Nokia N97 - first impressions assessment

You only got it yesterday and there are already three posts from you, that is really great and reflects how much we all were expecting it to be here. Iam an E90 user, and Iam not pleased that its keyboard is obviousely far away from what E71/E90 can offer. I was thinking about buying an E75, but I would missed the large screen and dont like the idea of combined End/Switch off button. So, I have a few things to consider and time will tell which one will I pick up, or, If I rather stay with E90 until its successor appears.

great stuff, the more i read the more i want it, my n97 should be with me at the end of the month and i realy cant wait, great work guys, keep it up.

Nice first impressions Steve�I�m glad you could upgrade from the 5800 so fast, lucky you!!!

From the geeky point of view, with the N97, the Pre, the Omnia HD and the rumored iPhone, June is sure turning to be a hot and touchy month.

My money for now is on the Pre (looks gorgeous). Just waiting for the Apple developer�s conference to change loyalties!!!

The N97 as you mentioned is a spruced up 5800.I�m just waiting for Nokia to come out with something like the 5800, the key to any new product is it should surprise you!!!

Suju.

Great shots here of the N97. I mean really. These are some excellent shots of the device and should be included in Nokia's press and web materials about the device. It looks very "BMW-ish" in these images.

Great overview as well; looking forward to getting one of these soon as well.

Nokia is releasing phones to close together... I tend to spend to much money... Nokia E71, Nokia 5800, Nokia E75 und now the Nokia N97... I need to work more 😃

Great initial assessment, and superb to hear confirmation that the hinge is alloy, and not plastic.

I didn't think that adding a little more RAM should cause that much of a difference in battery life - certainly not more than maybe a 5-6% loss.

Seems like mainly Nokia cheaping out again - sad on a phone that has something like a 40%-55% gross margin. That kind of RAM amount adds what? Less than US$ 5 in bulk? Sad :-/

I got news for you, not everyone has owned a 5800. So please write a proper review of the N97 and stop comparing the two.
Anything is an improvement over the 5800.

Hi, I'm from Hong Kong and N97 has just been "released" to Nokia sales poeple on the streets and in their flagship store in IFC mall for users to touch and play around with.

You may notice i've posted some questions earlier; I was quite eager to find out about the phone and hence i was shocked that i had a chance to play with it. I am not a phone reviewer nor historically a Nokia user (i use a dopod, ex HTC), but I got to play around with the N97 for about 20 minutes and I confirm the comments by Rafe almost completely.

1) Build quality is solid. It even feels light given the size of the phone. The phone however does feel big, and is not entirely comfy to fit in your pocket if you wear tighter pants or a suit.
2) The camera quality is very good. Once you push down the protector, the camera mode comes on in less than a second. The focus time for snaps is only about 1 second in good lighting, which is nearly equal to consumer point and shoots. This is fantastic and makes taking pictures SO much better (i am a Canon DSLR user normally). I can take 2 or 3 shots in the time the iphone or HTC devices take 1 picture. The camera button also has great depth, so you will definitely be able to press half way to focus before taking a photo. this is really important as i HATE unfocused shots. Macro is also good, there is some depth of field i.e bokeh / background blur which is always nice. Contrast is high, pictures a bit saturated but thats what you expect from non DSLRs.
2) The video quality is also very good. I completely confirm the video panning part where you virtually have no lag in play back (Note there IS a little bit of lag when you are filming). The Video chip that rafe talks about is definitely there.
3) The device i was running had about 6 or 7 apps running, facebook, video player, picture viewer, nokia maps and the OS was NOT slow at all. However Nokia maps wasn't drawing very quickly, but i think that was fine.
4) The phone was not connected but if you don't have an internet connection, it frequently prompts you that "you don't have an internet connection" which was a little annoying.
5) The screen is responsive, much better than the 5800. However it is quite reflective.
6) I did not agree with Rafe on the stylus being required however. When using character recognition (i.e writing Chinese for those who can), just use your fingernails and you'd be fine.
7) The price of the device was HKD 5600, where the white one had a bluetooth stereo headset included worth HKD 588 (but NOT the black one) if you pre-order it these few days. This equates to USD 700 unsubsidized but includes a bluetooth head set worth USD 70. No memory card is included. They also include a USD 20 service, where they come to your home / office to help you tune / introduce the phone to you one on one. Shipping confirmed night of June 16th.
8) The keyboard was not too easy to type. I agree with the 1mm depth of the keys, which was a bummer and much slower to type than on my blackberry 8707v. Although keep in mind I felt the 8707v is also much easier to type than the E71 (a little more space, firmer keys and greater depth). This is a bit of a dissapointment, but i think i can definitely get used to it.

Quick conclusion: Definitely worth the price - will buy.
Pros: Build is excellent, the device is fast, i can store everything i need in it (definitely getting a 32gb Micro SD to go with this), camera is excellent. Black looks really nice (has a bit of a rougher battery cover which is nice to touch and not a fingerprint magnet) but white includes a Bluetooth headset...
Cons: It's a bit big for my liking, i'll prob need to carry a bag to work going forward to put in the device with the headphones and stuff. The keyboard leaves me a bit wanting, but this is still much better than the iphone / 5800 on screen keyboard, although not as good as blackberry 8707 or E71 for now. Screen is also a little reflective for my liking. I would probably like more ram.

Here's my 5 cents, just want to share my experience of it.

I almost dont know where to start.. You guys are doing an excellent job I've gone back to read and listen to some of your earlier work.. and as a relitive new comer to AAS I must applaud your efforts.

I read that the ribbon is exposed and likely to become a problem for some users. Kindly expand on your thoughts regarding amount of exposure and likliehood of running into problems. (from the pics I can say I am a bit nervous).

Would you comment more on the sliding cover for the camera is it solid (movement and build) and does it clip in to place or is it likely to move about in a pocket.

