Why the Nokia N97 sucks... and why it still rules

In my experience with the i8910, I found that the battery life was actually very very good, even superior to the N97. The issue is that the phone drops battery bars too quickly. The last bar of battery can easily last through a whole day of moderate use.

Just another sign of Samsung's poor software abilities.

I am beginning to regret buying the Vivaz, don't get me wrong I love it and now with up to 10 widget filled homescreens the interface is great (sorry cant reveal much more).

BUT the lack of indication from SE about a Firmware update to fix some of the niggling things is beginning to annoy me.

I really want a Nokia device with a Qwerty keyboard but the N8 has made me think twice, I wonder if Nokia will ever do a Symbian 3 version of the N97 with much improved hardware. Maybe a Qwerty version of the N8. C6 interested me for a while just not sure if it will have the hardware to be good enough though.

Lately I'am following Posterous on his N97 Photo Journey through South - Africa :
http://myphotographer.posterous.com/

:) Regards jApi NL

"It's a Nokia."

It's all you really had to say Steve... :rolleyes:

"why it rules"

nokia managed to split the homescreen up into tiny little components distributed across different firmware files so that it can't be easily ported to other symbian phones.

Very good and fair article, my N97 is in for repair at the moment (lens cover, gps antenna and right speaker) and I'm missing it like crazy. I am using my old N95 8Gig and it just shows how good the N97 is ! Just hope the CPW pull their finger out and get my phone back to me soon,N95 is/was a great phone, but touch screen with physical qwerty is the future, and I'm sure the N9 will be a rock solid replacement for the N97 (I hope)

Note that most Satio's aren't buggy, particularly after the recent firmware update (I've asked lot's of Satio owners), Steve's seemed to have something wrong with it ;)

The N97 has this memory problem, that's undeniable - but it's down to the way people use it. I've never encountered the memory problem.

I've stuck with my N97 as well, but you didn't mention the issue with the flash bleeding. I hate it!

People dived in an bought the N97 to quickly not reading reviews about it,even Nokia were reading reviews themselves an released the N97mini to stop themselves getting slagged down,thats the current trend with the younger generation nowdays just buying a mobile on its looks not the functions an software on it,i bought the Satio myself because i knew the software was same as the 5800 ,i liked very much because the Speakers an Software on the 5800 was brilliant,had no trouble with Satio an even use the Nokia Ovi music player to download Songs to my Satio,an will stick with it until the N8 is finally released,Nokia always outshow SE phones with the speakers,i bought the Vivaz an only used for a day until i realised the speakers on it were way below par an no equaliser on it,Nokia thougth the Querty keypad would succede but not everyone seems happy using it,if Nokia were the ones who only produced the thinner mobiles the Querty keypad might have worked,but it makes Nokia phone to Broad an Heavy,thats why the N900 software should have been put on the N97 or N97 mini as the N900 was to thick an heavy for most people

@spice3d: the LED flash bleed was due to the camera glass microscratches - the fixed glass and slider also fix the flash bleed.

Everything you say may be true Steve, but the main problem with the N97 (or at least the Mini that I bought and trialed for a week) is that it is a horrible horrible horrible phone to actually use!

I came to the phone actively looking for a way to replace the iPhone I have to use for work with a non-Apple product. Think about that for a second. I was prepared to spend £200 of my own money in order to not carry an Apple logo and to get a bit more functionality and freedom, but the actual experience of using the phone was so horrible that I had to return to the Apple dark side with my tail between my legs.

And this was not a reaction to Symbian (I have owned and used an N73, an N95 and an E61i in the past) or to S60 5th (I have no problem using my wife's 5800). It was purely because the the device was so underpowered at the hardware level for what a power user expects to be able to do with a flagship device in 2010. How the N97 design team can possibly have concluded that it was a good idea to save $10 per device by using a 128Mb RAM chip and a slow processor is beyond me.

I have said several times on these pages that Symbian is being held back by Nokia's penny pinching hardware designs and bizare lack of quality control far more than the actual OS or UI layer. The problem now is that many early adopters are moving away from Symbian as a platform and that is a leading indicator of decline for any computing platform.

