Nokia N97 review: Lock, stock and touch

GSMArena team, 16 June 2009.

They don't get any bigger than that. A launch of this caliber can aptly be called inauguration day. The release of Nokia N97 is the Nseries counter-move that geeks have been waiting for since November. Easily one of the most complete smartphones ever created, the N97 has been haunting Symbian buffs' dreams for quite a while.

Nokia N97

We're about to see if this feature-loaded son of a gun is the stuff dreams are made of and if it has the gut to stand up to the best on the market. The 5800 XpressMusic was cheap enough to easily be forgiven a couple of shortcomings but the N97 is not the begging type. Nokia-faithfuls are used to only getting the best treatment, so they won't settle for less with the Nseries skipper.

Key features

• Slide-n-tilt 3.5" 16M-color resistive touchscreen of 640 x 360 pixel resolution
• 5 megapixel autofocus camera with dual-LED flash and lens cover (VGA@30fps video recording)
• Symbian OS 9.4 with S60 5th edition UI
• Slide-out three-row full QWERTY keyboard
• ARM 11 434MHz CPU and 128 MB of RAM
• Quad-band GSM support and 3G with HSDPA support
• Wi-Fi and GPS with A-GPS (plus 3 months of free voice-guided navigation via Ovi Maps)
• Digital compass
• Class-leading 32GB onboard storage
• microSD card slot with microSDHC support
• Built-in accelerometer
• 3.5 mm audio jack
• TV out
• Stereo FM Radio with RDS
• FM transmitter
• microUSB and Bluetooth v2.0
• Full Flash and Java support for the web browser
• microUSB v2.0 and Bluetooth v2.0
• Good audio reproduction quality

Main disadvantages

• The S60 5th edition UI still has poor ergonomics and is not as thumbable as expected
• Camera features are so two-thousand-and-late
• No DivX or XviD support out-of-the-box
• No smart dialing
• Somewhat limited 3rd party software availability
• No office document editing (without a paid upgrade)

Obvious from the list above, the Nokia N97 hardly puts anything new on the table. It is however a bold try to fit all of today's top features under one hood and offer a nice ride at that. This certainly is an ambitious task by itself but the ever-expectant Nseries fans, who always want something new on their next handset, make it even harder. The Nokia N97 will need to be near flawless to get a warm welcome.

Nokia N97 at ours

Nokia N97 will also be a major test for the still quite young (or immature if you want) S60 5th edition UI. The growing pains were expected and acceptable in the 5800 XpressMusic, but it's been 8 months since. The time is long enough in mobile phone terms and the market leader is simply expected to have had everything figured by now.

Looks pretty good, doesn't it

The disappointing N96 does owe Nokia some and the N97 will - among other things - probably have to cover its debts too. Join us on the next page as we take a peek inside the retail box of the new Nseries sovereign and complete our ergonomics rundown.

Retail package is decent

Nokia N97 comes in a modestly-sized (for the class, that is) box. Inside you will find everything you have all the right to expect and not too many surprises. The nice car charger that was supplied with the N96 is omitted here, probably in an attempt to keep the price down.

The contents of the retail package include the mandatory charger plus an adapter which you might use with older Nokia chargers. Both preceding standards utilized by Nokia can be converted to microUSB to charge your Nokia N97.

Looking under the hood

The box also contains a data cable plus a two-piece handsfree that allows changing the headphones without losing the remote functionality. The headphones themselves aren't exactly screaming high-end and you might as well find an alternative set to enjoy the handset's nice audio quality on.

The Nokia N97 retail package comes complete with a cloth for polishing your new toy and a nicely designed stylus - no spare though. Upmarket and stylish though it may look, the fact that it's supposed to hang on the phone on a strap makes it a no-go by our books.

Nokia N97 360-degree spin

At 117.2 x 55.3 x 15.9 mm and with a volume of 88 cc the Nokia N97 sure is a handful. It is more than 2mm thinner than the N96, in spite of the added QWERTY keyboard, but still a hefty piece of gear by modern standards. It's bigger than the XPERIA in all directions but thinner. But we guess the larger N97 screen is probably a good enough excuse.

Talking about its own segment however, the Nokia N97 is almost as compact as its gets with slimness only rivaled by Nokia E75. Considering the difference in features we would recognize the negligible difference between those two as a good achievement any day.

