Jul 12, 2009 01:19 PM
3347 Views
It's been 2 weeks since I purchased this phone. I haven't had any major problems yet. No crashes, hangs or self-restarts. I'm writing this after performing the firmware update today morning. So, digging deeper:
Appearance:This phone is an attractive little gadget, with a glossy metal frame around the touchscreen. The qwerty-keyboard, though awkward, is pretty well laid-out and gives an overall good look to the phone. The screen is bright enough for me.
Inside:It seems that this thing has been designed on the new, stabler 5th edition of the old, boring, unattractive Symbian operating system, for a reason; the sole reason seems stability. This phone is quite stable even with multiple applications running simultaneously. Even though they've provided only 128 MB of RAM(which is the biggest drawback of this phone, according to me), the N97 manages the small memory-pool well.
User Interface:However, the user interface, as I mentioned, is quite dry and boring. Same old Symbian. I was expecting something more on the lines of good fonts and theme-effects, like any high-end Sony Ericsson or maybe iPhone. Also, double-tap is often required to launch an icon or option. Tapping on this phone is quite awkward and clumsy. I wish they hadn't stuck with the old Resistive Technology for touch-screen interfaces. The iPhone wins many points over this.
Calling and Communication:If there's something worse than the low-RAM, it's calling and receiving calls/texts. The handset-speakers(not loud-speakers) cannot handle full volume. The sound starts crackling at full volume.
Also the sensors should get disabled during calls, because while talking, the vertical portrait-orientation often changes to horizontal landscape-orientation. This is extremely annoying because after the call ends, I have to shake the phone to go back to the vertical orientation.
Gaming:It seems that Nokia has enabled support for NGage but left everything else to the user. There are NO preinstalled NGage games. I was exasperated, trying to locate games for this thing.
But I managed to get my hands on Spore. Gaming is excellent on N97 and battery isn't consumed too significantly while gaming.
Battery Life:Do NOT go by the battery-meter on the phone. My first two days, I relied on the battery-meter which showed full for 2 days continously and then the 3rd day early morning(about 6 hours after it had shown full), it was down to 1 point! So I made it a practice to charge this thing every other day.
Internet Access:I haven't been able to use 3G yet due to its unavailability on my network. But otherwise, web-browsing is good and fast.
Best Part:1) Handwriting recognition is excellent on this handset, since it accepts finger-touch input, as well as stylus input. It is good to be able to actually write through the touchscreen and see it appear as text. There's also an amazing little applet which performs calculations on handwriting-based number-input.
2) Video-watching is superb. I put 3 whole movies onto the monstrous 32 GB of flash memory that comes built into the phone. Movie-watching was fun, and after watching a whole movie around afternoon, the phone battery managed to survive till the next day late morning.
Conclusion:I'd say go out and buy this phone if you have the moolah. Period.
