On the face of it, all the tech boxes are ticked: 3.5” touchscreen, all the HSPAs, WiFi, GPS, 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss camera, mega 32GB memory, expandable of course, build quality out of the top drawer and much, much more. STEVEN AMBROSE slipped his SIM card into this technical tour de force, and set out to see if the user experience matched up to the design.
Nokia have held a large chunk of the cellular market for a good while and have been the top dog as far as smartphones are concerned for years. Symbian, their now wholly-owned operating system, had played a part in this dominance. In the last year, however, all this has begun to unravel, Nokia still dominates for the moment, but other brands, notably the Apple iPhone and the BlackBerry, have been making solid strides into Nokia territory.
In the fast changing world of cellular phones, a year is a long time and, for the past few months, it has become apparent that the current batch of Nokia devices are finally beginning to show their age. The user interfaces are dating, fast, and this is the reason that the latest Nokia devices, including the N97, are falling a little short of the mark.
Back to the N97. In true Nokia fashion, the device is beautifully made. Just unboxing and holding the N97 is a wonderful feeling, but set me up for a bit of a disappointing experience. The build quality of the phone is excellent, it is a large squareish slider phone with a full QWERTY keyboard; the solid thunk as you open the N97 and the smooth way it slides up to a predetermined angle, combine into an engineering masterpiece. The screen is good but, compared to the latest screens from other smartphones, it is below par.
The first inkling that all is not well with this Nokia was the time it took to start up. I had to try a few times to get the phone to boot up and while the time it took would have been fine for a laptop running Windows Vista, it was not acceptable for a mobile device of this nature.
The next disappointment was the response of the screen and the device in general. Resistive touch screens are not nearly as responsive as the capacitive type found, for example, on the iPhone. However the Nokia does resistive as well as most, if not better. The upside is that you can use a stylus and write on the screen for character recognition. The slight lack of responsiveness of the resistive screen, coupled with what in my opinion is the biggest oversight on the device, the 424MHz processor, makes the interface jerky and very hard to navigate.
My interaction with the N97 lacked any fluidity and was extremely irritating, as the obvious lag and jerk of the screen interfered with basic operations, such as making a call.
All the N97’s competitors have faster processors and more memory. Having briefly tried the same Symbian operating system on a much higher powered device, I have to say Nokia have crippled the N97 with the processor supplied. Load up the Twitter client, mail, and the web browser, and the already slow response moved down a whole lot of notches, well into unusable territory.
The Symbian operating system is also showing its age: doing a simple thing like making a call takes far too many pushes and clicks and whacks at the screen. Interestingly, the same operating system on the E75 works fine. Though it still has too many clicks, pushing responsive buttons is not nearly as irritating.
In general, this version of Symbian is not optimised for touch interaction and it shows, making the user work far too much to do simple tasks. You are also asked to confirm and reconfirm your choices, too many times, often for no logical reason. On balance, the operating system makes the phone usable, but it is never intuitive. In fact, it can become highly irritating if you are in a rush to make a call or answer an email, and generally are having a busy day.
Among the great features of the phone was the camera: fast, good detail, low noise, and a bright fast flash, for an LED unit. The N97’s video recorder is also usable and its integration is great. The built-in FM transmitter is wonderful: no more cables just tune in and use the music on the roomy internal drive in your car, boat, plane, you choose.
The 3.5mm headphone jack is welcome, and something all smartphones should have. The N97 also is one of the first units from Nokia to exclusively have the micro USB jack for charging and syncing. Another standard Nokia feature is the Nokia Suite for syncing your phone to a computer. This was and remains the standard: fast, effective and unobtrusive. Also supplied is the new Ovi suite, which is more multimedia-based, and this was not very good. A Beta of the Ovi suite showed great promise, but was far too unstable for general use. My recommendation is to stick with the Nokia PC suite for now.
The built-in browser is also very good. I really liked the way it handles multiple pages when going back and forward; it is also fast and very usable. The ability to see flash sites is also rare, and welcome. Generally, web pages rendered well.
The N97 also has a range of built-in widgets and one of these takes you to the recently launched Ovi app store. The Ovi store, similar in concept to the Apple iPhone store, is really new and has a limited range of apps for download; the majority are not free and are rather expensively priced in Euros. Nokia are taking the store seriously, and while the current quality and range are questionable, I am sure that it will fast develop into something impressive.
In conclusion, I was very disappointed. I loved the build and the feel, but I am not sure where to start on the user interface. On other Nokia devices, such as the E series, it is a little dated and somewhat clunky, but overall very useable. On the N97, it is simply bad and it makes the device unusable for a busy working day. The user Interface is dated and completely inconsistent: sometimes one tap will work and other times two are needed - I never got to understand when. Gestures or flicking did not work, except in arbitrary applications.