The weight of 150g is another thing that could've been a disadvantage were we not talking a smart QWERTY all-in-one. However it gives quite a distinct solidity and we doubt it anyone will complain too much.

Design and construction

The slide-out QWERTY form factor has only recently found its way to Symbian handsets and Nokia in particular. We have to admit, the Finnish engineers have done a good job of it making the handset quite a looker.

Plastic from tip to toe is probably the only thing we aren't particularly fond of. In all honesty though, we cannot imagine how much it would have weighed with E71-like steel finish.

The design is pretty good for the form factor

On the positive side, we are really pleased with the material used on the rear and sides, for both slick polish and fingerprint-resistance.

The Nokia N97 16M-color resistive touchscreen takes most of the front of the handset. It measures 3.5" in diagonal and has a resolution of 360 x 640 pixels, falling short of only the E90 business monster in the Finnish company portfolio.

While that resolution seemed quite satisfactory 6 months ago, year 2009 saw WVGA resolution screens becoming standard issue equipment in the upper market segment and they are already found on a number of non-smartphone devices by competing brands. Nokia has yet to go as high as that and we really hope they achieve something along these terms later on this year or they would be in a disadvantageous position by Christmas.

Best of all the Nokia N97 is noticeably better than what we saw on the 5800 XpressMusic (talking displays, size does count above all) but the more vivid colors of the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD will probably seem more appealing to the general audience.

Don't get us wrong - the contrast and brightness are still great on the Nokia N97, it's just that the OLED blacks can hardly be rivaled by the LCD technology.

We really dig the ample display

The sunlight legibility is the only thing that makes the Nokia N97 screen superior to what the competition has to offer. Nothing of the bad experience with Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, the N97 users will be able to fully enjoy their handsets outdoors. The legibility of the N97 is at almost the same level as the good old Nokia N95 8GB and this is about as good as we've seen a Nokia get.

The Nokia N97 uses the resistive technology for its touchscreen as opposed to the capacitive units in devices like the Apple iPhone. This means a bit of extra pressure on the screen is needed for a tap to be registered.

The resistive display technology has the dubious advantage of allowing the use of stylus (and other objects than fingers).

The sensitivity of the Nokia N97 display is improved over the Nokia 5800 and is now at least on par with a lot of the competition, but we still see better performing touchscreens on a daily basis. It's perfectly alright when you use the stylus, but resorting to your thumbs quite often leads to poor response. That of course may be an issue of the underlying UI and not the screen itself.

We guess the improved sensitivity makes the lack of a stylus compartment so much less of an issue. If you don't like the stylus dongle, with the N97 you may as well go without it. The user experience is way ahead of what the 5800 XpressMusic had to offer.

Haptic feedback is of course enabled. Vibration intensity is adjustable, with three different levels to choose from.

Leaving the display aside, there are several other elements of interest up front. The call and end keys are this time touch-sensitive, unlike the menu key which is a regular button placed somewhat askew in the lower left corner of the front.

The three keys at the bottom of the front panel

At the other end of the front panel of Nokia N97 we find the earpiece and video-call camera, along with a couple of sensors. Those include an ambient light and a proximity sensor, which takes care of switching the display off when you hold it to your ear.

A couple of sensors are surrounding the earpiece and the video-call camera

Design and construction (continued)

The right side of the handset sports the volume rocker and the dedicated two-step shutter key. They are both comfortable to work with and have nothing to do with the terrible controls of the N96.

We have no complaints about the two keys on the right

The left side hosts the stereo speakers at each end and the microUSB slot and the screen lock knob in the middle. There is no protective cover for the USB slot so it will probably accumulate dust and dirt with use. The screen lock triggers a mild vibration every time it is engaged. The control itself does look rather cheap to some on our team.

The stereo speakers, the microUSB slot and the display lock slider are on the left

The 3.5mm standard audio jack is on top of the Nokia N97, along with the power key. The latter is also used for alternating the ringing profiles on the device and locking it, as on the other Symbian devices.

On top are the power key and the 3.5mm audio jack

The bottom features nothing but the lanyard eyelet (there goes the stylus dongle in case you are wondering).

