I was able to take a trip during the thunderstorm early this morning for the Nokia N97 launch at the Nokia NYC Flagship store. I was a little disappointed to not see a waiting line, but understood since it's priced at $699. Only the black model was available at the store which also began shipping for those who pre-ordered. White models were expected to be delayed by approximately 2 days as I was told when I met up with Chanse Arrington, Service Sales Manager at Nokia. I pre-ordered the white model last month, but decided to take advantage of Nokia's very generous 14 day refund policy.
PHONE BUILD
The build of the phone is amazing and you could tell that placement of all keys, features, and details were thoroughly detailed. The battery cover requires some force to open which had me shook up to do, but was necessary. It used the same BP-4L battery as my previous E71 which is very convenient for me. The SIM card sat in a tray which was pushed into the device, and microSD on top.
TOUCHSCREEN & QWERTY KEYBOARD
Start up time was speedy and I encountered no delays arriving at the live widgets home screen. The resisitive touch screen is very responsive, almost to a point that it slightly bothered me. I was still used to the iPhone's capacitive touchscreen so finger presses were not as effective as finger nails. (It actually wouldn't respond at times when I used my finger tip.) Sliding the smoothly operated screen up revealed a 3 row QWERTY keyboard under the angeled screen. The slightly raised keys were layed out very nicely, but the OK button was leveled with the directional pad which made it difficult to know where your finger was without looking. I do believe that if the blue arrow/alternative key is located on the far right, frequently used symbols such as the exclaimation, question, and quote marks should be on the far left so both thumbs could access both efficiently. It would also have been nice to have the number keys located in the middle of the keyboard like the E71, but I was able to adjust within time.
OS SPEED AND BUGS
Even though I'm fairly familiar with S60, it took time to get used to the touch screen interface. Changing between menus and apps was near lagless, until several apps were open then there was a moment longer wait; it's tolerable. Chanse and team was able to help me out with questions I had about the interface, settings, and features. I discovered several bugs:
1. Facebook app does not like predictive text, and would type symbols in place of letters on more than half of my keys. Deactivating predictive text on another text editor solved that.
2. Facebook app displayed side buttons (Back, Option) randomly when the app was open. Removing and re-adding the Facebook widget from the home screen solved that.
3. Backlight would not turn on when unlocking. Locking and unlocking solved that.
4. Screen turned black in the middle of something and flashed three screens of a line of red, green, and blue respectively and self-restarted. Notified Chanse but I had no clue why that happen.
I'll begin getting into the apps (1st and 3rd party) day by day and hopefully within two weeks of extensive use I'll have a thorough review. N97 brings together many features at a premium price and can really be titled a mobile computer and a worthy competitor to any mobile device on the market. Look forward to more in-depths look at Nokia's new flagship device. Feel free to ask questions via comments or Twitter (@imphoreal) and I'll be more than glad to respond.
