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TechJunkeez Gear | August 2009
Just like all other businesses these days, the mobile phone market
has been hit strongly by the dreadful recession. Even Nokia, the leader in the
market showed huge signs of weakness as it started losing large percentages of
the market to rival companies like Apple and Samsung. The N-series are supposed
to be the knight in shining armor of the company. But even that has changed, as
the N79 or N96 showed weak performance in the market and in the feature list,
compared to rival companies’ offerings. Does the N97 have enough power to clean
up the mess of recent N-series phones and put Nokia back in the driving seat?
I’m not going to shout “NO!”, I’m just going with an ”umm… maybe
not”. First of all, they announced it too far away from the release date. This
is a very bad thing to do in the mobile phone market, since almost everyday you
seem to have a new technology ready to be implemented in phones. So the features
announced for the N97 sounded good at the time but after 8 months, when the
release date is here, they don’t sound all that good anymore.
Let’s take the screen as an example. 3.5” in size with resistive
technology and is 360x640 in resolution. Sounded pretty good in November, but
look at what Samsung are offering now. For the same price you get a 3.7” size,
480x800 resolution touch screen with AMOLED technology instead of LCD.
Still the N97’s screen has excellent sunlight discernability so
you won’t have any problems outdoors. Colours are vivid and vibrant but nothing
close to what an AMOLED screen could offer.
Inside the box you get a microUSB charger, a charger converter if
you want to use an old nokia charger with the N97. You also get a stylus, 3.5
headphones and microphone, and a microUSB connector to connect your phone to
your PC with OVI suite which is also included in a CD. Finally, a nice piece of
cloth that says "Nokia" to clean your phone.
The N97’s design is pretty well done, it is indeed one of the most
attractive phones by the manufacturer. The metal ring around the phone is a nice
touch and the plastics used all over the phone are very high in quality and look
fantastic. On the back you have a 5 megapixel camera with dual LED flash, both
protected by a lense cover. On the right side you have the camera shutter key
and volume control keys. On the left side you have the screen unlock slider,
stereo speakers and a microUSB port. On the top side you
have your power button and next to it is the 3.5 headphone jack. The phone feels
very solid is very slim on the side with the qwerty board in mind. The microUSB
port should have been covered by a removable piece of plastic like the 5800, but
that’s not a huge factor to complain about.
The buttons below the screen are the call and end buttons and the
menu button is tilted and placed to the lower left. The call and end buttons are
touch sensitive but you don’t have to worry about answering or rejecting calls
accidentally because after you press any of them you have to use an onscreen
slider for the press to take effect.
The qwerty keyboard is released by pushing the screen to the left
or if you are holding it horizontally, pushing it upwards. The sliding movement
is not clunky or cheap, the screen moves and gives a solid click sound when it
hits its position. The whole process looks very strong and I’m sure no one will
have any problems with releasing the keyboard or getting it stuck. The buttons
on the qwerty keyboard are large and easy enough to use. Buttons have good
feedback, and they don’t look cheap at all. In terms of build quality, you sure
as hell get what you paid for in the N97.
Design and
product quality are about the only things Nokia doesn't rip you off on
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