Nokia N97 Review

A Quick Glance

When the much awaited Nokia N97 finally hit the markets, it didn’t completely disappoint the loyal Nokia users. Since most of the features in Nokia N97 are available in any smart phone, so an increasingly popular remark about the phone is the fact that it offers nothing new. But there are features that are of extremely high quality and are in consistency with Nokia’s usually high standards. Let’s take a leisurely look and analyze what features make this phone so popular.

Machine Performance Guaranteed

First of all, the performance of the overall machine is good and shows that Nokia didn’t ignore the fact that at the core, a Smartphone should be a good phone. The N97 has been seen as a good instrument connecting well with a 3G network signal. Its capability of catching the signal from the network is quite good and you can be assured of consistent connectivity. You are sure not to face any problems with the internet connectivity as well. To top it up, it has a high quality earpiece and a microphone so people on either end do not have any complaints with regards to the flow of sound. More than the volume of the sound, the quality is exceptional, giving people enough reason to feel good about the speaker quality. It has a radio that can also be used as a transmitter.

Photo by kiroshafeek

Impressive Click Cut and Zoom

It has a 3.5mm headphone jack, a microSD and mini USB, which makes it very easy to connect to other devices without the requirement of a bunch of accessories. The 640 X 360 pixel slide-n-tile 3.5 inch 16M color resistive touch screen is good. It has a decent camera, which is a 5 MP Autofocus one, and comes with a flash obtained from dual-LED. You can conveniently shoot videos with it as well. However, the camera features aren’t any great considering Nokia’s inclination towards manufacturing better camera phones. Although you can use the USB for transferring files, the number of formats that are supported is not exhaustive leaving much to be desired.

Operating System – Struggling its way to the best

It runs on the Symbian OS 9.4 and one must say this falls flat on its face compared to better software from iPhone or any of the other Smartphones. The animations and morphing on the screen or any transition do not seem to be spontaneous. It doesn’t give the same pleasurable experience that one expects from a Smartphone that is quite expensive. The angle in which it opens up is not what most people are acquainted using. On the other hand, the gloss of the phone or the look and feel along with controls is missing making usability of the phone a bit difficult and boring to say the least.

Functionality Ranks Average

The phone has got thumbs down from many people due to its touch controls, which are not too good to be talked about. The internet browser doesn’t have anything new and the fact that it is similar to lesser grade Nokia versions leaves users a bit disappointed for not getting anything over and above what is easily available. Most importantly, the phone doesn’t have a multi-touch screen, which means zooming in and out is still a function of slides and tapping again is not what you would have liked in your Smartphone. A silver lining is that it has Flash, which allows you to watch videos on Youtube without much of a fuss.

The keyboard of Nokia N97 is average to say the least. The QWERTY keyboard isn’t easy to get used to and the rubber keys are sometimes hard and just too difficult or irritating to use or get used to.N97 falls short in this regard compared to an HTC of even an iPhone.

Storage Capacity and Battery Life Speaks Volumes

It has an internal storage of 32 GB along with a 128 MB RAM and can be upgraded further which is a good thing about this phone. It is configured for Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP and Wi-Fi- 802.11. Apart from FlashLite, it also has a document reader for Word and Excel documents and an editor for editing videos and photos. The battery life of N97 is quite good. It can give six hours of talk time for 3G and music can be played for a very good duration of around 40 hours.

Photo by kiroshafeek

Final Verdict

It is a phone that definitely has some good features but misses out on some essential parameters that would have struck the success chord a bit heavily.