There's not much action at the bottom

The backside of the handset features the 5 megapixel camera lens and the dual LED flash. Those are hidden under a nice protective cover to prevent getting scratched and all. Unfortunately, dust gathers at the edges of the raised little deck where all those elements are placed and it's quite hard to clean.

The 5 megapixel camera lens is well protected this time

Opening the battery cover reveals the capable 1500 mAh BP-4L Li-Ion battery. It's said to provide up to 432 hours of stand-by and 9 and a half hours of talk-time in a 2G network or 408 hours of stand-by and 6 hours of talk time on UMTS. In reality, we've nothing more to say than that the days when Nseries top gadgets (N95 blushes with embarrassment) needed a recharge twice a day are now gone.

The huge battery is the same as in Nokia E71

The other element of interest under the cover is the microSD card slot. It can easily handle 16GB microSD cards which are the largest currently available on the market. You will have to remove the cover every time you access your card but at least you won't have to restart the handset, as it is hot-swappable. By the way, that's exactly the XPERIA approach too but the N97 is more likely to get away with it. You just don't mess around with 32 GB of onboard storage.

The microSD card slot is also here

Keyboard could have used another row or two

Sliding the phone open reveals the three-row QWERTY keyboard. Now, the chosen layout of course opens plenty of space for ample keys, and the fact is they are very comfortable to type indeed.

The press feedback is excellent and a great help for faster typing. Basically, they got the best out of this setup, no argument there. However, we would have really liked another row instead, even if it meant smaller keys. It feels like the handset was made with big-handed users in mind, rather than the comfort of the rest.

The QWERTY keyboard is as good as it gets, considering the layout

With a three-row keyboard you've got two chars per almost every key, which requires much more intensive use of the symbol key. So yes - you will need time getting used to the specific layout but otherwise you might type at pretty decent speed.

Another thing that made quite a few eyebrows around the office raise is the peculiar D-pad location. It is placed on the left of the keyboard like it is meant for left-handed use. All due respect (and political correctness), right-handed people still were the majority the last time we checked. It would have made a lot more sense to have the D-pad on the other end.

The placement of the Space key on the right is also a part of the peculiar keyboard layout that needs getting used to.

The D-pad is very comfortable, but its location doesn't feel right

The build quality of the Nokia N97 causes no concern. We already mentioned the particularly pleasant finish of the rear, and the metallic frame around the display is a nice touch too. The side controls are user-friendly and look resistant to wear and tear, so the N97 adopters can hope to have their gear in good shape for quite a while.

The Nokia N97 held in hand

The sliding mechanism however is unevenly tense. The spring is quite rigid at first followed by an all too sudden release that makes a loud banging noise. It's not that disturbing, especially given the level of sturdiness it implies, but there is still room for improvement.

The specs quote visible on the back of the Nokia N97 once it's slid out make the device look like a marketing sample than a real retail product and we're quite surprised that Nokia decided to leave that sign there.

The sliding mechanism

Widget-happy UI

We stand by every word we said about the S60 5th and its approach to touchscreen. Long story short, the direct translation of D-pad and soft-key action into touch has its benefits but the result is hardly the most fluent and intuitive touchscreen interface there is.

Scrolling and accessing items across the interface is nothing like any touch platform we've tried. On the other hand, soft-keys, which in touchscreen terms are another Symbian quirk - if you will - work just fine and enhance usability compared to other touch phones.

So, the user experience with S60 5th is a mixed bag and what you think of it will quite depend on your background. The best thing is though, that a Symbian touchscreen will hardly leave you indifferent.

If you know your way around S60, you'll be quite at home with the N97 interface and you'll swear by it. But if you look at it more objectively maybe, just maybe, you will realize some things come out a tad better on other touchscreen handsets than they do on S60 5th.

Back to the point, the only significant change since the 5800 XpressMusic is widgets. They are the fad these days and their usability is unquestioned. They can't be the dramatic improvement you've been waiting for though.

It is also worth mentioning that, compared to the 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia N97 has a tad snappier UI (thanks to the faster ARM 11 434 MHz processor perhaps). There weren't any major lags or holdups for the time of our review.

The S60 UI has made another go at touchscreen

While the widgets are something new for the S60 5th edition, the menu structure is a déjà vu - the same as in Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. Icons are organized in a 3 x 4 grid or a list and you can freely reorder. Screen orientation can be set to change automatically. Sliding out the QWERTY keyboard makes the screen rotate as well.

