So Close but still far.... Review on Nokia N97

Its been a long time, I had written a review..After a tenure of 2 years with Blackberry at Abroad, I came back to india and decided to switch over or try our good old Nokia... Its been a long long time that I had used a Nokia phone...

The latest launch was N97, so that was the obvious choice... I am using this since a week and now I am fully equipped with data points to put a review...

This review has no technical information, as this is already available in Abundance.. so decided to keep it simple from purely a users perspective - from usability...

I fall into the user segment who is a major internet and email buff, in addition to it, I would like to have sometime alone with some of my favorite music and also do not want to miss out an opportunity to capture a lovely moment with a decent camera...

So heres what is my observation -- Lets talk about the thumbs down first

1. This one is a major goof up.... The phone has a slider lock/unlock control on its side..if your phone is in locked state, and you get a call, there is no way you can receive a call without unlocking the phone first.... this is pathetic boss... the acceptable situation is, if you get a call in locked state, you receive the call and when the call ends - the phone goes to locked state automatically...

The workaround is, the phone can be unlocked by a simple GUI touch based slider control on the screen, so with a little amout of practice, you can unlock and as well as receive the call pretty fast.. but that still is a thumbs down...

1. Accelerometer is the latest trend now, depending on your phone movement, the display changes from Potrait to landscape... I have used these accelerometers in IPhone, Blackberry Storm and now on N97... I have seen no considerable difference on all of these, they sometimes have a delay in responding and sometimes they respond fast.. but that delay is acceptable.. the point is when your display orientation changes, how you present the active content of the screen becomes important..

I would have been happy, if a touch screen fullkeypad could also have been provided in potrait mode...Having said this, this key pad is there in potrait but it comes in the form of pages.. which means half of the keypad is visible initially and you need go the next page of the keypad to access characters in the other half.. This is also bad... Think about a keypad you use which is divided into pages... your typing speed reduces considerably...

1. Since the OS is of latest edition of S60, so many popular third party applications available does not work smoothly on the S60 fifth edition.. The older version they do install after a warning, but the reliability at which they work is considerably lower. For example, Nokia.co.in does not have a Mail for Exchange still for N97, however, Nokia.co.sg (Singapore) has a version for N97.. I tried installing, it gave me a warning, that the software is not compatible with this version of OS...This is also weired..

   
   




2. There is a proximity sensor on the device, which is supposed to disable the touch screen of the phone, when you are talking holding the phone close to your ear... well thats a nice feature.. but it does not work properly... many a times, I have got that familiar click click sound, which happens when you use the touch screen and I have seen the lots of application getting opened..

   
   




3. Its high time, Nokia should change their Carl Zeiss lens ... this lens is of no good... atleast I cannot make a difference between 3.2 MP photos taken from E75, to the 5 MP photos taken in N97..

   
   




4. The material used to construction could have been improved... the back cover is very thin and light weight, so for inserting/changing SIM Card, battery, please be cautious, as I feel it may break, if you force is too hard...

   
   




5. Browser touch screen - Not good at all.... scrolling up/down , sideways with fingers takes considerable effort... however, it has been provided with a stylus too with which the job is easy.. but the touch sensitivity and responsiveness in browser has a huge scope of improvement...

   
   

Now for some thumbs ups

1. Personalized Home Screen with Widgets - A very Big thumbs up.....This one surely is a niche in the market... You can personalize with small widgets, which can consume your GPRS and provide you updates on weather, news, alerts you on emails which is very very cool.. which means yourself and use the SDK of symbian and develop widgets distribute it freely or even charge for it.. There are already lots of widgets available - the main advantage is they would work like some standalone application and need not be necessarily installed in your phone. For the detailed info in widgets you click on one, it takes to to the appropriate site in your browser...

   
   




2. There is a huge 32 GB on board memory with an additional 16 SB Micro SD support... I doubt whether Micro SD would be ever needed unless we want data portability 32 GB is more than enough, unless we treat this as a iPOD..

   
   




3. The OS is fast and touch screen is very responsive.. If your phone is in general. pager, loud profiles, the touch has a feedback system in the form of vibrations, so you know exactly at what portion of the screen you have touched... This was completely lacking in IPHONE.... so typing an email in IPHONE was a pain for people having large fingers.. ..... So essence is even if you have a touch screen provide a feedback for the touches...

   
   




4. Emails, Internet is same as the communicator line up (E92 to be precise).. which is extremely fast and easy to browse through...

   
   




5. Sound quality is pretty good, although N96 was better... but then N96 was not a business phone.. My service provider is Vodafone, so I am yet to test this on a 3G network.. hopefully in my next trip abroad, would use this in 3G and let you know, how it handles the same...