Nokia need to beef up the processor, double the system memory and then, maybe, the N97 will come to life. This device will in all probability sell well, based on reputation alone. However, we at Gadget can’t recommend this over many other similar multimedia powerhouses.
Nokia have held a large chunk of the cellular market for a good while and have been the top dog as far as smartphones are concerned for years. Symbian, their now wholly-owned operating system, had played a part in this dominance. In the last year, however, all this has begun to unravel, Nokia still dominates for the moment, but other brands, notably the Apple iPhone and the BlackBerry, have been making solid strides into Nokia territory.In the fast changing world of cellular phones, a year is a long time and, for the past few months, it has become apparent that the current batch of Nokia devices are finally beginning to show their age. The user interfaces are dating, fast, and this is the reason that the latest Nokia devices, including the N97, are falling a little short of the mark.
Back to the N97. In true Nokia fashion, the device is beautifully made. Just unboxing and holding the N97 is a wonderful feeling, but set me up for a bit of a disappointing experience. The build quality of the phone is excellent, it is a large squareish slider phone with a full QWERTY keyboard; the solid thunk as you open the N97 and the smooth way it slides up to a predetermined angle, combine into an engineering masterpiece. The screen is good but, compared to the latest screens from other smartphones, it is below par.
The first inkling that all is not well with this Nokia was the time it took to start up. I had to try a few times to get the phone to boot up and while the time it took would have been fine for a laptop running Windows Vista, it was not acceptable for a mobile device of this nature.
The next disappointment was the response of the screen and the device in general. Resistive touch screens are not nearly as responsive as the capacitive type found, for example, on the iPhone. However the Nokia does resistive as well as most, if not better. The upside is that you can use a stylus and write on the screen for character recognition. The slight lack of responsiveness of the resistive screen, coupled with what in my opinion is the biggest oversight on the device, the 424MHz processor, makes the interface jerky and very hard to navigate.
My interaction with the N97 lacked any fluidity and was extremely irritating, as the obvious lag and jerk of the screen interfered with basic operations, such as making a call.
All the N97’s competitors have faster processors and more memory. Having briefly tried the same Symbian operating system on a much higher powered device, I have to say Nokia have crippled the N97 with the processor supplied. Load up the Twitter client, mail, and the web browser, and the already slow response moved down a whole lot of notches, well into unusable territory.
The Symbian operating system is also showing its age: doing a simple thing like making a call takes far too many pushes and clicks and whacks at the screen. Interestingly, the same operating system on the E75 works fine. Though it still has too many clicks, pushing responsive buttons is not nearly as irritating.
In general, this version of Symbian is not optimised for touch interaction and it shows, making the user work far too much to do simple tasks. You are also asked to confirm and reconfirm your choices, too many times, often for no logical reason. On balance, the operating system makes the phone usable, but it is never intuitive. In fact, it can become highly irritating if you are in a rush to make a call or answer an email, and generally are having a busy day.
Among the great features of the phone was the camera: fast, good detail, low noise, and a bright fast flash, for an LED unit. The N97’s video recorder is also usable and its integration is great. The built-in FM transmitter is wonderful: no more cables just tune in and use the music on the roomy internal drive in your car, boat, plane, you choose.
The 3.5mm headphone jack is welcome, and something all smartphones should have. The N97 also is one of the first units from Nokia to exclusively have the micro USB jack for charging and syncing. Another standard Nokia feature is the Nokia Suite for syncing your phone to a computer. This was and remains the standard: fast, effective and unobtrusive. Also supplied is the new Ovi suite, which is more multimedia-based, and this was not very good. A Beta of the Ovi suite showed great promise, but was far too unstable for general use. My recommendation is to stick with the Nokia PC suite for now.
The built-in browser is also very good. I really liked the way it handles multiple pages when going back and forward; it is also fast and very usable. The ability to see flash sites is also rare, and welcome. Generally, web pages rendered well.
The N97 also has a range of built-in widgets and one of these takes you to the recently launched Ovi app store. The Ovi store, similar in concept to the Apple iPhone store, is really new and has a limited range of apps for download; the majority are not free and are rather expensively priced in Euros. Nokia are taking the store seriously, and while the current quality and range are questionable, I am sure that it will fast develop into something impressive.
In conclusion, I was very disappointed. I loved the build and the feel, but I am not sure where to start on the user interface. On other Nokia devices, such as the E series, it is a little dated and somewhat clunky, but overall very useable. On the N97, it is simply bad and it makes the device unusable for a busy working day. The user Interface is dated and completely inconsistent: sometimes one tap will work and other times two are needed - I never got to understand when. Gestures or flicking did not work, except in arbitrary applications.
Nokia need to beef up the processor, double the system memory and then, maybe, the N97 will come to life. This device will in all probability sell well, based on reputation alone. However, we at Gadget can’t recommend this over many other similar multimedia powerhouses.
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