We've never reviewed the Nokia N97 fully here on AAS, mainly because we knew the v20 upgrade was on its way. And now that it's here, with the N97 distinctly nicer to use, along comes a sister device, the N97 mini that impresses by improving in almost every are, making the original N97 still hard to fully recommend. In a multi-part review series, I look at both N97 variants in detail. In part 1, I look at form factor, design, build quality and performance. Parts 2 and 3 will cover applications/usability and camera/multimedia. 

"Also revealed is the microSD slot - with card swapping now infrequent on modern devices, hiding this potential dust trap away inside the back cover is fine by me. It could even be argued that the card itself is now not quite so vital, with most Symbian-powered phones now coming with substantial amounts of internal flash memory (of which more later). Also of note is that the N97 mini hides its antennae (GPS, 3G etc) underneath plastic, while the N97 leaves them exposed on the surface - yet more evidence that the N97 mini hardware is very much a second iteration on the basic design. (There will be more on GPS performance in a future review part.)"

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