GSM Arena's Nokia N97 Review

The GSM arena guys have published a hefty 11 pager of a review, and probably the most comprehensive Nokia N97 review to date.

If you’ve got the time and are curious about purchasing the N97, it’s an excellent introduction and analysis to practically every single one of the the N97’s major features.

Here’s just a few keypoints just from the design aspect:

• Good package contents, except for the headphones (although it’s pretty much standard in practically all cases of supplied headphones)

Design

• 2mm thinner than the Nokia N96 despite the QWERTY keyboard.
• Beautiful design (imo, particularly black :P), “Finnish engineers have done a good job of it making the handset quite a looker”
• Screen resolution is good (more than most of its competitors), but GSM Arena is expecting more from them given a flurry of newer handsets dishing out WVGA (800X480)
• Better display than the Nokia 5800, brighter, better colours but since everyone has seen how good a display should be (with the Samsung i8910), more again is expected from Nokia.
• Legibility of screen in sunlight is its saving grace though (against AMOLED). GSM Arena says as good as the Nokia N95 8GB which is as good as Nokia’s going to get. They’ve obviously forgotten the N93.
• Resistive screen better than the 5800, and on par with most of the (resistive screen) competition. Some frustration maybe due more to the S60 5th Edition UI rather than the screen itself. I don’t particularly care at all for the “advantage” of stylus until resistive can match the same super light sensitivity of capacitive.
• Good news on the battery life front – no more recharging twice a day.
• Memory card is accessed under battery cover – annoying that there isn’t a simple exterior slot – but most users will probably never use this given the gargantuam 32GB on board memory.

Keyboard

• GSM Arena says the feedback of the keyboard is excellent (quite a contrast from the controversial Boy Genius Report, “there’s absolutely positively the smallest tactile feedback imaginable when pressing in a key”
• Layout of keyboard good, although I do agree that one or two rows would have made it perfect. Even just one could have meant a separate numbers row.
• GSM Arena reckons that the placement of the D-pad is wrong and intended for the minority of left handed users. Seems Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have some explaining to do, putting their Dpad “wrongly” on the left side. -_-. Seriously, the configuration of the keyboard would have been excellent for gaming. It’s a pity Nokia didn’t follow through and keep the graphics chip for more visually pleasing games.
• Placement of spacebar on the left is a non issue, and is probably the more efficient location do to the placement of the DPAD shifting the keyboard to the right, there’s minimum travel for your right thumb to press the space bar.

The rest of the review covers:

• Slide mechanism
• Widget UI/Homescreen
• Themes
• Phonebook and Telephony
• Messaging
• File Manager
• Image gallery
• Music Player and Audio Quality
• Video Player
• FM radio and FM Transmitter
• Camera and Video Recording
• Connectivity
• Organizer
• Games
• GPS
• Preinstalled Applications and 3rd Party Apps
• Conclusion

Via GSM-Arena

Tags: 5th Edition, GSM Arena, N97, Nokia, Nokia N97, Nseries, Review, S60

Category: 5th Edition, Nokia, Nseries, Reviews, S60, Symbian