Music on the Nokia N97
When Nokia first announced the N97 and its crazy huge 32 GB of onboard space, the first thing that came to my mind was “Sweet, If I get this device, I could finally carry my whole Mp3 Music Collection around with me !”.
But harddrive space aside, how does the N97 handle Music ? Does it have that certain Boom boom Pow ?
Read on to find out.
The Music Player UI and Features :
If you’ve used an S60 device before, chances are you’ll feel right at home on the N97. New-comers might be a bit frazzled at the beginning, but I havent met anyone who hasnt been able to figure out how the Music Player works, in a minute or two.
When you start up the Music Application on the N97 you get the following Menu :
You get shown your Last Played Song, Access to your Music Library, Access to the Nokia Music Store where you can purchase more Music, and finally the FM Radio Application.
The FM Radio works like you’d expect it to. Only annoying thing is that you need to plug in a pair of headphones to use it, since the headphones act as the antenna for FM reception.
If you select your Music Library you get your entire Music collection on your N97, arranged by Artist, Albums, Playlists, All Songs, Podcasts (If you’re subscribed to any), Genres and Composers.
Thats quite a load of sections, but helps you find your Music more easily. Not to mention, once you’re in a “Music Menu” such as “All Songs”, you can start typing out the name of the song or artist, and the Application automatically finds it for you, or its closest matches.
The annoying thing about the N97’s method of arrangement is that, every time you add new Music or Mp3, you have to manually go to “Options” and then select “Refresh Music Library” for your new Songs to be listed. This can be very annoying at times.
Of course, the N97 also supports .m3u playlists so you can create your own and list your Music as you want it.
There’s also three pre-defined Playlists. Most Played, Recently Played and Recently Added.
Coming to the actual Music Player UI, you have your basic Rewind, Play/Pause and Fast Forward keys.
You have basic support for Album Art too, along with a scrollable time bar (where you can click anywhere to reach that point in time of the song).
If you go to your Options Tab, you get a lot more settings to tinker with :
There’s Shuffle Play, Repeat. You’re able to Turn on the FM Transmitter (which we talked about a while back).
There’s also an Equalizer and settings. You can also choose to add the currently playing song to a Playlist, or use it as a ringtone for your profile, or for a certain contact.
Settings include basic Left/Right Balance, Loudness and Stereo Widening.
Equalizer gives you 5 pre-defined Equalizer settings (excluding the one “default” setting) to choose from. Unfortunately you cant mess with the Equalizer settings more than that, but it gets the job done.
On the N97’s Homescreen you are able to choose a “Music Player” widget that allows you quicker access to basic features of the Music Player.
You have access to the Play/Pause keys and Rewind & Fast Forward. Tapping the Music Icon (changes to Album art if present) brings you back to the Music Player App.
Storage/Space for Music Files, Music Formats :
As we already mentioned earlier, there’s a whooping 32 Gb of memory onboard the Nokia N97 for you to store your Music files, along with others.
For most people that’s going to be more than enough space to store your entire Music Collection on there.
The N97 music player supports music file formats such as MP3, AAC, eAAC+, WAV and AMR. You can use Nokia PC Suite or Nokia Music to convert between any formats incase you’d need to.
Loudspeaker, Headphones and Accessories :
The N97 has its stereo loudspeakers at either end of it’s left side.
They’re pretty loud although just a notch below the 5800 XpressMusic’s Loudspeakers, and quite a bit less louder than the N96’s stereo speakers.
Still they get the job done. They’re a heck of a lot louder than the E75 or my ol’ N82. Loud enough for you to use the N97 as a sort-of mini-boombox to listen to your tunes.
Now the N97 (both the Black and White versions) ship with a pair of really ugly headphones that are just about good enough to listen to music.
They look okay with the Black N97, but look way out of place with the White N97.
But thankfully the Nokia N97 has a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, so you can attach any pair of headphones to the device and use them.
For example, I use my Seinheisser in-ear type headphones with my N97 and they work great. Music Quality seems pretty good. The Bass levels didnt have enough “punch” for me, but the N97 seemed to be on par with the N82 & E75 and very close to the N91 in terms of Music quality.
The Retail package also comes with an attachable remote that you can use with your N97. You can attach (again) any pair of headphones to it, and use the controls to listen to your music on your device.
The Remote itself has the basic rewind, fast forward, stop and play/pause keys. There’s also a Voice Call button, incase you wish to answer an incoming call, or use Voice-Tags on the N97.
The remote also has keys to increase and decrease volume, and a clip to attach it to anything.
And of course, the Nokia N97 supports Bluetooth Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP), so you can listen to music on any Stereo Bluetooth headset.
It works great with my Nokia BH-501’s.
Conclusion :
So the Nokia N97 as a Music Device. Yay or Nay ?
The N97 actually does the Music Playing bit pretty well. With that huge 32 GB of space to spare for your Music Files, and support for a bunch of music formats, and standard headphones, as well as Bluetooth devices, the N97 seems to handle music fine.
What do you think of the N97 as a Music device ? Got any questions ? Do let us know in the comments y’all !
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