A fresh look at the Nokia N97

Very good review. Very impartial and comprehensive.

Most of us are aware that the jury has returned a verdict of not good enough on the N97, but it's nice to read an opinion in perspective, instead of the usual exaggerated vitriol. Particularly this:

"S60 5th Edition, which the N97 runs on, has been criticised for being outdated, and having a touch interface bodged on top. However, 5th Edition is logically laid out and it's not too complicated to find anything."

Which is absolutely true.

By the way, my iPhone needs two taps for some things. What's the big deal? Can't people cope with two taps?

I don't think people have a problem tapping twice, and if you had to tap everything twice, no issue at all. But 5th Ed is littered with examples of sometimes its once, other times twice. Messy.

But the real point about this device is simply summed up here

"For example, it is actually impossible to have Ovi Maps, Spotify and Qt (needed for other applications) all installed on the N97 at once"

How could an enthusiast buy this having read that line?

Kev

The N97Mini doesn't have the C: drive problem.

Good review of the N97.
I suspect I am not alone in having looked at the N97 and N97 Mini from an 'E Series' perspective, and been slightly disappointed that one or two features are missing. Given that the devices are fairly well suited to document editing, it is a pity that you have to buy upgraded software to do it. And no support for printing documents or emails - I have found that occasionally useful, and even an impressively cool thing to be able to do!
Perhaps Nokia are over zealous in trying to preserve the distinction between E and N series. Or maybe Nokia are planning an E series equivalent of the N97 (mini), as it the obvious hole in the E series range.

P.S. I think the headphone socket is probably in the right place, as often you would want the device n your pocket, whilst you listen to music.

Just 2 comments:

1) The C:\ issue is beaten to death but I have installed Nokia Messaging, Nokia Maps 3.04 (beta), Java 2.0 Runtime, Nokia Bots, Ovi Store, Swim and I have 25.7mbs free. I'm just surprised you can't get the 3 apps into c:\.

2) Video editing is available in the "Photos" app, where videos can be altered by: 1) Changing the background sound track, 2&3) edit / cut 4) insert text. While not an effecient video editor, it is usable if you take the effort to learn how to use it and you don't mind fiddling for a while. I've made a few edited videos and all viewers are generally shocked they were filmed and edited on a phone.

100% agree the N97 is for geeks given the stability and tweaks required to get this thing working. But when it isn't freezing or causing me to reset this ... the phone is still amazing.

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

yitwave, quite right regarding the video editor. I was miss-footed by trying to find video editing options while the video was playing, not in the actual gallery view. So I looked again after reading your comment and found the editing options. I've updated the review now, sorry about that folks!

I will just add now that I'm not writing quite so formally about the phone, is that while its stability drives me up the wall, I have absolutely loved having it, and it will be sorely missed when it goes back to London.

The N97 exceeds the sum of its bugs!

So David, will you swap your legendary E90 for an N97?

Well, I'm not fortunate enough to have an E90, my own phone is an E55. However, I am giving serious thought to finding an N97 or N97Mini on Ebay, after having had this N97.

Ah Queens Gardens in the centre of Hull.

Not a bad shot from the N97 to be honest.

Now I am really torn. Last night I had decided to replace my old and flaky N73 with an N97. Now I read your article I cannot pretend I dont know what to expect.
To be honest the reason I have stuck with the N73 so long is that it does what I want. I use Google maps for Nav, Google mail, Google reader,Google voice search and MobiReader for downloaded books. And I'm happy (apart from when the camera freezes). I read on other threads of the N97 having problems with these Google apps as well.
What a pity Nokia spoiled the N97 from being my best friend for a good few years.
I suppose it is over to Android thereby ending a long journey that began with the Nokia 7650.

I forgot the thank you for the useful review in my earlier post - many thanks.
Surely it wouldn't be too difficult, especially now that Symbian is open-source, to create a kind of C drive swap file which resides on E, and therefore offers extended storage? Does anyone with Symbian development experience have an opinion on this?

That's an interesting idea, and assuming that there are no showstopping gotchas, why not have an applications installed C: drive area written out to the memory card when the app is not in use, freeing that space for in-use apps. When the original app is needed the data is written back in before running.

When you think about it, this amounts to having the .sisx for the app on the E: drive, and installing it just before use, but a bit quicker this way.

I'll have a little go at this tonight. It won't help with apps that need to run at the same time, but might save some installed space if you are selective about which apps.

Ebay pricing for used Nokia phones aren't that great. Often they're priced at or above what you'd find for new devices on Amazon, Newegg or Dell.

I haven't used most of the Google apps on the N97. Maps and Mail work fine. Although a lot of the time I access Mail, Reader & Docs via their mobile sites on Opera, and that works incredibly well. In fact, I've all but replaced using the built-in mail application on the N97 with the GMail mobile website.

If I get time I'll test the Google Voice search on this N97 and report back, so subscribe to the thread, okay?

Yes, the prices aren't great. I've seen an N97 Mini go for £240, which is a bit more than I'd prefer to pay for a used phone. MobileFun charges £360 for a new one, so it's only a 33% depreciation.

Yes, I'll take that point. I supposed from a designers point of view, they can't do right for doing wrong. For me, I'd never walk around wearing earphones, as if I'm moving around, I want to hear my surroundings. So I'll likely only use earphones while I'm watching a video, and thus holding the device in landscape.

But yes, I can see how you might prefer it on top if you're using it as a walkman.

Hey, you're welcome :)

Thank you :)

You know the place? I haven't bumped into you in Hull City Centre have I? :)

Hi, really good review, can't argue with it. love mine (despite all the hard work, so I must be a geek !) Google voice search works fine, as do all the google apps I've installed, and I tend to use Opera mini and Snaptu as my main two homescreen shortcuts, plus run the Nokia Beta Labs social messaging widget for FB and Twitter on my homescreen with no problems. Also remove share location stuff from maps and you get about 3meg of C back :)

This has been brought up before and people have said it is theoretically impossible due to something about the c: being a nand disk and the e: being a flash disk. Now that we see so much of Z: (around 30mb) is free even on the latest firnwares, cant they not repartition the z: and c: drives? 30 more mb on c: will make ALL the difference for non-technical users.

Will admit is takes abit of tweaking to optimise the n97 but it works flawlessly when it is to my liking :p

"The N97's killer hardware feature is of course the hinge mechanism..."

This says it all.

Why, why, WHY don't people mention the utterly broken and virtually unusable predictive text nightmare?! WHY?!?!

Oh and can anyone tell me how to CHANGE a favorite contact once they've been set in the homescreen widget? Without deleting the contact?

Go to your phone book (contacts app). Your favourite contacts will be at the top of the list. Choose one of them, select options, select remove from favourites. Voila! you are done. This automatically updates the favourite contacts widget as well.

Thanks. So weird. I had to do a factory settings reset. Before that there were no "stars" by my contacts to indicate that they were my favorites. Beeeezarre!

I just can't stop trying to give this phone a go. If only I could fix the predictive-punctuation thing. Doesn't anyone else have this trouble?