Posts filed under Nokia N97

No sooner has Nokia launched the Nokia N97 than rumours of a new Nokia N97 Mini start swirling around the blogosphere.

This would be important news in its own right, but given the underwhelming reception that the Nokia N97 received, it’s news that might just save Nokia’s skin.

More details and pictures of the Nokia N97 Mini after the jump.

Here it is at last, my full hands-on Nokia N97 review. I’ll give you the low-down on the good and points of the N97, as well as how well it works as a smartphone (which I’m in a good position to assess, having owned a Nokia E90 and now a T-Mobile G1). You might be surprised by the answer!

Full hands-on Nokia N97 review after the jump.

I finally got to play with the Nokia N97 that Nokia kindly sent me. Here are my first impressions of it. Full review coming tomorrow, and much, much more video (which may or may not be a good thing, depending on whether you like the sound of my voice as much as I seem to ;)

Finally managed to spend some time with the Nokia N97 that Nokia kindly sent me for review. Before I get down to details, though, here’s the usual unboxing that seems to be required of all things tech (we’re weird people, we tech-lovers!)

The Nokia N97, Nokia’s long long long-awaited riposte to the iPhone, is finally released on June 15th, but you can pre-order one now on Orange or on O2 if you’re a UK customer. For those not in the know, the N97 is a new touchscreen smartphone from Nokia with a full QWERTY keybaord, all the usual features (5 megapixel camera , aGPS, HSDPA, 32GB memory, etc.), and a brand new user interface aimed at bringing Nokia phones firmly into 2009.

Well, 2008 anyway!

Eighteen months after the iPhone was launched, the world’s major mobile phone manufacturers have finally released a set of phones that will give it some serious competition. Apple completely changed the game with the iPhone, focusing not on features that nobody used, but on a world-class user interface that was literally second to none.

Ever since then, seemingly every mobile phone that’s been released has featured a touchscreen, but the user interface itself has been largely unchanged, with just a few tweaks and polishes here and there; certainly nothing that come close to Apple’s glorious invention.

Until now.

With the start of MWC 2009 just days away, the big guns of the mobile phone world are preparing to unleash their brand new phones onto the market, and nearly all of them have something very special waiting in the wings – full touchscreen phones with enhanced user interfaces that match or even surpass the iPhone’s, plus a feature spec that takes your breath away.

Is 2009 the year that the iPhone is finally overtaken? Read on to find out.

Nokia, no, no, no, what are you doing?! Having seen more pictures of its latest smartphone, the Nokia N97, I can say that the company’s usability department needs to be shot! The N97 features a physical QWERTY keyboard (above), which ordinarily would be perfect for text entry.

Perfect, that is, if the rest of the keys are where you expect them to be – you know, like the spacebar and the shift keys!

But no, Nokia in its infinite wisdom has chosen to place the space bar to the side of the QWERTY characters, next to the M key, while there’s only one shift key, at the far left.

Anyone who’s ever done any typing will know you simply have to have two shift keys, while moving the space bar is just sacrilege. I can understand doing this if you don’t expect the user to enter much text, but if that’s case, why include a physical QWERTY keyboard at all, when there’s a perfectly good virtual keyboard that can be used via the N97’s touchscreen?

More ranting after the jump…

I don’t mean to overwhelm you with Nokia N97 news, but well, here’s a video of the Nokia N97 in action! The Nokia N97 is Nokia’s latest wonder phone, which Scoble has described as the best Facebook phone on the market, beating the iPhone hands down.

Of course, that’s not difficult – the iPhone has a poor 2 megapixel camera, no video and no keyboard, whereas the Nokia N97 has a 5 megapixel camera, DVD-quality video recording (which, incidentally, can record in widescreen 16:9 ratio), huge 3.5″ widescreen VGA screen, and a full QWERTY keyboard as well as screen!

Check out the video of the Nokia N97, and see what you think of it.

The Nokia N97 is the first Nokia N-Series touchscreen phone, and so comparisons with the Apple iPhone are inevitable. So inevitable, in fact, that the first thing everyone wants to see is pictures of the N97 next to the iPhone.

Fortunately, Scoble, who’s at Nokia’s N97 briefing this morning, has kindly obliged, so here are the pics, courtesy of Scoble and Flickr.

More pics after the jump.

The hype is over folks – welcome to the new Nokia N97, Nokia’s latest N-Series wonder phone. The N97 seems to be a neat blend of an N-Series phone and an E90, taking all the multimedia gloriousness of the N-Series and marrying it to the superb Web browsing experience you get on the E90.

There’s a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard, which wil be super-ergonomic (the E90’s is a peach), and a massive screen for desktop-like Web browsing. In fact, the screen is the star of the N97. It’s massive – 3.5″ in size, widescreen 16:9 ratio, and touchscreen to boot, making it perfect for browsing the Web.

More pics of the Nokia N97 after the jump.