screen comes with a resolution of 360x640 pixels and 60 million color support. The image quality remains good in artificial lighting conditions although colors are not as saturated as on the amulet devices.
It is a good thing that details remain easily discernible in direct sunlight but colors get so—aside from this, the N97 has a screen that is more sensitive to touch than the Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic, meaning it won’t give you any troubles. The proximity sensor is clearly visible on the left of the earpiece while the video call camera and the light sensitivity sensor are on the right. The Sent and End buttons are also touch sensitive in feature resistive technology. We didn’t have any troubles using them and they produce distinguishable vibration feedback when touched. Except for them, there is not a rather ordinary looking button to access the main menu and the task manager.
The Nokia N97 weighs a 150 grams and the moment you take it in your hands, you’d find out you’re dealing with a heavy—it has an elegant overall look despite it’s almost entirely made of plastic.
Now, let’s open the N97 and to engage its QWERY keyboard. As you can see the display remains tilted while the phone is open and then like the HTC Touch Pro2. This particular angle cannot be changed. You also immediately notice the space key that isn’t located in the middle but on the right. Pressing buttons feels clearly discernible and they are large enough for trouble for use even by people with thicker fingers. And in the side of the phone, you’ll find a two stereo speakers, a micro USB slot and two sliders that locks and unlocks both the screen and the buttons below it. The volume rocker is right above the camera shutter and the foremost by no means easy to press. The 3.50mm jack and the Power button owned the top side of the phone. The five-megapixel camera with carat size—optics and double LED flash is in the back protected with a plastic flap.
Look at the slightly bulging lower part of the back panel, this is so to help prevent the phone from getting tilted to its side or the button to flat surface, say a table or your desk. And the Nokia N97ornSymbian S60 5th Edition just like the Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic, the Samsung Omnia HD and the Sony Ericson Satio, up to five widgets appear on the home screen one below the other. They entirely replace the auto known home screen themes and can be hidden in this way, but cannot be removed completely.
The available widgets aren’t many but you have the option to download that gets straight to the obvious stall where unfortunately a widget section is still missing. As a whole, the main menu doesn’t feature any changes. It can be shown as either a 3x4 icon grid or vertical list. And a lot of case, items selected with double clicks which is typical for this version of the operating system and is pretty much the same as with other cellphones running it. We’ll find the screen interesting when you’re having incoming call while the buttons are locked. Two sliders pop up one below the other when this happens. You use the first one to answer and the second to unlock your phone screen and buttons rather than reject the call. The organizer is not any different from what you can find on other devices running the same operating system, but unlike them, the N97 supports a full hardware QWERTY keyboard only, meaning you don’t have the softer ones. We don’t like this at and do hope that Nokia fixes the issue via software update and soon.
You follow your email correspondence using the standard Symbian client that offers quite a few options such as support for attached files sorting messages by Sender, Title, or Date. And last, it is by far not that comfy to use this Nokia messaging. The N97 comes equipped with the standard internet browser that comes with the operating system itself. In terms of functionality, it is pretty much the same as the versions found in the Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic, Samsung Omnia HD and Sony Ericson Satio. And the differences, it is the first time you have had the so-called kinetic scrolling or initial momentum feature.
Basically, scrolling movement goes on and doesn’t stop the second you move your finger away from the screen. Webpages and their flash elements including the YouTube player loads with almost no issues and navigation when such a lot screen makes for a great experience indeed.
Double taps are used to zoom in or out on things while keeping your finger pressed against the screen, switches the handset to full-screen. This is something we quite like. In case the page is too big to fit on the screen, you can use the overview function to move around faster. And the camera interface remains the same as the Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic. It feels somewhat uncomfortable when it comes to switching captions and they are plenty. You can choose between eight-scene settings, a variety of shooting modes, four color effect, white-balance, exposure, ISO’s sensitivity, contrast, sharpness and multiple snapshot sequence.
After taking a picture, you can share it right away over the Ovi—services but unfortunately, others like Facebook, Picasa and Flickr are unavailable—hosts all snapshots we have taken and features a quite comfy interface. You have several ways of filtering pictures aside from being cabled to see them all at a time. They are easily grouped by relevant month or album and can be easily tucked. Unlike other N series models, you won’t find the multimedia shortcuts menu on the N97becasue it has been replaced by music and videos and TV.
The first starts the music library and the music player which comes in a rather boring and button interface. Naturally, it offers several—that are in captions by Album, Artist, Composer and so on. And it is a good thing, there are several equalizer presets and sound effects you can take your pic from. As a whole, the music player is really easy to use. The Nokia N97 performs quite well when it comes to listening to your tracks. The overall audio quality is good although we believe there is still a room for improvement especially the other side of cellphones considered the best with this respect.
The Videos and TV menu offers several options to see recently watched content or available videos those captured with the N97 camera or any downloaded from the internet. They are played with real player that comes integrated into the operating system. Its interface is simple and provides a few functions. MPEG4—two videos coded at the native resolution of the screen played properly and despite the fact that the image quality is not merely perfect, watching them on the 3.5-inch screen makes for a pleasing experience.
The Nokia N97 is snappy and responsive with its 434MHz ARM 11 processor and 256MB of ROM and 128MB of RAM memory chips, but isn’t any faster than other devices running the same operating system. The—spots are beautiful 3.5 inches display, a good mechanism and does have a high audio quality yet it has several major drawbacks such as mediocre in call quality and this issue does calls the operating system to freeze at times. Not to mention, the N97 is not exactly as stable performing device in terms of multimedia. The cheaper Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic offers pretty much the same function and better sound through the loudspeakers—come to the conclusion that the Nokia N97 makes for a possible—smartphone but aside from the hardware QWERTY keyboard, it is not better than its arch rival, the Samsung Omnia HD in any respect. We have to admit the N97 is Nokia’s flagship but such a title is far from well deserved because the differences from the cheaper 5800 are not significant.
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