Nokia N97 - A Touch Screen Mobile Computer

By Author: Jerry Smith
Total Articles: 225
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Nokia N97 stirred the world of mobile phones and it is a complete smart phone with all the features that you could ever dream of, even though there is room for some shortcomings. The Nokia N97 is quite large with dimensions of 117.2 x 55.3 x 15 mm and weight of 150 g. The Li-ion 1500 mAh battery is pretty much satisfactory with a standby time of 432 hours for 2G and 408 hours for 3G, talk time of 9 hours 30 minutes for 2G and 6 hours of 3G as well as music play of 40 hours.

Nokia N97 has 3.5" resistive touch screen, with a pretty decent resolution of 360 x 640 pixels. The sunlight legibility is very good and it definitely makes the Nokia N97, a winner. As the screen is resistive, you can freely use the stylus to activate the menus and options. The call and end touch sensitive keys are placed at the lower part of the screen. Contrastingly, the menu key is a regular button. There is a video call camera which enables video calling. The slide out design of the full QWERTY keyboard is impressive; however, the build looks a little plastic. Keys are big and arranged in three rows.

The Nokia N97 features a huge 5MP camera ...
... with Carl Zeiss lens and dual LED flash. With extensive settings, it is a very good camera to use while on the go. However, the N97 lacks smile detection, face detection and blink prevention features. The videos are of MMS quality as the camera can shoot videos with VGA resolution at 30fps.

The music player of the Nokia N97 incorporates a few changes and it is designed for a touch screen mobile phone. Music player supports a number of formats and the equalizer options make listening to music in the Nokia N97, a pleasurable experience. You can work with other features of the phone at the same time the player still on at the background. There is also an FM radio with RDS support. The FM transmitter is an interesting addition to the entertainment package of the Nokia N97 because now, you can stream your favorite music to a FM radio receiver in your range.

The large screen of the Nokia N97 encourages using the video player with decent features. However, lack of XviD and DivX is disappointing. Onboard memory is a massive 32GMB and externally, it can be extended to up to 16GB using the microSD slot.

The Nokia N97 uses Symbian S60 5th edition user interface and it makes the touch screen more usable and easy. If you have already used the S60 platforms in other Nokia mobile phones, the Nokia N97 will be your piece of cake. There are several widgets available and you can customize them as you will. The screen rotates for your convenience as you slide out the keyboard. Thumb scrolling is enabled, even though using the scrolling bar makes things easier with the Nokia N97.

The phonebook of the Nokia N97 is similar to other Nokia phones. It's simple and convenient to organize and edit contacts on this phone. Voice dialing option is pretty much easier to use, but it's hard to understand why the Nokia has left out the smart dialing feature in the Nokia N97. Common messages SMS, MMS and emails are supported by the Nokia N97 using the same common editor. Audio messages can be recorded and sent separately using a dedicated editor. Alphanumeric keypad is available on screen in both portrait and landscape modes, but the QWERTY keyboard is much easier to use. Handwriting recognition is impulsive and useful.

3G technology featured in the Nokia N97 brings extensive connectivity options. The web browser is neat and supports flash and java content. The built in GPS receiver and Nokia Maps lets you navigate without confusion. It appears that the Nokia has completely forgotten to load at least one preinstalled games, though you can download and play Java games.
Jerry Smith, the editor of http://www.mobilephoneonly.co.uk. An expert on mobile phone and an observer of UK telecommunication market. He writes reviews on latest mobile phones, and also suggests promotional deals and special offers from mobile phone retailers in UK.