Looks familiar, doesn't it?

Opening an item in any of the listed submenus calls for two presses - one to select, and another one to confirm the action. Now that's something that you don't normally see often in touch phones. You get used to it with time, but the main issue here is that the interface logic is different when you deal with icons instead of lists.

When the opened menu uses icons to represent items as opposed to lists, then a single click usually does the job. There's a possible reason for that - the scrolling logic used. Again we see two different implementations throughout the interface - scrolling of lists and scrolling of icons is different. And it has a negative impact on the touch usability again.

The explanation is simple: on S60 5th the touchscreen is doing the job of a D-pad with confirm action. You scroll a selector down a list rather than dragging the actual list as in other makers' solutions, which we find much more fluent and intuitive. One benefit of course is that the touch-optimized S60 stays absolutely faithful to the original, so users feel so much at home. But the drawback is the steep learning curve for anyone that has experience with other touchscreen phones.

Thumb scrolling is an option everywhere but in listed menus it still gets bumpy. Instead of a smooth roll in response to every sweep (think Apple iPhone, LG Renoir, Samsung Pixon or Touch Diamond), there's a notable break as each line slowly revolves up or down. And when you stop dragging, the last item you touched remains highlighted. That's the reason why you need a second click to open an item in listed sub-menus. The benefit of that is accidental taps are ruled out. The drawbacks - well, we've already pointed those out.

In the end dragging the side scrollbar turned out to be our preferred way of scrolling in all menus and we just had to put up with the double-click system in the listed ones.

Meet the homescreen

The homescreen layout of the N97 (not counting the widgets) is similar to the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic version - all the status indicators are at the top, plus the clock and the calendar.

A single press on the clock starts the clock application (with an option for setting up an alarm) while tapping on the date opens a drop-down menu where you can either enter the calendar application or change the currently active profile.

Calendar, profiles and clock just a touch away

Now, let's take a closer look at the widgets. If they are hidden, just sweep a finger across the screen and they'll show up. Another sweep will make them disappear.

You can have up to 5 widgets at a time displayed on the homescreen and you can arrange them according to which you use most. For now, there is a slim choice of widgets for N97 but the number will grow. We tried to download new ones at the Ovi Store but there wasn't even a Widget directory.

Along with widgets that get you access to websites and services like Amazon, Facebook or AccuWeather you can have your favorite contacts (up to four in a widget, up to two Favorite contacts widgets on screen), e-mail inbox, calendar, music player or the FM transmitter app right on the homescreen. It is possible to go for one or even two widgets each consisting of 4 of your favorite applications so you won't have to enter the menu to access them.

Arranging widgets is easy and fun. You can remove some of them, add or download new ones (if available), change their order (just drag and drop). If all 5 slots have been taken, you have to remove one or more widgets to make room.

Arranging the widgets is easy and fun

Nokia N97 comes with 8 preloaded themes and most of them are really appealing. You can also download third party themes from the internet. As before, you can switch the themes effects on and off. Unfortunately, even if the transitions look kinda cool, they cause occasional lags when browsing the menu.

Some of the preloaded themes are a real eye-candy

Nokia N97 features a task manager, which is launched by a press-and-hold on the menu key. The task manager itself is identical to the one found on Symbian S60 3.2 devices. Also much like in the previous version of the UI, it appears on top of every pop-up menu.

The task-manager

Phonebooks is the same as usual

Nokia N97 uses a phonebook that's identical to what previous versions of the UI have offered. Except for the whole touch thingy, that is. The phonebook itself has virtually unlimited capacity and functionality is among the best we've seen.

Contacts can be freely ordered by first or last name and can naturally be searched by gradual typing of any of the names. You can also set whether the contacts from the SIM card, the phone memory and the service numbers will get displayed.

The phonebook hasn't seen much change

Editing a contact offers a great variety of preset fields and you can replicate each of them as many times as you like. You can also create new fields if you happen to be able to think of one. Personal ringtones and videos are also available for assigning. If you prefer, you may group your contacts and give each group a specific ringtone.

Viewing a contact, editing a contact offers a huge variety of fields

The Call log keeps track of your recent communications. The application itself comes in two flavors - accessed by pressing the Call key on the stand-by screen or from the main menu. The first one brings 20 call records in each of its tabs for outgoing, received and missed calls.

If you access the Log application from the main menu, you'll see a detailed list of all your network communications for the past 30 days. These include messages, calls and data transfers (even WLAN connections are included).

Telephony: smart-dial badly missed

We didn't experience any problems with the in-call performance of Nokia N97. Reception levels are good on both ends of calls, the earpiece is loud enough and there were no interferences whatsoever.

Voice dialing is an option with the N97 as with mostly any other phone. The voice dialing mode is activated once you press and hold the Call key. It is fully speaker-independent and doesn't require prerecording the names of your contacts. Bear in mind though, that if you have multiple numbers assigned to a contact, the first or the default one gets dialed.

The dialling pad

Thanks to the built-in accelerometer you can silence an incoming call on the phone by simply flipping it over. Those feature was also available in 5800 XpressMusic and through third party application on the previous versions on the UI.

Making a call is very good. Thanks to the proximity sensor the screen turns off automatically while close to your head. There are four big buttons available – mute, hold, loudspeaker and end call. Form the options menu you can find more settings like lock screen and keys, switch to video call, new call and etc.

Making a call, call options

A really strange behavior we observed is that you cannot answer a phone call with the green receiver key. Instead you are forced to accept the call with an onscreen slider. That’s some really weird solution. Rejecting a call much the same thing – the red key doesn’t simply reject it. Instead you have to use a second slider that appears on screen to unlock the key first.

We also ran our traditional loudspeaker test on Nokia N97. The handset didn't perform too impressively but still scored a Good mark meaning we have seen (and heard) better. You might want to keep a closer look on it when you are in noisier environments.

Speakerphone test	Voice, dB	Pink noise/ Music, dB	Ringing phone, dB	Overall score
Apple iPhone 3G	66.1	62.1	71.7	Below Average
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic	75.7	66.5	68.5	Good
LG KM900 Arena	70.9	68.2	78.3	Good
Nokia N97	72.8	67.3	75.8	Good
HTC Touch Pro2	74.6	70.0	78.1	Very Good
LG KF900 Prada	77.1	75.7	82.0	Excellent

Messaging is simple

The messaging menu is yet another part of the Symbian S60 UI that hasn't been modified at all compared to what we saw on Nokia 5800.

Nokia N97 supports all common message types - SMS, MMS and email. They all share a common intuitive editor which by this point should be quite familiar to everyone. When composing an SMS, a counter is displayed of characters left to the limit of 160. An indicator in brackets is showing the number of separate parts the message will be divided into for sending.

Once you insert some multimedia content, or an email address is inserted as recipient, the counter is replaced by a data counter showing the size of your email.

The N97 uses a common intuitive editor for all your messages

Nokia N97 also features the dedicated editor for instant recording of audio messages. Much like with Symbian S60 v3.2 you can either record the message on the spot or use a sound clip from the phone memory. The interface of all the messengers is quite similar too.

Delivery reports can be turned on - they pop up once the message reaches the addressee, and are then saved in a separate folder in the messaging sub-menu. When you are exiting the message editor without having sent the message, you get prompted to save it in Drafts or discard it.

Here might just be the right time to mention the input options on Nokia N97. The handset offers a standard alphanumeric on-screen keypad in both portrait and landscape mode.

The alphanumeric keypad is available in both portrait and landscape modes

Of course the hardware QWERTY is here to solve all your problems. It’s just three rows and you need to use the function key for accessing the numbers and symbols, but that’s no biggie.

Finally, the Nokia N97 offers handwriting recognition, which did a rather decent job, recognizing almost all the letters we scribbled in the box. You can improve its performance by taking the handwriting training - where you actually show the handset how you write each different letter.

The handwriting recognition worked pretty well for us

The email client is really nice, able to meet almost any emailing needs. The easy setup we found in the latest Nokia handsets is also available with the N97. It has even been touched here and there, so it needs even less input.

Setting up email is easy

If you are using any public email service (it has to be among the over 1000 supported providers), all you have to do is enter your username and password to start enjoying email on the go. The phone downloads all the needed settings to get you going in no time.

Besides, it now prompts choosing whether you prefer POP or IMAP access to mail providers that support both. With the previous version selection was automatic. Nicely done!

Advanced email options

The email client gives no reasons for grudges

Multiple email accounts and various security protocols are supported, so you can bet almost any mail service will run trouble-free on your Nokia N97.

The client can download headers only or entire messages, and can be set to automatically check mail at a given interval. A nice feature allows you to schedule sending email next time an internet connection is available. This can save you some data traffic charges since you can use the next available WLAN connection instead.

There is also support for attachments, signatures and generally, you can hardly think of something important that the Nokia N97 lacks. Furthermore with a screen resolution like this reading your emails is a real pleasure.

File manager does a fine job

The file manager is yet another aspect where the pedigree counts big time. With the soft keys at the bottom you can almost forget that you are looking at a new device.

The Symbian file management system has been top notch for quite a while now, and you can hardly think of anything to change. The application can basically do anything you can think of with your files - moving, copying renaming, sorting or sending - you name it. You can also password-protect your memory card if you see fit.

The file manager has extensive functionality

The searching for a specific file or directory is also available with the phone. All you need to remember is a part of the desired name and where it was located (phone memory or memory card) the Nokia N97 will find it in no time.

Image gallery - not bad, but not great either

The gallery of Nokia N97 is yet another part of its interface that hasn't been dramatically changed compared to non-touch Symbian predecessors. It has neither the swanky 3D view mode, nor the customizable slideshow we are used to seeing in the Nseries. The only difference here is the added touch-friendliness. In fact, the gallery is one of the very few places around the interface where sweep gestures are allowed.

This means that you can go through your pictures (and videos as well) by sweeping your finger across the screen. Unfortunately, there isn't kinetic scrolling, which is to be seen in the web browser for instance, and in many of the N97 rivals.

The image gallery

Opting between portrait and landscape mode is automatic, thanks to the built-in accelerometer. Unless you have that feature disabled, all you need to do to switch modes is to flip the phone sideways (or just to slide out the QWERTY keyboard).

Viewing a photo

Image zoom is controlled via either the volume rocker or an on-screen touch slider. In all other cases, images are displayed full screen. After you've cheked the details, to go to the next photo you always have to zoom all the way back, which might get annoying if you zoom in to often.

Overall, picture browsing is relatively fast, but the zooming is rather slow. It takes about a second on each zoom step even when dealing with 3 megapixel photos, let alone higher-res ones. The panning is worse than HTC's latest models and many of the other similar devices - it's almost jerky.

Good music player

The music player (identical to the 5800 XpressMusic one) is very similar to the S60 3rd edition versions. A few cosmetic changes here and there and touch-optimization is all that sets it apart.

Not that the music player isn't capable enough or something - it surely has more than enough functionality. However some more eye-candy would have been quite welcome. After all, touch interfaces are usually mostly about being fun to use and nice to look at.

Your music library is automatically sorted by artist, album, genre and composer and searching tracks by gradual typing is available. You can also create your own playlists in no time.

The process of adding tracks to the library is as simple as choosing the refresh option. You won't need to do that if you upload the music via the proprietary PC Suite application.

The Nokia N97 music player

With the huge number of supported formats you will hardly ever come across an audio file that the phone won't handle. Album art is also supported and if you don't like the default sound of the device you can enhance it by applying one of the five equalizer presets and if they seem insufficient you can create new ones in a matter of seconds.

Quite naturally, the player can also be minimized to play in background. In this case a tab appears on the stand-by screen indicating the currently running track.

Audio quality goes the right way

The audio quality of Nokia N97 is just great, save for the disturbingly high intermodulation distortion levels. The handset fared excellently in all other parts of our test achieving some pretty impressive scores.

The frequency response has been greatly improved over what the N96 could deliver. It now closes on perfection, deviating by no more than 0.27dB throughout the audible range.

The noise level, dynamic range and stereo crosstalk readings are also very good, comparable to the best in class. Here go the results so you can compare it to some of the other handsets we have tested.

Test	Frequency response	Noise level	Dynamic range	THD	IMD + Noise	Stereo crosstalk
Nokia N97	+0.04, -0.27	-90.7	90.7	0.0048	0.896	-89.5
Nokia N96	+0.52, -2.14	-90.6	90.7	0.016	0.364	-73.5
Nokia N95 8GB	+1.14, -1.68	-77.1	76.9	0.0066	0.148	-68.5
Nokia N95	+1.17, -2.68	-74.9	74.9	0.019	0.186	-75.3
Nokia N81	+0.39, -1.13	-86.6	85.8	0.041	0.040	-69.9
HTC Touch Pro2	+0.17, -1.61	-84.6	87.1	0.023	0.182	-84.9
Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1	+0.11, -0.47	-93.2	94.8	0.448	0.897	-96.3
Apple iPhone 3G	+0.52, -1.05	-89.9	90.1	0.0033	0.016	-93.1
Apple iPod Touch 2G	+0.04, -0.05	-91.4	91.5	0.0027	0.012	-90.0

Nokia N97 vs Apple iPod Touch 2G frequency response graph

You can find more information about our audio quality test here.

Video player could be better

Watching a video on the Nokia N97 is generally a pleasure due to the large screen. The built-in video player has decent functionality but only supports a very limited number of codecs, no DivX and XviD out of the box. As to third party solutions, mixed success is reported in terms of getting compatible players to run on the 5800 XpressMusic or the N97.

The built-in video player

The Nokia PC suite has a built-in application that automatically converts all kinds of video files to the format and resolution your phone supports. The automatic converter though seems to compress the videos too much even at the highest quality setting and they look over pixilated but so far it's the easiest way of getting video to your Nokia touch handset.

The video player itself only works in fullscreen landscape mode but, since anything else would have made the widescreen display useless, this is understandable. When in fullscreen, a press on the screen shows the controls which are normally hidden.

The amply sized high-res screen is also more than welcome for truly enjoying your clips. With QWERTY keyboard slid out, the Nokia N97 looks just like made for video watching.

Nokia have called their video app (which is actually a Real player in disguise) Video & TV but as it turns out, the TV is actually videos that you can stream from Nokia or Reuters. One can only wonder how YouTube was left out of this streaming video equation.

FM radio comes with RDS

The FM radio on Nokia N97 has a neat and simple interface and can automatically scan and save the available stations in your area. It also has RDS support and automatic scanning for an alternative frequency. This means that if you travel the N97 will take care of auto-switching to the frequencies of your selected radio station.

The FM radio interface is quite cool

The RDS is the best part of Nokia N97 FM radio. The radio station name gets displayed with cool effects across the whole screen, while the rest of the RDS readings are printed in nicely legible text on a line at the bottom. Perhaps we would have preferred this font a bit larger, but it doesn't really matter that much.

FM transmitter, weak but still usable

The inbuilt FM transmitter is quite a useful feature, which allows you to sream the music on your phone to any standard FM radio receiver nearby at a frequency of your choice.

If you live in a city with lots of radio stations, it would be hard to find a free frequency slot within the standard FM scale of 88.10 to 107.90 MHz. Even if you manage to find one, you may experience poor sound quality and/or interferences. That is what happened to us while testing the N97.

Still, we managed to make the music sound really loud and crisp by placing the phone closer to the antenna or the back of the radio head unit itself. The interface of the FM transmitter app is simple enough to guarantee smooth and easy operation.

The FM transmitter works well enough * you only need to find a free channel

The camera is a mixed bag

Nokia N97 has a 5 MP camera with a maximum image resolution of 2592x1944 pixels. Carl Zeiss optics and the dual-LED flash promise nice photos with a lot of detail. Let's see is it true.

The camera UI is similar to the one found in 5800 XpressMusic - the few changes made are hardly for the better. All the settings are squeezed in a common menu, except for the flash, which has its own dedicated shortcut. We understand that a tabular layout isn't the easiest of thing this kind of devices but some of the more important features could have had their own shortcuts too.

The camera UI

At least the range of settings that the Nokia N97 offers is extensive enough: from manual white balance and ISO to exposure compensation, sharpness and contrast. Various effects are also at hand, labeled as Color Tones.

Unlike the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, which needed a firmware update for the purpose ,in N97 camera geo-tagging is present out of the box.

Nokia N97 lacks all the modern features that the other competing manufacturers are using such as face detection, smile detection and even blink prevention - not to mention in-camera face retouching or the likes. So yes, Nokia seems quite conservative in equipping their cameras lately but we really hope that the N86 8MP is going to change that.

The Nokia N97 viewfinder doesn't occupy the whole screen - a bar on the right is reserved for the touch controls. You have a settings button that launches a semi-transparent overlay of all available shooting options, a dedicated Flash button and an on-screen shutter key. Again, that last one is absolutely redundant - it doesn't have a half press/full press action to properly handle auto focus. It would've been way better to have a Quick Settings button instead.

The picture quality is pretty decent in our books. First of all the picture detail is enough to qualify the photo as a very nice one. The next thing is the noise reduction algorithm is mature enough and finds a good balance between noise levels and detail. There is no purple fringing and the white balance and auto ISO settings worked just fine.

If there is one thing to complain about in the Nokia N97 photos, it would be the color balance. Most of the photos compared to the LG Arena's have generally warmer colors and the yellow tint is at times too much to swallow. Bear in mind though that quite a lot point and shoot cameras are tuned to reproduce colors warmer than they really are since this makes the photos look more vibrant and appealing to the end-users,

The dynamic range is also not quite impressive with highlight clipping a bit more frequent than usual.

We've prepared an impromptu shootout between the Nokia N97 and the LG Arena. It's not that the LG Arena is the best there is, but it's a nice performer and… well, we had that readily available.

Nokia N97 • LG Arena • Nokia N97 • LG Arena

Nokia N97 • LG Arena • Nokia N97 • LG Arena

Nokia N97 • LG Arena • Nokia N97 • LG Arena

Nokia N97 • LG Arena • Nokia N97 • LG Arena

Nokia N97 • LG Arena

And there go some more photo samples from the N97 camera.

Nokia N97 camera samples

Starting from this review we will be publishing test shots of the ISO12233 resolution chart. This is a standard chart used for evaluating the synthetic resolution of digital cameras. It is an excellent tool for measuring pure horizontal and vertical resolution and also offers a good reference point for comparison of resolution between cameras. The chart will be available for every cameraphone which comes through our office from now on to facilitate monitoring the progress that the manufacturers are making in terms of resolution.

We have also added a few touches of our own to the chart by sticking a color chart and a grey scale over it. The first one will allow you to see the amount of noise in the different colors as it tends to vary quite a lot from phone to phone depending on the sensor and the noise reduction technique applied.

The gray scale is there to provoke the usually more powerful noise reduction, which kicks in when shadows are involved. Once that happens, you will notice complete loss of detail towards the darker end of the scale. Meanwhile the thin lines at the top of both the color chart and the gray scale show more real-life effect of the noise reduction. You will notice that the numbers are barely readable with some phones and more easily visible with others.

For starters we have compared the Nokia N97 to the good old Nokia N95 8GB. The once famous for its camera dual-slider is now easily outclassed by the N97, which has better performance in every aspect. Both the horizontal and the vertical resolution are superior in the touchscreen handset with the noise levels remaining lower.

Nokia N97 resolution chart photo • 100% crops

Nokia N95 8GB resolution chart photo • 100% crops

Camcorder: VGA is no longer fashionable

The camcorder interface doesn't differ from the still camera much.

The N97 video capture quality is OK. Colors and white balance turn out just fine, but the compression seems too aggressive in most of the clips and produces many noticeable video artifacts. Plus the other manufacturers are already offering better video quality at higher resolution - take Samsung, for instance, and their Samsung S8300 UltraTOUCH or even Omnia HD. Not to mention the 120fps and slow-motion videos that are already standard issue stuff on the higher segment LG and Samsung phones.

The camcorder UI

Here are two samples from the Nokia N97 taken at VGA@30gps.

Sample 1
Sample 2

So in essence, Nokia N97 offers a three-year old camera technology remixed as a brand fresh product for quite a steep price tag. Image quality is still top-of-the-line but for a 5 megapixel cameraphone. Five megapixels don't count as high-end anymore, not to mention the lack of all the current popular features such as face detection, tracking or manual focus, touch focus, smile shutter, blink detection and the likes. Video recording is another area where Nokia have made no progress for the past several years. So if you've set your eyes on N97, we really hope that the camera is not the most important feature for you as Omnia HD goes for pretty much the same asking price.

A complete connectivity

Smartphones are usually well-heeled in terms of connectivity. Nokia N97 makes no exception: all contemporary means of data transfer are supported.

Both USB and Bluetooth are version 2.0 and the latter naturally also sports A2DP. