The N97 – Nokia’s latest flagship

The Nokia N97, the long awaited flagship model is finally here! Its taken months to get to us and the question we’re asking here is whether it will still lives up to the expectations from many months ago? Read our short review to gain a glimpse into the workings of the N97.

The N97 boasts an excellent assortment of various qualitative features, most notably an incredible 3,5’’ display and full sized, slide out qwerty keyboard. The device provides an interesting user experience through the combination of implementing a liberating array of multimedia elements, an abundance of business features and all with unique touch user interface functionality, as well as the additional benefit of having a fully customizable home screen. The latter seems to be the USP from Nokia’s perspective as recent television adverts have focussed on the availability of live internet feeds shown in real time on the N97′s home screen – a must have for social networking devotees!

The N97 has a multitude of features, which can be utilized to engage in a plethora of activities.  Use the N97 to connect to mobile broadband using WLAN or HSDPA (3.5G). Find directions and locations with the integrated A-GPS and included maps.  Enjoy the benefit of having a fully integrated music player. Record high quality videos in DVD like quality. There are also many additional features including advanced gaming through N-Gage which contain some very impressive graphics, a 5 mega pixel camera with dual LED flash and automatic geotagging of images and videos. Furthermore, users will have the luxury of having a massive 32Gb onboard storage .

It’s S60 5th Edition that provides perhaps the biggest usability frustration, though  Nokia’s OS is, in the face of attractive and modern platforms like that the iPhone or Samsung, looking a little visually tired, and the touch enabling they’ve done feels half-hearted. Not only is there little in the way of visual gloss that users have come to expect, such as screen transitions or animations, but the way touch has been incorporated seems much like an afterthought. There are no gestures or similar controls, instead buttons have merely been made chunkier and menus larger. The reason behind this is that the Symbian Os has simply been  modified for touch usuability – a purpose it was never created for. What Nokia should have done is started from scratch, from the bottom up and otimized the touch usuability first and incorporated the Symbian after, then perhaps they could have had something worthy of the Iphones OSX or even the S-class of LG…

Nokia’s flagship is harldy anything to be amazed by, especially with rivals stepping up the mark since the phone was first announced in November of 2008. None of the features and revolutionary or outstanding – the camera, screen size, form factor etc, have all been seen elsewhere and have been surpassed by the competition, the Iphone has an incredible touch interface, the N97 doesn’t; the Omnia HD has better screen and much faster processor; the Sony Ericsson Idou has 12 mega pixel camera, the N97 simply does not – the list is extensive. To conclude it is clear that Nokia’s rivals have taken a step forward in many aspects of mobile telephony, however, very few have been able to achieve what the Nokia N97 has and that is an excellent all rounder that has almost every feature imaginable – in one phone, not bad, not bad at all, very good in fact.

Check out the full tech specs here: http://europe.nokia.com/find-products/devices/nokia-n97/specifications#hardware-kim