Hardware

When I opened the box I was greeted with the phone and the battery.  It looked amazing.  I picked it up and could not believe how awesome this phone looked.  The build quality is amazing, and it feels solid when you hold it.  The screen slides open on a hitch system that is very smooth.  It’s hard to describe but it just feels damn solid when it opens.  Once open there is a physical QWERTY keyboard inside.  It’s actually very nice and I think other reviews are a bit too harsh on it.  It takes a little getting use to, especially with the spacebar off to the right side but it actually feels natural once you get used to it.  It has a 3.5mm headphone jack on top, a micro USB plug for charging or hooking up to a computer which is on the left side, and volume buttons and a button for taking pictures.  On the back side it has a 5 megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens that has a slider to open up the lens or cover it.  The back also opens up where the “Sim” card and battery go.  It also has a microSD slot next to the lens that can go up to 16gb for extra storage.  That brings it up to 48gb of total storage.  That’s actually really nice but for me 32gb internal is just awesome.  I put in quite a bit of data and I still have over 25gb’s left.  The only thing I didn’t like about the hardware is the battery cover.  You have to pull on edge and it bends like it’s going to break.  Once you put it back on though it feels solid.  On the front of the phone is another camera for video calls and a button on the lower left that takes you to the main menu.

5 out of 5 stars.

Camera Photo/Video

Well probably one of the biggest features for me buying this phone is the camera.  I use my camera all the time.  I like the fact that I have a fully functional point and shoot camera always in my pocket.  My N95 had the same camera and it took great photos.  I have to say that even though it’s the same for the most part, this phone takes much better pictures.  Outdoor is simply amazing.  Sharp pictures that have a nice contrast to them.  Indoor pictures are ok.  Not the best and I really have a complaint for that.  Nokia chose to go with dual LED instead of Xenon flash.  Why they did this I have no idea.  Even one of their more inexpensive N series phones has a Xenon on it.  For the price of this phone, they should be putting the best nothing less.  It has a nice menu that gives you many choices when taking a picture.  It really feels like a normal camera.  It also allows you to take video with it.  I also used this on my old phone and it felt the same with this one.  One thing that I can’t figure out is on my old phone, I could edit the movies right on it but they took this out on the N97.  Why?  Why would you get rid of such a great feature?  They also made changes to the gallery.  My old phone had a neat gallery where the pictures would move around a wheel zooming the one that’s on top.  On this phone it’s gone and there really isn’t a gallery, only a grid with every picture taken.  Again why?  It’s something upsets me but isn’t really a deal breaker.  Again I just don’t understand why features are taken out of there biggest phone out there.
4 out of 5 Stars

Software

This is where it gets interesting.  When you first turn on the phone you get the classic handshake.  It then brings you to the home screen.  The only thing I can say about this is Wow.  It’s great and very customizable.  It has widgets that can be moved and you can put what you want on the home screen.  By default it has the weather, Facebook, and default apps which can be changed.  Once you click the menu button it brings you to the main menu which if you have used any Nokia phone,  it’s no different except that it has a touch screen.  This is where it gets frustrating for me.  It’s very

archaic and really needs a makeover.  I was hoping for a lot more.  I’m mean it’s not bad but with all the other phones out there with there OS’s this comes in last.  The only thing that I really like is that you can have multiple apps open at once.  Although it will look at the ones that aren’t being used and close them to save ram.  This is actually something I didn’t mention.  It only has 128mb of ram as opposed to the 256mb’s that some smart phones are coming with.  This actually is a pain because the phone starts to slow down with to much open.  So yes multiple apps is cool but it’s restricted.  By the way the phone is partitioned so that the OS is on the 100mb partition and the 2nd partition is 32gb’s.  I don’t know why they did this because they have a store and really want you to put apps on it.  More on this later.  So digging in I really wanted to check out some of the more common apps that I use.
The first thing I did was setup my email  Though it doesn’t look much or feel much different, it’s very easy to setup.  All I had to do was enter my email address and it went out and pulled the settings for me.  I really like that since my N95 required a lot more.  As for the rest, it felt like my old phone.
The next thing I checked out was the Contacts.  This app is ok.  I mean it is what it is.  I can enter all the information I need, add or remove details that I want and so on.  It let’s me add pictures and custom ringtones for each.  If you have an account with their service called OVI, you can sync it both ways.  This is nice and can save you a lot of time.  I opted to start from scratch and type in everybody’s one by one.  It took a while but my old contacts had issues.  I then put a widget on the home screen that allows me to put 4 people on it.  It’s shortcut that shows their picture and has

Head phone jack dead center!

