The perfect mobile – Impossibility? Or are we close?

You forgot to mention 3GS processor/RAM combination completely trounce the N97, like the the PRE also does (and the Omnia HD, and the SE Satio). Same goes for 3D acceleration for games and other graphical intense apps (Open GL 2.0)

Sorry, i meant Justin, not you Steve

Sorry to burst your bubble but... spending an hour fondling the phone in a store is not enough to judge it.

Just wait until the novelty wears off and the slider mechanism starts to feel a little loose. Or that first RAM error message.

Twitter full of praise? Sure. But I also see many peolpe on Twitter talking about this review:

http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2009/...ia-n97-review/

At the outset of what is quite a lengthy (if enjoyable) piece, I thought 'I'm going to make my own prediction: that this article is going to twist and turn, touching upon the iPhone 3GS and Pre, but really only touch on them, and at the end... guess what? It'll be leering at the backside of the N97 in a salacious, distrubing manner.'

I amazes me that AAS will entertain what is frankly utterly self indulgent and without any measure of hard objectivity, complete pap before we've even seen and had a decent review of the N97, never mind it's competitors. I remember before on AAS (with the N96 and i7510 in mind) that reviews have been 'held off on' until we'd seen a couple of mature firmwares pass.

I've lost count of the number of times it has been mentioned on AAS podcasts, features etc. that to paraphrase 'the N97's amount of free RAM is disappointing but we should see that improve after firmware updates.' Like that is a valid and unquestionable truth for the N97's disappointing specs.

Stick with this rule or don't. I know everyone wants the N97 to be the Charles Atlas of the phone world, Nokia re-asserting itself on Phone Beach and kicking sand in the eyes of those pesky troublemakers that seem to have been getting all the attention recently. But either publish a full-on test, with the firmware it has right now or don't publish subjective toss talking up a particular point of view.

It's the easiest thing in the world to trawl the net to find features to support a particular point of view. Would AAS list as it's headline feature, say, what Cnet.co.uk thought of the N97? Namely:

'The Nokia N97 is another feature-packed N-series powerhouse that somewhat neglects design and usability considerations. With a great Qwerty keyboard but a disappointing resistive touchscreen, we're ultimately underwhelmed by the whole package'

No, I doubt it too.

So review the N97 and be damned, or wait for the 3GS to come out and do a comparison test, or stick to the 'wait for mature updates' embargo and keep subjective and biased articles off AAS.

An OMAP3 N97 would be a killer combo, unfortunately Nokia for whatever reason have selected OMAP3 for Maemo only for the time being. Ever since Nokia relied less on TI their smartphones (lacking PowerVR graphics) have been missing a key feature.

When will people realise that processor speeds and pedantic numbers, and hardware features are not what makes one phone better than another? The best phone for you is the one that suits you best. This author is obviously best suited by his choice. Personally, I was never going to be interested by an N97; I realised this the second I read the dimensions, just too big. The iPhone is worse still, what use to me is a huge slab of a tablet that won't fit comfortably in a jeans pocket? That's just stupid byond belief. It could have a 100 billion Tetra-Hertz CPU with a billion GB RAM and super-poo-poker 4d laser-vision holographic graphics acceleration display with thought control. But if I can't comfortably carry it about it ain't worth s**t.

Nokia will sell shedloads of N97s, which will upset the anal pedants with their cpu clock speed fixations, but a lot of people will like it. Their choice, not yours.

OMAP3? WTF is an OMAP3? Quite frankly who gives a s**t? Has anyone round here got a life? Just tell me what the damn phone does. I don't care how exactly it does it.

LOL! I'm now convinced AAS is seeking out inflammatory stuff to get people going. Time to take a step back and have a look I think. I'll come and have another look in a month or so; see if things have improved.

We're working on a review (or rather continuing to do so). I'm up next with (Steve has done a couple of parts). I do need to use the phone for a little while at least before drawing conclusions and even then they'll change over time.

