Nokia N97 Blogger preview
I was given the chance to touch/play/molest the new Nokia N97 for a short while. The N97 isn’t released in the market yet, and not many people outside Nokia have touched it before. We were one of the selected lucky few who get the first hand experience on it.
Let’s talk about the hardware first. I love the hardware on the N97. 3.5 inch resistive touchscreen, 32gb built in memory. Yes, that is not a typo, 32 freaking Gigabyte of memory. At 32gb memory, you most likely won’t need anymore expansion, but Nokia still include a MicroSD slot, allowing up to 16gb MicroSD card. Madness. 5 megapixel camera which can record video at 30fps VGA quality. Standard HSDPA, Wifi, Bluetooth 2.0 and GPS. Charging and data transfer is thru a MicroUSB slot which is the future standard for all phones. 3.5mm jack for earphone. And it comes with a digital compass too. (Boy am I beginning to love digital compass) It’s bigger than most smartphones out there (Because of the Qwerty keyboard) and weighs around 150g.
The best part is the slide out Qwerty keyboard. When you slide the keyboard out, the screen is tilted roughly 30 degrees (My rough estimation). This make the N97 looks like a mini computer. The Qwerty keyboard is quite ok to type with. There is also a 4 direction navigation pad which is pretty useful. I love the tilted screen. It seems like Nokia did quite a bit of research on the best angle to tilt the screen. I think the N97 would look great on the table, sitting at one corner while showing updates from your widgets like facebook or stocks.
Speaking of widgets, when you first turn on the N97, you will be overwhelmed by the amount of things happening concurrently on the home screen. In fact, it’s pretty scary at first. But after a while, you’ll get used to it. Just imagine the home screen being sliced into 6 equal part and you can put a widget in each segment. Apart from the clock/date widget, all the remaining 5 widget can be remove or rearranged to your liking. You can even leave it blank if you find it too overwhelming. If your boss or someone walk pass, you can quickly do a left or right finger swipe and all the widgets on the home screen will be hidden from sight. Cool feature.
There are some interesting widgets currently available. I think the most widely used widget will be the facebook widget. There is also widgets for boomberg, AccuWeather, Hi5, Myspace just to name a few. For local content, there are widgets for Straits Times, SG Buses, Cab, SGX and a few more. One widget that is sadly missing from the current lineup is a widget for Twitter. But not to worry, I’m sure developers will create a Twitter widget for N97 shortly which will be available on the Ovi store for download. I didn’t managed to peek into Ovi store for N97. Maybe they have some secrets there. *cough*
Overall, I’m pretty impressed by the hardware and the design of the Nokia N97. Love the way the screen pops out and tilt to a comfortable angle. I think it will look good on a office table (or my computer table). And it should be pretty useful for video calls too. As for the apps in Ovi Store, its still too early to judge. Let’s see what interesting apps the developers create.
The Nokia N97 comes in Black and White colour. (I personally prefer the black colour) It will be officially launch in this region on 5 June at KL, Malaysia. Someone from Tech65 will be flying over to cover the event. Guess who. 
Thanks to Felicia from Text100 and Nokia for the sneak preview.
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[...] suddenly cried out 3 letters. Ovi. Yes, Nokia Ovi store is now open worldwide. If you recall my Nokia N97 review, I mentioned that I tried accessing the Ovi store on the demo unit but failed. I thought the Ovi [...]
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[...] But since the folks at Nokia and Text100 fed me well during their event and let me play with their flagship N97 a few weeks before the official launch, I think I should plug a bit. Just a bit. Hope not too many [...]
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Ooh lucky you! Sounds like a great smart phone. Maybe it will give the iPhone and Blackberry a run for their money?
Miss Virtual Reality’s last blog post..Tomorrrow You Can Download The Almost Finished Windows 7
Miss Virtual Reality: I think the N97 might be a good match against the Blackberry with the Nokia Messaging service. I’m not sure for iPhone. We really need to see the quality of the apps first to judge.
I like the hardware…
hey dk, the tilting of the screen hor, when u hol dit in ur hands and typing sms, do u feel that the tilt is a bit too much?
as in, do u hav to tilt ur hands to look at screen than tilt back to look at keyboard? erm… i hope u get what i mean.
btw, i measured ur side view photo, yup about a little more than 30 degrees.
Reversebungee: I find the tilt just nice when typing SMS. If you think about it, when we use our phone, we usually tilt it to a certain angle. Now, imagine the phone being straight and the screen tilted to the angle you would usually do on a normal phone.
And wow, you really go measure ah? Haha.
cool..my name appears..
lol..but im not that person…
so dk..
its gonna be launch on june 5th in kl..
how about the market?
when is it gonna be out?
Felici: It depends on the telco. I guess should be early June.
i did measure it. coz i read from some other reviews that the tilt is a lil’ too much that, u have to adjust ur hand inorder to see either the screen or the KB. but i guess thats a very early proto type and Nokia knows it and recity the released set. coz i rmb that time the tilt was 45 degrees iirc.
This phone have built in flash and java right? meaning, flash games and youtube and iBanking shouldnt be too much a problem?
Reversebungee: Flash in the web browser? No leh, still don’t have. At least for the version that I was using. So I guess still no iBanking on N97 yet.
hmm…. its next week liao, wait for telcos to push out this model… hope it wont go over 800 with a normal plan. heh~ i am trying to unload(sell) my stuff to get money for this!
i bought two units of Nokia N97 because i like the style of this phone and also its features. Best phone i have ever used.
^
I love the look and feel of the Nokia N97. This is probably the best phone that i ever bought, the other best phone would be the iPhone.
cool phone, but nokia shouldnt come with the chrome surface at the corner, it easily get scratch…