their name below it.  You can have up to 8 on there.
Then I went into the music player.  I used my old phone as my primary mp3 player.  I do own and iPod which I really like but I listen to my phone when I drive to and from work as well as when I go running.  Now I’ve read other reviews and it been mostly mixed but I have to say I really like the music player.  It’s nothing special in that it shows the album artwork and has the typical stop/play, and fast foward/Rewind buttons.  What really makes this awesome is the built in FM transmitter.  I thought this was so nice as I occasionally download podcasts right to my phone and now I could play them through my car speakers.
Another app that ties into this is the podcast app.  I went in and subcribed to a few podcasts.  I downloaded a couple to test out the quality.  It did what it was supposed to but I thought it could use a little work.  They have an option to search for podcasts but it didn’t find some of the ones I listen to.  They are pretty popular and I was surprised not to see it there.  You can also add them manually but it requires you to go onto a computer and find the link to the podcasts then enter it and name it on the phone.  They really need to get a better search engine.  The iPhone makes it easy in that you go into the iTunes store on the phone and you can pretty much find most things since most podcasts are in iTunes.
The next app I checked out was the Nokia browser.  One big reason for me to buy this phone over others was for this.  It comes with a full HTML browser and does have support for flash.  This is a big selling point for me because I go to some sites that require flash.  Overall though, the browser is ok.  I would have thought they would have put more into this since it really is an internet device  It looks very dated and they didn’t make any significant changes from their old browser.  I really like using an RSS reader and my old N95 came with it which I used daily.  Well this one did as well but they really put it deep in the menu section.  It used to be so easy, you click internet and it’s right there highlighted.  Not any more, you have to click options, goto, then scroll down to Web feeds.  Once there though they lay it out nice and it has shortcuts to refresh whatever is highlighted or refresh everything.
Another cool feature I was looking forward to was the new Maps.  The phone comes with GPS built in and also has a compass.  I fired it up and went through the typical first time opening up an app and was on my way.  I connect quick and I setup a route and it showed and talked to me giving me turn by turn.  The only bummer part is the voice turn by turn is good for 90 days.  After that you have to pay for it.  Well I went and played around and found that they haven’t really updated their info lately.  When I went to look for fast food, it showed a restraunt that hadn’t been there for over a year or so.  So a couple of weeks ago they updated to the new Maps 3.0.  I went out and updated my phone to it and what a mistake that was.  It was taking my phone minutes to connect to satellites where it was about 15 to 30 seconds before.  So frustration #1.  My friend and I were going to lunch so I pointed it to the restaruant we were going to and it kept telling us we were on different streets than the one we were on.  It would always put us on the street we were crossing having to recalculate itself.  Very annoying and very frustrating.  Well they just came out with and update for it and I applied it and haven’t had much time to try it.  I will say it does connect a little faster but I’m not sure that’s consistant.  I tried reinstalling it but it didn’t help.  I downloaded a couple of apps but I want to talk about the store and downloading in another section.

3 out of 5 Stars

Ovi Store

Ovi Store screen shot

This is the worst part of the phone and I can’t believe that they didn’t push this harder.  Every company seems to have an app store for their smart phones and this one definitely comes in last.  It’s clunky, there’s nothing available, and I feel the biggest problem is that it’s not separated by country.  This is hard because I was looking for a city guide app and everything I found was for Europe.  It makes it hard that you can’t use some of these apps.  Another problem is there really isn’t that much there.  Nokia should have really got behind it and worked with developers to get content up there.  I did download a few apps and that part was nice, the only problem is I can’t find anything I want.  Nokia needs to restructure it and integrate it better with more support.  I mean when I open the Ovi Store app for the first time, it said it needed to install it first.  Really?  Install what’s probably one of the more important features of the phone and one that has been around longer than the phone has been out.  Another thing I noticed that I couldn’t believe is the price for some of these downloads.  They do offer somethings for free but they also have things that you have to purchase.  I saw wallpaper that cost money which should have been free.  There’s not much else can say here as my experience with it hasn’t been the greatest.

2 out of 5 Stars

Well as you can see it’s been a mixed bag for me which leads me to another big problem I encountered.  I was using my phone when all of a sudden it froze.  It finally came up and when I went to the home page, it didn’t display properly.  I turned it off and back on only to have the same problem with my home page.  I did a soft reset with no luck and my only thing left was to do a hard reset.  Meaning wipe the phone and start over.  Well I did that and it fixed it.  I backed up my contacts before hand so importing them wasn’t a problem.  I went through the rest and customized it to my liking and so far it’s ok.  One thing that is nice is that most of my gripes can be fixed with updates.  They’ve had one major one and it fixed some bugs.  Hopefully they can fix these other things as well.  One thing that I saw is that they announced a new operating system and the N97 is on the list that will support it.  Hopefully it comes sooner than later.

I’ve been playing with the phone for about 3 weeks now using many of the features and comparing it to the new iPhone.  I know everybody says that but as Dick knows I was looking at both of these phones before either came out.  The new iPhone has many great features, some that have been in Nokia’s for years, and some that Nokia could take a look at.  I’m still not sure what I’m going to do as I have 30 days to decide if I want to keep this phone.  I think I would miss the camera the most.  The iPhone only has a 3 megapixel with no flash.  I did see quite a lot of photo’s though and I am impressed.  It’s a huge difference from their old phone.  One thing with the iPhone though is it only supports one app open at a time.  Not to crucial but it would be nice to have multiple things open.  Also I would like to see some kind of flash in the browser.  Oh well this is an N97 review not an iPhone so I won’t keep going.

Overall I like the phone although it didn’t live up to what I expected for the price but again it’s things that can be fixed through firmware.  It does many things just not as good as it should do them only for the most part average.

Overall 3 1/2 out of 5 Stars

If anybody either has the N97 or the iPhone, please leave a comment on what you think about them.  I would really like to hear from you as I only have a few days to decide what to do.

Update: Got on my phone this morning to check my RSS feeds and they wouldn’t update.  Tried different things but all failed.  Only way to fix this is to hard reset the phone.  This was an issue I had on my last phone and thought it would be taken care of on this one.  I think I’ve made my decision as I am going to send this back for something different.  I’ve had way too many problems and can’t justify keeping the phone.  Not even to wait for the New operating system.  Oh well.  Any suggestions for a new phone?  Please leave them in the comments below.

http://www.nokiausa.com/N97?lid=n97_home_learn&lpos=1