You only have to look at the N97 forum on this website to see what I am talking about. Long term Symbian flagship users whose experience of using the N97 has been so bad that they are now moving away to iPhones or (mainly) Android.
And these people are not leaving because of the GPS or the lense cover. They have fought through those issues. They are leaving because they cannot stand using the N97 anymore and many say they won't be returning to Symbian.

So the N97 doesn't rule. It sucks so badly that the N8 is going to have to be truely outstanding if Nokia wants to stem its user attrition at the high end of the market and undo some me the damage that the N97 has done to the company's thought leadership position in Europe and Asia.

Nokia needs to understand that they need to up their game massively in many key areas if they want to get back to being more than a low margin provider of utility products. That's a hard lesson to learn when you've been top dog in your industry for such a long time and articles like this don't help. They perpetuate the message that "things aren't really that bad" which really isn't what Nokia needs right now. So show Nokia a bit of tough love and tell it how it is.

The N97 stinks from a power user perspective and Nokia needs to do much, much better.

The problem with the N97 is that it is a good all around smartphone. It is hard to replace it without loosing something.

I am quite satisfied with my N97. After un-installing the NGage app and setting everything that can be set to use the E: drive, everything just works.

I admit that the 128 MB RAM and underspec'ed vanilla ARM 11 CPU takes some of the joy out of it, and Nokia deserves to be punished for that.

BUT when push comes to shove, it still pulls away from many of the Androids and iPhones. I've used both the Nexus, Hero, iPhone 3GS, SE Vivaz etc., and yes, the N97 is slower, but despite that it is still the most versatile smartphone. Steve is right, it does almost anything - only culprit is speed, RAM and the occasional clunky UI.

No doubt it is a "hate it" or "love it" device.

I am keeping mine, until it's successor comes out.

Android is too limited, sketchy and fragmented for my taste...and considering the CPU specs on eg. the Nexus One, also quite slow.

The iPhone is a good device for many, but way to limited and unflexible for me.

...and oh - the camera on the N97 still blows the competition out of the water, hands down...and it is not even the best camera compared to other Nokia phones.

Flash bleed is still there. After many, many fixes. It's not all about scratches. :rolleyes:

Couple corrections:
- The N79 also has a lens cover
- The N900 also has 32 GB buil-in storage

This is spot on!

@Steve, you are such an apologist...

The N8 better be special to get the mindshare back: http://tnkgrl.wordpress.com/2010/04/...-the-nokia-n8/

It can attempt many things, but fails on most of them. That's my experience after 7 months. I'll hit a situation that I realise I can use my phone for, whip out the N97 and then fight with it for five minutes trying to find what I want, get it going, handle the crashes, wait for the lag. By the time I have the everything ready to go, the situation has passed (a couple of times with people doing it five times faster on an iphone). That's not what I want a smartphone to be. The N97 can do a lot, but none of it is intuitive or responsive enough to be useful.

After using N900 I ain't coming back to my N97 no more!

But N8 is tempting me. :(

It is running S60 5th Edition ergo it sucks.

I'm still waiting for this ridiculous touch fad to pass.

Always strikes me as a bit odd that you don't own an iPhone 3GS, if only for comparison sake. Just saying...

How about the N900? It clearly matches the N97 and leaves it in the dust. Here's a sound response to this article: http://www.mobilitynigeria.com/2010/...d-by-the-n900/

I can't believe how poor the N97 is. When look back at some of the great Smartphones Nokia made like the 7710 and 9500 (and E90) you wonder why Nokia's software engineering skills can decline over time instead of improving. But I am looking forward to the N8 or the N98. But my favourite device is the HTC Desire (battery life much better than the iPhone and not that bad in the sun shine).

n900 has almost all of the superlatives on steves list(lacking in the maps department). and most of the weaknesses of the n97 like the underpowered cpu and ram are not present(still lots of plastic).
It is in no way harder to use than an n97(unless you want it to be) and it has a much more modern UI with vastly superior multimedia functions like divx playback and better youtube performance.

I agree with xerxes and tnkgrl. The n97 is terrible, sure it does lots of things but nothing well and this is not even taking into account for the premium that Nokia charged for the hardware that they cheaped out on. In this matter I can't believe that the engineers would have been happy with this hardware but rather it would have been a business decision to make more money for Nokia, very shortsighted and a complete fail on Nokia's part.

These apologist articles are not helping Nokia, they really need to be told how things actually are.