One of the issues with reviewing complex hardware is that it is difficult to do it from outside your own view point. We all have our own patterns and past experiences and the more complex the phone that effects your opinion. Added to that devices do change over time and, for some at least, that can be a factor in deciding what to buy (the N95 is the best example of this - buggy at first, but stable and mature now - see also 5800 v10 versus v21). At the same time you can not look into the future so the RAM issue will be important to some (personally I think its over blown - some people will never notice [depends how many apps you run at a time] - and the OS is quite capable of closing things as necessary in the background - an inconvenience for active multi-taskers, but not a show stopper).

Ultimately though most people don't think that carefully about which phone they buy. If you want to argue about 'sales success' or not its likely that deals with operators, costs and other logistics issues will be just as important (though of course these are impacted by how 'good' a device is).

I would also stress that this article is an editorial piece expressing an opinion, its not intended to be a review. And yes such pieces tend to attract more vigorous debate. Ultimately you are always going to get lots of different opinions.

I've moved the discussion on AAS editorial coverage / style / feedback to a separate thread so as to keep things clearer and encourage discussion of the article points.

See: http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/forum...ad.php?t=84865

Thanks,

Rafe

Chen's Perfect Mobile:

-N93/N93i's form factor

-N82's hardware (inc. Camera, flash, Ram etc.), of course camera with 3+x optical zoom which already exist on N93s

-N85's OLED screen

-Latest Symbian9.3 OS System (Sorry I'm not a fan of touch screen...)

That's it! I'm not greedy...

Even if N93i runs symbian 9.2 with SDHC support and get 5-8mb more RAM to me it's PERFECT!
:-)

1) What kind of camera test is that?! Hardly fair. One shot taken at dusk with a deliberately shaky hand whilst the other is a close-up in exceptional conditions.
2) Why compare the E71 anyway? Not a comparable device.
3) Can everyone just wait until January when we'll probably get the N97i (or whatever) with it's increased specs and we can laugh heartily at the early adopters (again).
4) Thanks.

That's just it. With the N97 not having an OMAP3 in an environment where all other flagship phones do, you're going to hear a lot more about what the N97 CAN'T do than what it can.

As for the article, it is a pretty big waste. All these thoughts from someone who hasn't even laid their hands on one yet.

re-read article and this comment jumped out:

"does the N97 deserve the title of the world’s best smartphone? In a word, yes. The hardcore amongst us will wonder where the wideangle top spec camera is, where the HD video function got to and why the build quality doesn’t surpass that of the Nokia E71 not to mention the lack of free RAM."

Oh dear.

I agree with Morpheus, this is complete pap written by an airhead.


The N97 is a serious let-down: it's only impressive if you have very low expectations. The user experience is poor: starting with the keyboard, not enough RAM, and a clunky UI only fanboys like Justin are going to tolerate.


Palm and Apple and even Android have raised the game and Nokia/Symbian isn't keeping up.
For example, why can't Nokia make the settings UI as logical as a Blackberry or a Sony Ericsson?


On his blog Twitter Justin says "Symbian is going from strength to strength". OK, we can see Justin isn't the brightest spark in the world, but he should read the analyst's stats: smartphone share down YoY.

That's your opinion and Justin shared his. I don't think it's necessary to insult the author, just say you don't agree with the opinion.

And on the point of Symbian going from strength to strength - market share is one figure you can use, but there's a lot of other factors. I think Symbian is in a much stronger position than it was a year ago (from a strategy / position point of view due to the Symbian Foundation), and I think most analysts would concur with that. It does, of course, still face a lot of challenges.

But if I don't need OMAP3 then there's no point worrying about it. And I don't need it, and many people don't need, or even know that they don't need it.

When you start telling your customers that they don't need something, you aren't in sync with them anymore, you've lost their pulse and gradually you're gonna lose those customers too.

Yes, I want Xenon on my phone (for video add an LED too)
Yes, I want the best in class processor on my phone
Yes, I want 3d hardware on my phone
Yes, I want the best in class optics on the phone
Yes, the sound quality should the be the best market can offer

If you wanna supply a spare battery in the box, I don't mind.

Give me a best in class product and I have no problems in giving you the best in class money.

Noble thoughts, but for something that I don't need (aka something that I keep getting told that I need when actually I don't) I'll keep my best in class money and spend it in the pub and on vacations.

Well, that may be your personal situation.

