Nokia N97 Mini - Designed For The Style Conscious Mobile Phone User

By Author: Jerry Smith
Total Articles: 225
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Nokia N97 mini is one of the interesting mobile phones in the N series. Apparently, it is a slightly downgraded version of the original N97. Mini is more compact and light. With a smaller display, lesser internal memory and smaller battery, the Nokia N97 mini is the best choice for those who want the high end features, but ready to lose some tweaks for the lower price. The Nokia N97 mini weighs 139 g and measures 13 x 52.5 x 14.2 mm. The battery too is downgraded from 1500 mAH in the N97 to 1200 mAh, but it still provides good value with a standby time of 320 hours for the 2G and 310 hours for 3G, talk time of 7 hours 10 minutes for 2G and 6 hours for 3G and music play of 32 hours.

The design of the Nokia N97 mini is flawless and it is definitely the compact smart phone in the side slider class of mobile phones. A 3.2" TFT resistive touch screen with 360 x 640 pixels resolution takes up the front panel and it can display 16 million colors. Though the size of the screen is not so big as that of the N97, the image quality is the same. ...
... The touch screen is very sensitive and sunlight legibility is good. The video call camera, proximity sensor and ambient light sensor is located above the screen. The side slide QWERTY keyboard has 3 rows of keys which is almost completely the same with the N97, except that the weird D-pad is replaced by traditional arrow keys, which are very much comfortable to use.

A 5 MP camera is located at the back of Nokia N97 mini along with dual a LED flash. The Camera is unprotected without cover and hence, you have to be careful while handling the phone. The images are good, but videos are recorded only at 30fps. The music player doesn't look great but still decent due to many functionalities it feautures. The audio quality is excellent and the speakers deliver what is promised by the music player. Without support for XVid and DivX videos the video player is basic. FM radio with RDS support is a welcome addition however the FM transmitter in the N97 is omitted.

The Symbian S60 5th edition operating system is as brilliant as it has always been. Due to firmware up gradation, Nokia is able to provide kinetic scrolling feature. Widget enabled home screen can be customized with your widget preferences. List items require double touch for opening, while a single touch on icons is all that is required to open applications. Preinstalled widgets corresponding to Amazon, Facebook, AccuWeather, CNN, and others are available. You can use the Ovi Store to download more widgets if you want. If you love Symbian mobile phones, then you will enjoy the tweaks spread out all over the interface in the Nokia N97 mini.

Nokia N97 mini possesses a pretty standard phonebook which has enhanced search and find options. There is still no smart dialing even though voice dialing is provided. Incoming calls and alarms can be silenced by flipping the phone over, thanks to the alerometer.

Nokia follows the standard interface for messaging - SMS, MMS and emails. You can create audio messages with separate editor. If you are more of a touch screen guy, you can use the alphanumeric onscreen keypad, though it must be admitted that the slide out keyboard is very convenient. The email client is neat and it supports a variety of protocols.

There are no complaints regarding connectivity options offered by the Nokia N97 mini, as it supports GPRS, EDGE and 3G. What's more Wi-Fi lets you get connected anytime and anywhere. The web browser is good for browsing with flash and java support, but it is not touch optimized. The Nokia N97 mini has an onboard GPS receiver and it comes in handy with Ovi Maps.
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.