Our Nokia N97 Review

Landscape view of Nokia N97 White

Design

Looking at the Nokia N97, we were eager to get to know it. As a smartphone, the design is quite bulky and standard in standard glossy metallic silver. We couldn’t keep our eyes away from its big screen, as we’ve set our hopes high on its performance. The general build and feel is professional and durable. Its design is minimalist and simple to handle and digest upon first use.

Screen

At 3.5in, the Nokia N97’s screen is what we call a resistive touch screen; you have to press hard to get a response from the handset. We generally feel luke-warm towards such screens, but the Nokia N97’s 16.7 million colors at 640x360 made us fall in love. It offers clear bright images and built-in accelerometer that switches orientation to landscape or portrait mode automatically. A great feature is the sensor embedded that turns off the screen when you put the handset to your ear – enabling smart power saving. Using the stylus is definitely better than using our fingers as it responds better and makes less errors.

Nokia N97 Black

User Interface

The Nokia N97’s user interface is widget-based. The moment you look at the home screen, you’ll find small widgets directing you to the different features you need. You can set a maximum of 8 on the home screen and we found that removing, editing, and adding the widget content is quite easy even for a non-experienced user. We loved the simplicity of the user interface and the general organization that enables you to find everything you need without any troubles.

Keypad

The Nokia N97 utilizes a QWERTY keyboard that performs great at different angles. In combination with the screen, you can easily type in a message when the handset is in your bag or under a desk – a great advantage for meetings and classes. The buttons are non-slippery ideal for summer where fingers get all sweaty. The keyboard is quite thin, but it doesnt’ affect the performance or speed of typing. The buttons are generously spread apart enabling the user to type in with ease.

Nokia N97 with keyboard in use

Camera and Multimedia

The Nokia N97’s 5 Megapixel Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens is a performer at all levels. We fell in love with its autofocus, dual LED flash, and 4x zoom, and advanced photo editing options such as: exposure, geo-tagging, and color levels. We found our photos to be clear and properly contrasted; not to mention the colours were rich and saturated with colors. Video capturing is great as well; capturing videos at a 640x480 resolution and a 30 frames per second. It outperforms many video-cameras on the market.

In the multimedia department, you’ll be glad to know that sports great features and applications such as: QuickOffice for Micrsoft Office integration, an Adobe PDF reader, a YouTube player, and a Wi-Fi application.

The Nokia N97’s media player supports AAC, AAC+, eAAC+ files as well as the standard MP3 and WMA. Its user interface is simple and iPod-like with music categorized according to albums, genres, or artists. Video playback supports 3GPP and MPEG-4 files, leaving you with a hassle-free playback experience.

Connectivity and Battery Life

The Nokia N97’s connectivity sports standard 3G HSDPA, GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. The web browser loads pages with stunning speed and the GPS Nokia Maps provides accurate locations without trouble. We felt that the connectivity needs a little push, but it will definitely do for any average web browser.

The Nokia N97’s battery is impressive at 6 hours talk-time and 400 hours standby. You can easily surf the internet, listen to music, and watch videos for 3 days straight without recharging the handset.

What We Liked

We liked the Nokia N97’s QWERTY keyboard, connectivity support, large touch-screen, and multimedia features.

What We Disliked

We disliked the Nokia N97’s touch screen’s responsiveness and classic minimalist design.

Our Final Verdict

We loved the Nokia N97 for its laundry list features. It is a great option for anyone looking for a large touch screen, awesome multimedia features, and overall stellar performance. It comes with an expensive price tag that can get many to re-consider their choice.

Compare Handsets

	Read Review
	Nokia N97
General
Form Factor	Candybar
Dimensions	117.2 x 55.3 x 15.9 (mm)
Talk Time	360 mins
Standby Time	400 hours
Weight	150 g
Quad Band	Yes
Photo and Video
Integrated Camera	Yes
Camera	5.00 megapixels
Video Player	Yes
Phone
Vibrating Alert	Yes
Voice Recognition	Yes
Polyphonic Ringtones	Yes
Integrated Keyboard	Yes
Messaging
MMS	Yes
Photo Messaging	Yes
Predictive Text	Yes
Video Messaging	Yes
Screen
Colour Screen	Yes
Touch Screen	Yes
Handwriting Recognition	Yes
Connectivity
3G	Yes
Bluetooth	Yes
Email	Yes
GPRS	Yes
HSDPA	Yes
WAP	Yes
Music and Radio
FM Radio	Yes
MP3 Player	Yes
MP3 Ringtones	Yes
Additional Content
Downloadable Content	Yes
Downloadable Games	Yes
Downloadable Ringtones	Yes

Nokia N97 Full Specification

General

Photo and Video

Phone

Messaging

Screen

Connectivity

Music and Radio

Additional Content

User Comments

Images of the Nokia N97

Landscape view of Nokia N97 White

Nokia N97 Black

Nokia N97 with keyboard in use