The Nokia N97 : First Impressions
We’ve had the Nokia N97 for about two days now, here at ZCJ. That’s one day with the old v10 firmware and another day with the new v11 firmware. Here’s our first impressions.
What we liked :
- The N97 has a really good weight to it. Not too heavy, not too light. It’s lighter than the E75, but just a bit heavier compared to my ol’ N82.
- Build Quality is great. The N97 “feels” expensive (and it should at that cost). Others have said it before, and I can confirm that this Nseries device actually does feel like an Eseries. The build quality is that good.
- It looks great. The device just screams elegance with silver finish around the screen, and the pulsating silver Menu key.
- Feels great in your hand in both Candybar/portrait formfactor (slide closed). In landscape (slide open) it still feels great, albeit you’ll have to use both your hands to use it in this “mode”.
- Call Quality is great, as expected.
- The slider mechanism is amazingly very snappy and works great. When the slider’s closed there is no wobble or give at all. The hinge is made of a Metal Alloy, and looks and feels very strong. Here’s a video of the Hinge Mechanism at work :
- The Slide-out Qwerty Keyboard gets a lot of attention and has a huge “Wow” factor to it.
- The screen is nice and bright and HUGE. I might never be able to settle for anything less ever again. Its just beautiful to watch videos on, or surf the internet.
- The touchscreen feels a lot more responsive than the 5800. Still not at iPhone level responsiveness of course (Resistive vs Capacitive touchscreen and all) but pretty darn good.
- The phone operates pretty fast when it comes to screen transitions, etc. Slows down just a tiny bit if you turn “Theme Effects” on but nothing too bad.
- The camera’s actually surprisingly good. I wont know for sure until I do an image comparison but Images taken with the N97’s 5MegaPixel camera look better than the N96. Very close to N95 and N82 quality. And the Camera lens has a sliding Protector cover. Thank you Nokia.
- The Dual LED flash on the N97’s is actually pretty good. Sure its nowhere as good as a Xenon flash, but for close up shots its “okay”. Still wont be replacing my N82 as my main camera-phone device though.
- The N97 charges via USB port. Gotta love that. There’s even a charging indicator next to the USB port, which lets your know the status of your battery charge (light goes off when fully charged).
- The N97 has the sliding keylock switch that we loved about the 5800 and N85.
- And of course, the widget-ised Home Screen is gorgeous. I like that you can swipe the screen to hide them all so you can see your wallpaper. Definitely very cool.
Battery life seems to be pretty okay. With my screen on full brightness, after 2 hours of Music, 30 mins of calling, 30 minutes of GPRS and another 30 minutes of Wifi usage, about 10 minutes of GPS, 5 minutes of Camera use, and another 10 minutes of installing applications and configuring the device, the N97 was only 2 bars down when I got back home. Of course i’ll have to test this out more intensively over the coming days. It looks like the N97 might get you back home, with it still switched on, but you will have to charge it every night or so, depending on your usage.
What we werent too sure about :
- The N97 was supposed to ship with an N-Gage Client, but it doesnt appear like anyone I know has it on their N97s, including me. I’m pretty sure the average joe wont go out and download the N-Gage Client for his N97 when/if it becomes available. Missed opportunity there Nokia.
- I’m still very confused as to where to download Widgets for the Homescreen. The N97 takes you to the Ovi Store, which suggests random crap for my device. Why isnt there a separate “Widget” section in the Ovi Store, for the N97 ?
- Our N97 came with a lot of bloatware installed on it. Widgets and applications that I’d really not use, and only served to clutter up my menu. It took me about 5 minutes to move everything around and organise everything on the Menu to my liking though, so it wasnt overly annoying.
- There is no TV-out cable provided in box. I’m assume Nokia either thought that people dont use this feature that much, and tried to cut down on costs, or thought people who had previous Nseries devices would buy the N97. In any case, there’s still “TV-Out” as a supported feature of the N97, but you’ll need to get that cable from somewhere else.
- The loudspeaker’s pretty “okay”. Its much louder than the E75 and most Eseries devices we’ve used, but a tad bit quieter than the N96 or 5800.
- The MicroSD slot is under the back cover. Mind you, its not under the battery, so you wont need to switch your device off to use it, and with 32GB of memory onboard, you might not need more. But it’s there anyway, and its in an awkward location.
What we didnt like :
- The Low phone memory. Whomever is the genius at Nokia that decided to put 32GB on a flagship device like this, but only dump in about 74 mb of phone memory (most of which is taken up by pre-installed apps, to only give you about 45mb of usable phone memory), should be downright fired. I’ve had my device for just 2 Days now, and I only have 25MB of Phone memory left. Ridiculous.
- The Keyboard does take a lot of getting used to. The E75 keyboard took a “little” getting used to, but I was able to start typing on it properly, within a day of usage. But on the N97’s Qwerty Keyboard , you have almost no feedback when you ‘press” a key. There is a bit, but its not really enough in my opinion. The keys are also quite a bit tiny, and the spacebar is located on your right side, which really does take a lot of getting used to, while typing. The Dpad is fine, although its definitely not the best one they’ve come up with.
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So there you are. Our first impressions after two days of using the Nokia N97. The low phone memory really annoys me though, but let’s see how many of our impressions will change by the time we review the N97 later.
Remember, if you’d like to know anything about the Nokia N97, do leave us a note in the comments and we’ll try to include it in upcoming posts.
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