YouTube: Nokia N97 Reboxing
Nokia N97 First Impressions
Day Two: SIM, images, N- vs E-Series, Bugs
Day Three: Screen & Text Entry, Bugs
Day Four: Powerboot, Image & Video Samples
Day Five: N97 Photo Comparison to E51, E71, iPhone 3G, Bugs
Day Six: Opera Mini, Bugs
Day Seven: Notifications, Pixelpipe, Skyfire, Bugs
Sample Videos Set 1
Sample Photos Set 1
BATTERY. On average, I was able to get 14 hours of battery every day which is good for a touchscreen QWERTY phone. Do note that I rarely listen music or watch videos during my daily commute (I normally catch up on sleep on the subways). It was convenient to have the same battery in the N97 as in the E71, so I was able to switch batteries if my battery died at the end of the night.
PHYSICAL. The design and build of the N97 is top notch and felt very solid the entire time I had it. I did not have any loose or creaking parts and the phone felt very durable. The keys on the phone were raised enough to feel where your thumbs were although it would've been nice to have the select button in the D-Pad lowered to feel the D-Pad more. Because of the SHIFT key location, the bottom row of letters were all moved one space over, making it easy to mix up keys. The SYM key and BLUE ARROW key were small and close together which made me frequently press SYM instead of BLUE ARROW which brought up the annoying Symbols map. The resistive touch screen was bright and visible especially in the sun and very responsive (how the OS responded to touch was another thing). I also preferred to type on my E71 instead of the N97 because the keys were much closer, and were laid out and felt better.
CAMERA. 5MP 30FPS Carl Zeiss with Dual LED took great pictures and fair video footage. I'd have to say this is probably the best feature on the N97 in my opinion, but retailing at $700, it's not worth it to buy a phone mainly for it's camera specifications. It would've been really nice for Nokia to add Xenon flash on their flagship phone, but it didn't bother me to use the Dual LEDs. Take a look at the sample videos and sample photos taken to see the quality I enjoyed.
OS. I have used S60 for a long time and know the menus and settings so navigating around was not a chore compared to those who are new to the mature (and old) OS. I have not used Nokia's 5800 XpressMusic to a big extent, but S60 5th Edition seems to be a larger clumsy version of their OS. The menus are the same but buttons that would have been pressed with the left and right selection key were replaced with jumbo sized OPTIONS and SELECT with a lot of wasted space between them; the full resolution and screen estate was not being used to it's full potential. It's very tedious to have to double click in order to select many options (once to highlight, twice to choose). Although it did not bother me at first, continuous usage ended up as annoying. I have encountered several bugs which I outlined at the end of my day to day posts and won't re-list here.
HOME SCREEN/WIDGETS. It was really nice to have a productive home screen to include app shortcuts, weather, calendar, RSS feeds, and social networks. The only thing I'd have to say is that the Facebook widget and application was a big disappointment. It crashed several times and some of the key features I used a lot were not there ("Like This" and tagging photos).
OVERALL. At this point, I hate to sound like a negative individual towards the N97, but my experience with the N97 was not pleasant or as ground breaking as I thought it would be. The N97 is not for every one and for those who are familiar with the S60 platform, your current devices will do just the same but without the kind of camera, touchscreen, or QWERTY the N97 provides. For those who are new to S60, this may be a wonderful experience if you are patient and are not interested in other phones available at the moment or near future. Sure there will be software updates to fix the current bugs and new applications coming out, but the N97 should have been a smooth device from day 1. It was also very embarrassing to be super excited for a $700 phone which was able to do all, but when trying to sway people, the backlight wouldn't turn on, or frequent bugs would pop up. The N97 would have been better justified at this time in it's product cycle at a price point within the $500 range. Although it is an unlocked phone, the N97 came out at a tough time where many of it's competitors were also releasing newer phones with OS that performed more and at a cheaper price.
If you were asking for an "out of 10" rating, I'd have to give it a 6. I was REALLY looking forward to this "mobile computer", but sorry, Nokia. Better luck next time.
