Nokia’s N97 is it’s marquee product, the answer to the iPhone for those who can’t or won’t use a touchscreen keyboard.
On paper it has much to recommend it. A touch screen and a qwerty keyboard, a 32Gb storage, a 7.2Mpixel camera, access to an app store (Ovi) for more software, all in a size that doesn’t dominate your pocket. There’s enough there to suggest you consider it as an option before you buy your iPhone.
Speed
One of the phone’s big problems is that it is incredibly slow. I’m likely to click on a function three or four times thinking it hasn’t launched. Some functions are single click and some are double, adding to my confusion, but I often have time enough to press once, think I’ve made a mistake, then click two or three more times before the app launches. It’s great that the Nokia N97 can multi-task (and how iPhone users got by without this for so long is beyond me) but you sometimes wonder if the little processor in the N97 is up to the task.
Browsing the internet is painful on the Nokia N97. Even on my local wi-fi connection I can barely raise a page or two before I’m too bored and frustrated to continue.
Functionality
For me it’s Google world, with our calendar, documents and email hosted by Google Apps. I don’t need push email (and actually found it quite annoying when I first set it up) but I do need everything to sync on the run. Unfortunately this isn’t actually possible with the N97. I would have expected the N97 to support the world’s largest cloud email/calendar but it does not. There is no way to sync your calendar to your Google calendar without buying third party software. I bought Moosync and it does a decent job of keeping the calendar and contacts synchronised, though it has to be manually and never seems to work on the 3G network (only when on wi-fi). While this system is workable it’s not even remotely like the kind of solution I could, as an IT consultant, present to a customer.
What frustrated me most was that this imperfect solution took a half day to research and implement. I could have been up and running with an iPhone inside 10 minutes. It syncs the calendar and email just by telling it your Google login details.
As a work and productivity tool the N97 fails miserably.
Copy-Paste
You get quite good at copy-and-paste with the N97. When someone sent me a phone number via text on my old Nokia E63 I clicked on the number and the phone dialled it. Now I have to highlight that number (with my finger nail, we’re talking about a small touch screen here), go to the menu and copy it. Close that down and open up the dialler, then back to the menu…Edit…Paste…Dial. Phew.
Similarly, in my previous like as a happy E63 owner, when someone sent me a text I had an option to call them back via voice call if I desired. It was about two clicks deep in a menu…easy to access. Now I don’t have the option at all.
Radio
I loved the fact that the N97 has an ability to broadcast your tunes to your car radio. With 32Gb on tap you can have a massive collection of music with you always, ready to play in any car anywhere. The gap between interesting gimmick and genuine contender here is sounds quality. Put simply, the sounds quality is so poor I’ll never bother using this feature.
It would have been good also, if when someone called, the conversation played through the radio. Instead Nokia chose to default back to the handset for conversation.
Streaming Internet Radio
My little Nokia E63 was a great little phone. Cheap and reliable and able to do almost anything, including streaming RRR direct from Melbourne. Nokia have dropped support for m3u and pls files and now the N97 does not even do the things that the E63 took in it’s stride.
Why the phone wouldn’t support the single most widespread streaming formats is beyond me. Perhaps it has something to do with all the apps you can buy in the Ovi app store that play radio for you. I’ve seen none of these apps that will play RRR so I even if I was prepared to reach into my pocket to pay for a basic feature of my previously very basic E63 then I still couldn’t stream RRR.
Battery Life
Decent. On par with other phones.