I think I'm going to be firmly in the "can't live without an fm transmitter" camp from now on.

I think the most impressive use case for this is when you are playing not only music, but also voice guided GPS instructions over the car stereo. Awesome.

Easy for me. Those few mm make an enormous difference to the carry comfort. I cannot deal with huge lump phones, so it has to be the mini.

If you are on a budget then the classic is by far the cheaper purchase as a used device from Ebay. Perhaps this pure market force fact alone says enough?

As an owner of both the N97 and N97 mini, I must say the Mini's stability is significantly better than the N97, so i would recommend the mini to anyone who is NOT a tech head.

Having more C: (avoiding the mess when this goes low and the annoying practise in monitoring C: or clearing cache) eases a lot of headaches for new users of the Symbian platform. This problem will only truly be cleared up if users can install Nokia apps on E:\ particilarly OVI Messaging & Maps.

If the above is fixed, then the playing ground is much closer for the 2.

I have used both the phones as well, and i definitely love the mini more. The sleekness is better that the classic, and it is much more stable and better to use.
I do not face any serious GPS issues, though I have to admit that if I am in a building and there are atleast 2 / 3 storeys above me, the GPS rarely gets a signal. I am not sure if this is normal or an example of the poor GPS quality that Steve mentioned in this article.

I also love the colours that the mini is available in - definitely sexier than the white or blank available in the classic (IMO). I am not a fan of the transmitter (though I do feel at times that I could have it :tongue:) and the built in 8 GB plus a memory card suits me just fine... :)

I just fail to understand why does the mini boot up with lesser RAM as compared to the classic when essentially they are the same phone - software wise...

Neither win. They are both dreadful phones. If you must have a touch UI (perhaps you have recently had a knock to the head or maybe you're just stupid) it's a no brainer - the iPhone is for you (if you must have touch, clearly you don't know your arse from your elbow).
Buy an N86 8MP. Gorgeous screen, great camera and none of that annoying, pointless, time-sapping touch UI nonsense.

If you must have a touch screen Nokia the winner is ..........the Nokia 5800, 95% of the features and very few of the problems of the N97 Classic/Mini at less than half of the price.

Don't buy N97/mini. The processor is too slow - when you play mp3 in the background you can feel the phone working slower, Mobbler in the background causes kinetic scrolling slowdowns etc. On top of that all the memory problems. If you want Symbian, buy 5800, it has exactly the same insides (except camera) and may possibly be worth the much lower price.

Or wait for new phones with Symbian^3 or wait even longer for Symbian^4 :)

As an old E-Series Qwerty user (E61, E61i, E71) the N97 Mini is the first N-Series which is really tempting for me in terms of build quality. Although I am a power user, I don't want to have to fiddle around with the C drive of a phone for which I just spent €350+ especially when it has 32GB of storage anyway. Sorry Nokia but that is just plain stupid and how should I explain that to normal users?

BTW Steve which Theme is that on the N97?

the answer is N900....the best there is now!!

This is another one of those arrogant "my way is the only way" posts from somebody who believes they know best for everyone and their requirements are universal.

The iPhone is not a no-brainer for touch, it is oversized compared to the N97 mini, and does not have a physical keyboard. I absolutely love the touch interface on the iPhone, but those two problem points kill the possibility stone dead *for me*.

I agree the N86 is a good phone, but I am outdoors a lot in daylight, and I need a screen I can read.

I also partly agree that the 5800 is brilliant, and a better value alternative *if* you don't want the widgets and the physical keyboard.

Horses for courses. Only those that have had a knock on the head or the stupid would assume that one size fits all.

I have the N97 "classic", and after the latest firmware update I must say, I am quite satisfied. It does everything I want, and yes, while Nokia should have put a faster CPU in the thing, it still does quite well in most areas and some areas quite excellent, actually.

I use Skyfire, Opera, WebKit for surfing depending what I need, all are fine.

For fun, music and day to day stuff I use: Mobbler or play mp3s from my 14 GB large music library on the phone, Frodo (with Bilbo) C64 emulator (amazing emu), Nokia Maps, Google Maps, play a few games bought from Ovi, use it to record concerts and rehearsals (I play in a band), take pictures, Facebook and email.

...and I cannot live without the QWERTY keyboard.

Everything works like a charm as long as you just remember one thing - ALWAYS install on E: drive ;-)

I love this phone, and right now everything is good.

BUT the next high/mid-end Symbian device from Nokia better be with a faster CPU and OpenGL ES or better graphics chip, or someone else will get my money.

