SINGAPORE, Singapore - Nokia launched their flagship device, Nokia N97, on June 19th this year, coinciding with the launch of two other eagerly awaited smartphones - Apple's iPhone 3GS and Palm's Pre.

While Apple resorts to the WWDC to launch its devices and services, and both Palm and Apple rely heavily on the print and electronic media for promoting their products, Nokia has been pro-active in the blogosphere in order to promote the N97.

They set the ball rolling with the "Search for N" campaign, an online contest attracting bloggers across the world in a competition giving away N97 units for the winners. They followed it up with another online competition, "Online As it Happens" - a (ongoing) widget design competition giving away N97 units for 10 winners. In continuation of their online efforts, WOM World/Nokia is providing review units of the N97 to several online publications, including ours in this case.

The device is not available in all regions, but one can buy the Nokia N97 via our Nokia N97 Blog.

Specifications

The Nokia N97 is the second S60 5th-edition device from Nokia, it is powered by an ARM 11 CPU with 434MHz, and it has RAM totalling 128MB. While this may not be the fastest mobile processor in market today, the overall performance is "snappy", and screen transitions are faster than in the Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic. Other specifications include a 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, equipped with autofocus and dual LED flash; quadband GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) and triband HSDPA connectivity (850/1900/2100MHz for the Americas and 900/1900/2100MHz for rest of the world); a 3.5" TFT resistive touchscreen with a resolution of 640x360 pixels, and capable of rendering 16 million colours. The screen is equipped with a proximity sensor and accelerometer for auto-switch-off and auto-rotation. A slide-out three-row full QWERTY keyboard is one of the highlights of this phone.

Other high-end features include Wi-Fi, A-GPS, digital compass, 32 GB of onboard memory, along with microSD slot for memory expansion.

The Nokia N97, however, falls short of pixel count when compared agaisnt competitors in the same league: the Sony Ericsson Satio has a 12 megapixel camera, and the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD has an 8 megapixel camera. Furthermore, the Samsung i8910 is equipped with a more powerful 600MHz processor.

At the left: Sony Ericsson Satio; At the right: Samsung i8910 OmniaHD

Aesthetics

As with most of Nseries devices, Nokia also has been spot-on in the aesthetics department for the N97. In fact, it goes a step further from Nseries devices and has the appeal and feel of Nokia's Eseries devices.

The chrome bezel ring along with the teflon coating on the rear panel adds to the elegance of the device. The device has a small bump on the rear bottom, to minimise wear and tear of rear panel due to constant friction. Sliding out the QWERTY keyboard reveals an impressively well-designed keyboard complete with a d-pad. The space bar has been moved to the right, much to the inconvenience of users. Keys on the keyboard are of optimum size, and along with the illumination, make typing on N97 a walk in the garden. The slide-out keyboard is supported by a metal-alloy hinge which is durable as well as responsible for the "snappy" clicks each time the slider is used.

Software

As this phone is the second S60 5th-edition device to hit the market, Nokia hasn't packed-in any surprises in the OS segment, except for the welcome inclusion of widgets on the homescreen. The homescreen can be customised with up to five widgets, depending on the preferences and convenience of the users, making it one of the most customizable interfaces in the mobile segment. While the Facebook and Accuweather widgets have been in included on the homescreen by default, there is a number of widgets (Bloomberg, AP News, Amazon, and Hi5) available by default, in addition to others which can be downloaded from the Ovi Store. Users can also add shortcut bars, favourite contacts bar, a music player, RSS feeds, and other visuals to the homescreen. While S60 may not be one of the "snappiest" and user-friendly OSes for mobile devices today, the N97 is worth an upgrade for fans of Nokia and of the S60 fifth edition.

One of the most commonly discussed critique against the N97 has been the lack of a considerable number of third-party applications. As this phone is the first S60 5th-edition device with a physical keyboard, users can now install S60 third edition applications on the N97 as well. With some of the best S60 applications not supporting touch input, the N97 is a welcome relief for S60 fans. We successfully installed and used Skyfire browser and DivX mobile player, with some minor hiccups in operation. This flexibility of installing S60 v3 applications certainly adds on to the list of third-party applications available for N97. This is in no way close to the number of applications on the iPhone platform, although the number of third-party applications may increase with time, as this software platform is still new, and it is on the verge of gaining market acceptability with launches of devices by other manufacturers, including Samsung with the i8910 Omnia HD, and Sony Ericsson with the Satio.

Camera

With a 5.1 megapixel Carl Zeiss sensor onboard, the N97's camera performance is marginally better than satisfactory, although the N95 and N82's cameras are more commendable. However, the camera performance was impressive in outdoor shootout in auto mode. It seemed that camera performance was marginally better for close-up (macro) shots indicating better autofocus optimization for close-range shots.

The camera performance indoors is average, owing to the weak illumination capacity of dual LED flashes. With Xenon flashes being offered by competitors in this segment, Nokia's reluctance to opt for Xenon is reflected in poor indoor camera performance. However, dual LED flash performance was satisfactory for close-range illumination, but the images suffered from low colour reproducibility.

Above, capture with flash; below, without flash:

The N97 is no XpressMusic phone, but the device is equipped with stereo speakers and the default music player is capable of playing MP3, WMA, WAV, and eAAC+ files; and WMV, RealVideo, and MP4 playback are supported by the pre-installed real player. The speaker performance is not of the league of XpressMusic series devices but it is satisfactory. With the N97, Nokia continues to ignore out-of-the-box DivX support, forcing users to rely on third-party media players for one of the most popular video formats in the market. Video playback in general was impressive with no lags even at high bitrates, when observed on supported 3GP and MP4 formats. The device also features FM radio with RDS support, and has an onboard FM transmitter.

Pricing

The phone is reasonably priced at US$699, and considering the pricing history of other Nseries devices, the N97's pricing is competitive. But with its rivals - Apple offering the iPhone 3GS at US $699 (for the 16GB version) and at US$799 (for the 32GB version), the N97 may lose out to the popularity of iPhone. The latter is armed with a far more superior processor, a much acclaimed OS along with a wider third-party application support, while the N97 has its own advantages with its flash support for the default Symbian browser, full QWERTY keyboard, support for multi-tasking, and a higher-resolution camera equipped with a flash. The N97's pricing has been spot on, taking into account the high-quality build and other specifications, but Apple steals the deal with cutthroat-pricing for the iPhone (in certain regions).

Verdict

The Nokia N97 impresses us with its elegant and feel-good build, impressive voice clarity, above-average camera performance, and the all new customizable widgetized homescreen. However, the Symbian platform does need a major makeover to compete with the likes of Apple, Palm, HTC, and Blackberry, who have revolutionized the smartphone segment with innovative designs for interfaces, along with faster and more fluid touchscreen performance.

Notable absences in N97 are kinetic scrolling and default DivX/XviD support. However, Nokia Maps integration with the onboard digital compass makes it the best navigation phone of the lot. The Nokia Maps application can be used without network connection and is the leading navigation application in Europe and Russia. Navigation may be the only noteworthy achievement in the software department for N97.

Advantages - Classy phone that looks and feels elegant; the slide-out QWERTY keyboard is  delightful, except for unusual placement of the space bar; the overall performance is faster than the previous S60 fifth-edition device, Nokia 5800; outdoor camera performance is above average; and video playback of supported 3GP formats is impressive.

Disadvantages: S60 is not as user friendly as some of the other smartphone OSes in competition today; this, along with a slower 434 MHz processor, impedes the overall smartphone performance when compared to faster devices from the same segment from Apple and Palm.

Rating: 7/10

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