I really wanted to like this phone. It is after all pretty powerful, and includes Nokia's neat mail for exchange which means my emails can be there on a top notch screen with a decent useable keyboard.
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| From Yourmobile |
My kind of phone I thought.
The N97 has been around almost a year and its smaller (slightly ) brother the N97 Mini has grabbed all the recent headlines.
But I like its size and the fact it does a lot. A smartphone needs to feel special and the N97 still does that.
Its touchscreen works well and the operating system will be familiar to everybody who's ever had a Nokia though on the N97 the Symbian OS looks even better thanks to a redesign.
Initial impressions were good and here are the big pluses on a phone that launched at more than £500 in the UK10 months ago but can now be secured for as little as £19 a month with unlimited internet access and load of calls and texts (See the 3 site for full details).
It flicks open with a reassuring thunk exposing the keypad. The touchscreen is bright and responded well to my finger touches. The home screen was easily set up to show what I wanted quick access to and it was easy to reach the applications folder to find what I need less often.
The 5meg camera, with Carl Zeiss lens, performed well and the video too worked easily well enough to satisfy Youtubers.
Web access was easy using the standard browser and I downloaded the excellent Opera 5 browser as a useful alternative.
Twitter came via the free download of Tweets60 from the ever improving Ovi Store and the Facebook app did all you could need.
I linked quickly to my Picasa account as well as Ovi's own pic and video sharing service so getting my pics from the phone to anywhere else was easy.
At this stage I was almost sold. Could this be a genuine all rounder with which I could sign up for a decent two-year contract relationship?
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| From Yourmobile |
Directions came easily, my place on the map was pinpoint accurate (well, ok it was about 25 yards out) and I was immediately offered a choice of voices to instruct me. Impressive.
Nokia had kindly provided the phone for test but Ovi maps was offering an 8meg update. So I asked the impressive piece of kit to download it immediately.
And that's where the problem started.
The memory was too low it said. 'Delete some data and try again'.
I did, it did the same when I tried again.
What? This is a new phone and there's a whopping 32 Gb of onboard memory. Surely some mistake?
I spent an hour understanding the phone, where apps were stored, how the memory was divided into two, for example the emails were stored on the small 'phone' memory not the in-built 30 odd remaining gig. I moved some more things around, deleted a few apps… in fact all the things a new owner should not have to do.
For me there is a fascination; for most users this will be an irritating frustration and that makes the N97 a geek's phone, not for the ordinary user.
The N97 could have been a Blackberry-eating iPhone option for so many people but as far as I'm concerned this inability to download makes it a loser.
Worse than that, the problem is not solvable.
I consulted the geek-zone: message boards frequented by people who love to examine every aspect of their smartphone's performance, talk and compare, and who are those good people who advise the newcomer how to overcome the limitations of almost every phone made. And the N97's insufficient memory is not curable. You have to live with it.
I can't do that. I want the Ovi maps update, I want the 6gig app that will allow my N97 to play N-Gage games.
The N97 is a great phone that would have done everything I needed. I would have bought one myself despite being in a position where I'm testing new phones week in week out. But the unsolved download glitch and, arguably, its lack of RAM memory too, make the N97 a superb nearly phone.
The other glitches I could have lived with: it didn't want to default to WiFi when available, you had to select it and the fact I couldn't get the BBC iPlayer to work nine times out of ten.
The fact I knew, and would always know, I wasn't getting the very best out of the N97 takes it off my wish list.
It's a shame, it is a great phone. Look out for the N98 then...
Overall 6/10
Good
Great camera, great screen, great keyboard, simple to use. Still something of a multi-media bargain
Bad
Unable to download larger files and updates.
Conclusion
The N97 is a mini computer, which represented Nokias return punch to Apple and should have held Android keyboard phones like the Motorola Milestone at bay. Still a great phone f you like it just as it comes out of the box.
Review Gary Wright
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