Both of them are generally bad. The user experience is hardly great and i dont know why Nokia is always sticking with only 182mb of ram no im sorry ONLY 128mb

Boring.:boring:

As I am currently using the 5800, moving to either N97 or N97 mini is an update.

Between the two, I would likely go for the N97 mini. The smaller size and the heftier device memory are both plus points for a techie like me. The reduced memory can be easily compensated by a microSD card and the FM radio is not much of a loss as I don't carry my headset that often.

Since I carry 3-4 handhelds/phones most of the time, the smaller size is a must.

No, no, no, why do people keep getting confused between an FM radio and an FM transmitter? TOTALLY different thing. Gah.

An update in the most minor way possible. Trust me, you'll regret it. The widgets are pointless system hogs and with the latest updates the 5800 is closer than ever to its N series brothers.

I love Nokia. I've dabbled with other manufacturers but Nokia are streets ahead - except with the N97. It's absolutely dreadful in every way.

For touch UI the iPhone is by far and away a superior device. The lack of a qwerty is irrelevant as it's actually faster to use the touchscreen. Not so with Nokia. The 5th edition UI is, at best, a shoddy compromise and at it's worst is an unusable mess.

DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY.

SPEAK FOR YOUR SELFISH SELF.

The iPhone is too large, the touch screen won't work with gloves. The screen is too vulnerable to damage, the cases crack and split at the back near the USB connector too easily. Lovely interface, I have one nut don't carry it.

The N97 mini is the only phone that does the job for me. Unless you can name a more suitable one. I doubt you can because I've tried very hard.

I owned and sold a 5800 for no apparent reason. Tried android and now want another Nokia as a second device. Wanting to stay touchscreen for video purposes. Never considered N97c but have looked at the mini. My girlfriend picked one up on contract and its fairly nice. Now I'm looking to buy sim free from eBay and cannot for the life of me justify the 150 quid premium of the Mini over another 5800. What's it get me? 1.8 megapixels and an average and painful keyboard. Good hunting on eBay gets a new 5800 for 120 pounds. Only one winner. Just pissed I sold mine in the first place.

I don't see how giving advice is selfish. Far from it. I wouldn't want anyone else to be lumbered with such a hopeless device as the N97mini.

Get an N86 8MP! If the screen is too small or you must have touch (for God's sake WHY?!) get an iPhone. Waffle about a "delicate screen" or it being "too big" is nothing but empty hand-waving.

For the hard-of-thinking: the N97 mini is a disaster. Touch on the Nokia is dreadful. it is time consuming, counter productive, counter intuitive, pointless, bolted-on (badly) and totally unnecessary. Some brainless morons will tell you "there is no place for a non-touch device in 2010" or some other such idiocy. Touch is, in its current guise, nothing more than a fad. It's come and gone before. It'll need to change drastically if it's to stay this time.

Crap.

From a former Nokia owner (a 6650 flip) and a current Motorola Droid user: the N97 is an awful phone; the mini is just 'okay' but not much better. They both hang a lot, are very slow, and the touchscreen response is middling, while S60v5 is just a mess.

I travel overseas to Europe from New York to visit family, so I've taken both of the N97 versions for a test drive.

Honestly, Nokia should be embarrassed for releasing such half-assed efforts onto the public, and this is coming from someone who thought that the E71 was one of the best phones Nokia ever released. Of course they went ahead and botched that up with the absolutely terrible E72, but that's another discussion...

The N86 is actually a pretty good phone, but my poor thumb joint ached at the thought of going back to T9 buttons only. If the N86 had a Palm Pre style portrait slide out qwerty, it would have been the bees knees.

I hope Nokia isn't hitching its hopes onto S60 for much longer. Yes, Nokia makes great throw-away dumbphones for second and third world countries, but currently, they can't make a good smartphone it seems.

And from their unwavering use of low powered ARM processors and 128 MB RAM chips in their phones, one would think that they bought warehouses full of those things back in 2002, and are absolutely determined to use every last one of them. That's the only explanation I can come up with for sticking them in every single phone Nokia releases.

stop being so overdramatic. the mini is just fine.

owning an n95-3 before my n97 NAM, i came to the conclusion to just wait it out if u own one of the great N95s (basically any none n95-1). Otherwise, buy any other cortez a8 phone or any of the e-series, because they all come with enough ram and storage to handle any task and still retain stability. Something is seriously wrong with s60v5 on the n97, ram leaks and all.

Can't say I remember the last time my N97 classic crashed tbh, yes the phone was a pretty big let down after the astronomical hype it received but eh, with V20+ firmware it's a perfectly dependable and hugely capable bit of kit, Just without the glamour of the iPhone/Android crowd. Mind you, if I was to start my contract again now, my money would go on an N900 instead.