Steve indicated that it doesn't support divx/xvid natively. Will it support DIVX mobile (users on the divx forums have indicated work arounds for getting 3rd edition version to work on the 5800).

How likely is it that Nokia will introduce touch screen QWERTY and/or predictive in future firmware update. If so are you likely to be able to change the regional settings to QWERTZ or AZERTY.

What is the range of the FM transmitter.

finally can you comment on the general compatibility of 3rd edition aps on this device.

The divx mobile player is crap anyways. But the guys making coreplayer says there will be a s60 5th edition version this summer. It should be able to play divx movies(and virtually every other format) at a decent bitrate. It also plays youtube much better than the official youtube client. The spelling correction on this ipod touch makes me want to strangle something.

Great article Steve. Can't wait to get mine.

I don't understand why everybody waits for this telephone as the messiah...
It has nothing very innovative except a customizable homescreen. Beyond that no innovation with regard to previous Nseries !
A bad processor...

I don't understand this expectation !

could you test using windows vista or anything else and see how fast the write and read speeds are to the internal 32GB flash drive

Only thing unique is the combination of touchscreen and qwerty keypad with S60 5th edition. On the surface it has a customizable screen. The low end processor and cheap plastics make this phone undesirable. Plus the design is similar to HTC touch pro 2. Nothing that would interest me in this device. My N95 can do all the things this device can do efficiently. I'd rather go for a solid N Series or the upcoming E55 with solid build quality. As for touchscreen phones, I'd go for the well built Samsung phones because of the processing power and solid build quality, which Nokia has began to ignore.

Nokia N95 8gb NAM has the potential for increased functionality with new software updates but Nokia is completely ignoring the potential of this device in the US market. 😡

I don't understand why everybody waits for this telephone as the messiah...
It has nothing very innovative except a customizable homescreen. Beyond that no innovation with regard to previous Nseries !

Uhm, how many N series phones have you seen with a touch screen AND a qwerty keyboard...? I know, none.

Mind you, as a long-time E90 user, the keyboard does look just a tiny bit rubbish. And I think they made a really stupid decision to have an offset spacebar, 3-row keyboard or not...

Why is everyone going on about the space bar all the blooming time!? When I'm typing on a PC I find that most of the time I'm using my right thumb to hit the space bar anyway, so having it offset to the right doesn't bother me in the slightest!

The bigger question would be, is the N97 really worth paying TWICE as much as the 5800, considering the fact that there are only a handful of feature upgrades that have actually been made?

Thanks, all, I'm answering the above questions (where appropriate) in the main N97 Q&A comments, might as well keep everything together!

the processor ist not the latest..yes..but why should nokia use a new one when the older one has enough power to manage the device?

"Unregistered
It's just because it is Nokia !
I don't understand why everybody waits for this telephone as the messiah...
It has nothing very innovative except a customizable homescreen. Beyond that no innovation with regard to previous Nseries !
A bad processor...

I don't understand this expectation !"

Agree... They (Nokia) are lost teens preferences, and lost market share, and maybe lost me... So much money for almost the same 5800:frown:

Steve indicated that it doesn't support divx/xvid natively. Will it support DIVX mobile (users on the divx forums have indicated work arounds for getting 3rd edition version to work on the 5800).

The Xvid / Divx support issue on Nokia devices apparently isn't a technical one but a legal one. From what I can make out, it would be technically easy for them to add such support, but there are various licence problems with those formats.

As far as I know, Nokia can't put Xvid or Divx support built into their devices out of the box, but they can leave the door open for users to install such support through third party software. (They've done the same thing with OGG, it's not built in but you can install third party apps on the N97 and other devices which add OGG support.)

"Nokia could have stuck in another 128MB of RAM, as Samsung did with the i8910 HD, but there are cost and battery life implications. A tough one to call"...Come on Steve, 128MB must be virtually free these days and as for battery life a minimal impact I would think, what is Nokia thinking of, potentially crippling a device like the first N95.

I doubt the RAM is going to be a problem. I'm running with about 29MB phone memory free on my N95 8GB, and I've yet to have any memory issues. That said, I don't tend to keep a lot of apps running because the battery life is so poor.

I was encouraged to hear that the battery is bigger on the N97. Any idea how long it will last with a 3G connection active? A lot of the functionality I'd like to use on my N95 is basically useless because of the battery life issue.

but does it look the deal on screen ? does it have fancy transitions when switching from portrait to landscape ? Some promotion material from Nokia showed the tiles elegantly rearranging on rotation but all the real videos I have seen show the screen going black between the 2 states.....

Generally speaking does the UI have 'wow' factor or not ?

I have the N95 8GB - still pleased with pictures it takes, apart from at night! lol
i`m also really happy with it`s video recording (Picture and Audio) 😊
people are still Amazed when i record my band and put it on YouTube, they ask what camcorder i use!
my question is, does the N97 have better Video Quality and Camera than the N95 8G?
i was going to get th Samsung Omnia HD, but after hearing about the rubbish AMR Audio Codec that comes on the HD Video Recording, i wont be getting it now, my contract ends on July 4th on 02 Network, knowing my luck there will be another batch of phones to choose from, Grrrrrrrr 😡

Is there any word on whether or not some of the software improvements (namely widgets and kinetic scrolling) will hit the 5800?

Tzer2 wrote:The Xvid / Divx support issue on Nokia devices apparently isn't a technical one but a legal one. From what I can make out, it would be technically easy for them to add such support, but there are various licence problems with those formats.

I own a Nokia 5800 and find the software a bit 'clunky' and not really optimised for touch. It's good to use most of the time, but is far, far away from being intuitive. Most users will find the same with the N97. I for one will stick with my 5800 and upgrade when 5th edition has matured.