From iPhone to N97 mini? An opinion from the other side!

[slitchfield]

As an experiment, I lent my Nokia N97 mini to All About iPhone's Matt Radford, to see what he thought of the device and its interface, coming from a staunch iPhone background. Embedded below is my ten minute catch-up interview with him, for your interest. A fuller textual report from Matt is in the works over Christmas, pudding and festivities permitting!

Read on in the full article.

[mattrad]

Yes, move over "The Gadget Show", and prepared to be enthralled by the man in the grey jumper…

I'm not sure if it comes across in the video, but I really enjoyed playing with the N97 Mini. I thought that it was an impressive device, but perhaps too complicated for the average user to tailor to their requirements. Coming back to Symbian from the Dark Side, it still strikes me as an incredibly capable platform - but in need of a facelift and rethink in terms of usability.

Any chance we will get a show about how many move from Symbian/Nokia to the iPhone and never return?

[rvirga]

The Smartphone Experts network (a group of sites, each focusing on a different platform) is currently doing its annual Smartphone Round Robin, where each site tries for one week two of the best smartphones of each competing platform and writes a review. Last week the staff of iPhoneBlog.com reviewed the Nokia N97 mini and the N900. It's an interesting read. And so are the other reviews of the Round Robin; for example, also last week Nokia Experts had a look at the Blackberry 9700 and Storm 2 from a Nokia user perspective.
(hoping that this message won't be moderated into oblivion because I mentioned competitor websites)

@unregistered very funny but true. They cherry pick stuff to positively highlight anything Nokia. I'm surprised they can actually find these articles... Probably the only site to constantly harp on about Nokia.

To put this into context you'll probably find far more people trying an iPhone and never come back.

BTW I actually detest iPhones but I have a far more open view. All mobile OSes have their + and -

[xerxes]

My wife just chose to return to Symbian (Nokia 5800 in this case) after 6 months on an iPhone 3G.

I have personally never been able to retire my N95 (posting from it now) despite having had a 3GS for the same 6 months.

I went to the HTC Hero (Euro w/ chin) and never looked back. I absolutely love the phone.

I've owned the 6230's, the E51 and E65, the 5800XM, the 5730XM (which I liked best out of them all), E75 (which my wife currently enjoys, but is still envious of the HTC Hero). I also use the 3rd gen iPod Touch. I love my iPod Touch, but just can't picture myself using it as a phone, especially after watching everyone Else's grievances with the iPhone. The iPhone's inability to multi-task or customize drives me nuts too.

I was a real die hard symbian freak, but after getting so many phones that ALWAYS NEEDED updates to do the things that it was originally created to do, well, I just got tired of it and tried something else. And I did.

If you are looking for an alternative to Symbian (which I still use my 5730xm as a backup), but do not want to jump on the iPhone band wagon; give android a shot! Especially HTC with its Sense UI. You will be shocked at how good it really is. Even its Marketplace.

I don't understand the talk of Multi-tasking and Customisation holding someone who uses a Nokia Device back from getting an iPhone? You can jailbreak now in the press of a button and with it comes the customisation and the much wanted (yet overrated, for 99% of apps IMO) multi-tasking?

Just a thought....

Another Nokia infomercial.

Why are we even mentioning this underpowered, short of memory, buggy phone in the same sentence with the iPhone?

"My wife just chose to return to Symbian (Nokia 5800 in this case) after 6 months on an iPhone 3G."

Why?

Biggest lie of the year.

ipod user, then went to nokia , then iphone (love it), but went back to Nokia S60 again. It just works for the things i need to do with a phone. (with more battery life and portability too). Never going back to the iphone unless i get one for free.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

"My wife just chose to return to Symbian (Nokia 5800 in this case) after 6 months on an iPhone 3G."

Why?

Biggest lie of the year.

Why is it a lie? People are not allowed to choose? They all like what "YOU" like and it's the best for everyone?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Another Nokia infomercial.

Why are we even mentioning this underpowered, short of memory, buggy phone in the same sentence with the iPhone?

exactly, why do we have to put a phone that has to be "jailbreak" and download at least 20 apps to have a functionality of a Nokia out of the box. But it's a great music player

Originally Posted by Ignorance

I don't understand the talk of Multi-tasking and Customisation holding someone who uses a Nokia Device back from getting an iPhone? You can jailbreak now in the press of a button and with it comes the customisation and the much wanted (yet overrated, for 99% of apps IMO) multi-tasking?

Just a thought....

i'm sorry, I have a jailbreak iphone but it is more than just "pushing one button". Perhaps some gadget geeks can do this blindfolded but the rest won't even bother. Plus in some places if not all, you void the warranty and some people are actually afraid of that. Sure you can re-flash it, but yet again, it's for us more technically inclined. The majority will have someone else do it for them.

But I agree, once jailbroken, they are quite nice. Non-multitasking was never an issue to me yet too.

I think what's holding some back is not the lack of multitasking but other feature like full bluetooth, (out of the box), even size (believe it or not), camera (iphone's camera is still not up to N95), changeable battery (use full in some countries).

Different needs.

What the guy is saying is what I've been posting on Nokia conversation for months maybe years now.

Symbian does not suck, it's too just complicate for a Joe Doe.

It needs to be dumb down so that even a monkey is capable of using it and should even make the monkey look smart using it.

Like my friend; I convinced him to buy a E71. When he got it he don't know crap about S60 and can't figure out how to use it properly. I help him install apps and etc to better suit his needs, so he likes it better. He used it for about a year and never figure out how to do anythig on it beside what I've helped him install. Now recently, he got the iphone and he can install apps on it easily and show them off to me proudly.

Iphone user feel so good and so proud of their iphones because they think they are so so smart because they can actually use the device properly and install apps on it. That exactly the way how I ( a smart smartphone user or aka geek) used to feel when I got my S60 phones and the world was still on their old T9 dumb phones.

If there's anything Nokia should learn it is "Not being able to use a device makes a person feel stupid and fustrate, not the kind of emotions you want anybody to link to your product."

Wake up Nokia!