But, the fact is, that Nokia is selling this device as the best mobile powerhouse ever. And, It is simply FALSE.

It has nothing that puts it ahead of competition.
Clunky UI: this is something that even those who don't need anything from a phone, will notice)
Old hardware: most people spending 700 on a phone, DEMAND latest technology. N97 is, in this subject, a complete rip-off.
Processor: You may not need it, but having a DECENT processor into the mobile does make a difference. Personally I'm growing tired of waiting for my 5800 to respond to my commands (and I'm not the fastest operating it...)
3D: Same as above, If I spend such money I expect to play DECENT games on it, not a 10 F.P.S. nightmare. (I will let the whole n-gage fiasco subject for another post....)
Sound: well, again you may not need it, but I would like to have a medium-decent DSP onboard.
Xenon: Of course, I don't think the BOM would suffer too much. Plus, the N97 is a brick already so form factor was clearly not the issue...
Optics: Well I can bear to have the same optics than on 2 years old phones, but honestly It won't help to make my mind and spend that little fortune.

In the end, I think that these kind of devices are designed for people who CARE and NEED such features and they (we) DEMAND them.

Otherwise, If I don't need any of those things and I only need to make calls, why would I buy a new phone? I wouldn't even have a valid opinion since I am not sufficiently informed on what those features would add to my current experience... Obviously, if I don't need all those, It is because my current experience is NULL.

Final point: Nokia needs to rehab themselves, regain the hardware advantage and catchup wiith OS development. Meanwhile, I am fed up.

My two cents.

Easy choice, iphone, it just works, Nokia need to start again with the OS, end of message....

Rafe, first of all thank you for even responding.

I would be the last person to tell anybody how to run their site. But if I could just offer one bit of humble advice:

Please stop praising any new device that comes out of Finland just for the sake of cheerleading. Let's leave that stuff for the amateurish "blogs", shall we?

I have come to expect a lot more from AAS.

Thank you.

It's our intelligence that's being insulted here.

I had the N97 in my hand for a while, when it released in India. I must admit that I was let down. The reason is not because N97 is not good, it just because my expectation was from a Flagship product.

One comparison of the N97 to the Nokia 5800 and you wonder, where is the extra money is going.

People don’t necessarily pay for “better components used” to make phone (when it’s a showcased as “The laptop to your pocket”), people pay for how much it has scaled from its predecessor.

I’m convinced that Nokia has got its strategy in place; it has to do some catching up in the high end space because Apple came in and spoilt everybody’s party (Thankfully).

As for AAS, they are indeed very good and they have a fan in me!!!

For the critics, I appreciate their views, but it’s fair to say you don’t come into a site about Symbian expecting an overdose of criticism on the N97.

I agree with you when you say that people pay for how much it has scaled from its predecessor. It is a very good point.

Sadly, no Nokia flagship phone has scaled from their respective predecessors since the N95, even with its initial flaws.

N96 was a joke at best, a step back indeed if you consider features (the same as N95) and hardware (worse than N95)

N85, a letdown, a smaller-sized remake of the N95, with cooler buttons, nothing more.

The only true "innovation" at Nokia's camp in the last two years, is the 5800, and only because of touch (let's be realistic, Symbian 5th is NOT on the user-friendly, it has a very poor UI with bulky buttons and sluggish transitions).

And now, they try to convince us to shell 700 for a phone that is almost the same as the 5800, hardware-wise. Software-wise, It only adds widgets to the mix...

This is what I think: Nokia has had NO interest on improving their devices portfolio during the last 1 1/2 years, they have decided to focus on services and ignored the High-End. During this time, competitors have overtaken them and now, IMHO, all Nokia has to offer is a half-baked Ovi portal with no real device to enjoy it in all its glory (i.e.: the 5800 can barely handle Ovi.com pages without freezes or glitches, at least that has been my personal experience).

This trend is maybe more dangerous to Nokia's mid-term business than what they think, only time will tell. Me, I'm not going to shell any money on a device that adds nothing to what I already own.

It's not that we are critics Suju, It's that we have been highly dissapointed for a long time. We all expected a true flagship to regain the smartphone crown, but It seems that Nokia is not releasing anything new anytime soon.