Maybe I've got a metal fetish, but there's just something about handling cool metal that makes me fall in love with a phone. I started with the Nokia N93, then (in approximate order) Nokia E90, Nokia E61i, Motorola Z10 and now the N97 mini, built to Eseries standards by those nice folk in the Nseries team. And, as part of my attempt to do real world comparisons between the best the Symbian world has to offer and the best of the competition, I've matched up the N97 mini with the slightly larger, but similarly specced, also metal, similarly priced (£380) Motorola Milestone (known as the Droid in the USA).
Both sit in the hand and feel like they mean business. The cool metal and ultra-solid build mean that you at least can see where your £380 has gone - in contrast to certain plastic devices which shall remain nameless (that creak and bend at the slightest provocation).
So, spec by spec, feature by feature, I've used my experiences with both devices to rate them, head to head. As usual, where appropriate, I've tinted with green the cells in each row that indicate a 'winner' for that attribute, for interest sake...
There's also a score in brackets, for explanation see the text below the table!
| Motorola Milestone (a.k.a. Droid) | Nokia N97 mini | |
| Latest firmware, as at March 5th 2010 | 2.01 | 11.0.045 |
| Form factor, materials | Slightly odd looking metal frame that's easy to hold and hard to drop (unlike the Nexus One!), buttons and (gold) highlights, plus rubber-shod metal battery cover, with plastic rear outer and panels to allow radio signals through. Tempered glass front, 169g | Metal bezel around front face and metal battery cover, with plastic rear frame, resistive, plastic touchscreen and alloy-hinged keyboard mechanism, 138g |
| Input mechanisms | Physical QWERTY keyboard (though disappointing - the keys have little feel, are tiny and are all joined together), plus virtual qwerty keyboard in both portrait and landscape modes, with basic writing aids. Voice input also an option for some fields. [7] | Physical QWERTY keyboard, plus virtual numeric and handwriting options. [8] |
| Display | 3.7" TFT, great indoors, OK, but not brilliant in sunlight [9] | 3.2" TFT, great indoors, OK, but not brilliant in sunlight [7] |
| Interface | Android 2.0, three homescreens, heavy widget and shortcut customisability, finger control only but designed for finger touch from day one [9] | S60 5th Edition plus some Symbian^2 modules, including full kinetic scrolling in applications menu. Finger, stylus or keyboard/d-pad control [8] |
| Speed | With latest 2.01 firmware, surprisingly slick, no noticeable waits while working round the interface [9] | Sometimes sluggish, even with latest RAM-friendly firmware. Symbian ideally needs more horsepower under the bonnet [8] |
| Processor/RAM | ARM Cortex A8 550MHz, includes graphics acceleration, 120MB free RAM after booting [8] | ARM 11, 434MHz, 55MB free RAM after booting [5] |
| Memory capacity (storage) | Around 140MB of internal storage is OK for most purposes, though will struggle when larger Android games come along. A big microSD card is essential for media. [7] | 280MB or so of system disk available at first turn on, enough for all applications anyone could want, alleviating the problems of the N97 classic. 8GB of mass memory, plus microSD expansion [9] |
| Camera | Average 5 megapixel stills, Dual-LED flash, exposed camera glass. Video capture is good at 720 by 480 and with great audio but there's no focussing or pre-focus. [8] | Super 5 megapixel stills, with dual-LED flash and exposed camera glass. Video capture is good at VGA with great audio, but again there's no focussing or pre-focus (as on the N86, N95 and N82). [9] |
| GPS and navigation | Great GPS chip, backed up by Google's Wi-Fi location and the latest Google Maps and with voice navigation rumoured for some point in the future (maybe). Trial version of commercial Motonav software. [8] | 'Good enough' GPS chip and antenna, plus the super Ovi Maps 3.3 with free voice guided navigation. And free traffic, guides, etc. And all worldwide. Forever. [10] |
| Audio | Loud and surprisingly high quality mono speaker, plus 3.5mm jack, good microphone for video capture. Comes with basic call-pick-up stereo headset [8] | Rather tinny stereo speakers, plus 3.5mm jack, good microphone for video capture. Comes with handy in-ear multimedia stereo headset. [9] |
| Video | YouTube client works well for high quality streams, though videos can sometimes be slow to start playing; local MP4 and WMV videos of modest frame size supported (no FLV), good frame rate in general [7] | BBC iPlayer works superbly for streaming or downloading TV programmes in the UK. A YouTube client is available in the Ovi Store and works OK, but with lower grade streams. Local MP4, WMV and FLV (Flash) videos of modest frame size all work well, with 'good enough' frame rate. [8] |
| Web browsing | Browser is also Webkit-based, but with no Flash support (this is 'coming soon'). Page zooming is handled better though, there's full multitouch (pinching and splaying), and speed is generally good. [8] | S60 Web (webkit-based), functional without ever really impressing, though there is Flash support if needed. Touch interface is clunky. [7] |
| Other application highlights out of the box | Native Google Mail client, Google Talk client, Quickoffice viewers, Corporate Calendar/Directory (Microsoft Exchange clients). [8] | Quickoffice viewers, Dictionary, Zip manager, Converter, Mail for Exchange, Nokia Music store, Podcasting, Facebook widget and another dozen or so utilities and widgets. [9] |
| Application store and ecosystem | The Android market boasts many thousands of applications, the majority of which are free. Quality is variable, but there's no shortage of choice. Application updates are automatically checked for and offered. A growing number of high quality cloud-enabled Google applications (e.g. Goggles, Shopper, Earth). [10] | Nokia's Ovi Store is now very usable, with a good choice and with some very high quality apps. There's no automatic checks for app updates though - individual apps have to 'call home' to check for themselves. [8] |
| Battery | 1400mAh, microUSB charging, nightly charging needed [8] | 1200mAh, microUSB charging, nightly charging needed [7] |
| Ongoing firmware support and updates | Over the air updates only. I'm expecting 2 or 3 updates throughout 2010. | Updates Over the air and via Nokia Software Updater. Again, 2 or 3 updates are expected through the year. |
As you'll have seen from the panels above, with 7 'greens' each, there's nothing obvious to split the N97 mini and Milestone. Note that an outright winner is not necessarily needed, but it's always interesting to come away with some quantitative finding.
Which is why I then went back and added individual scorings where appropriate, shown in square brackets: after all, some of the 'green' panels above were awarded on the tiniest of margins - breaking things down by score/weight will obviously shed more light here.
Having scored where needed and then added up the marks, we get:
- Motorola Milestone 114 pts
- Nokia N97 mini 112 pts
So, in pure numerical terms, the N97 mini gets edged out, though by the narrowest of margins. There really is that little to choose between them - which means that making a real world choice will depend on what you've used before (and thus a preference for one mobile OS over another) and perhaps on specific applications that may or may not run under Android/Symbian. Buyers are drawn to the N97 mini's 'phone' form factor and size, along with the free world voice navigation, while others are drawn to the larger screen on the Milestone, along with the faster, slicker interface.
A good question might be why most of my 'head to heads' end up so well matched - I'm hoping a good answer is that I have a 'feel' for decent devices which give each other a good run for their money. You'll possibly disagree with some of the above, in which case fire away in the comments below!
Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 7th March 2010
PS. Special thanks to Clove Technology for the loan of the Milestone and Nokia PR for the loan of the N97 mini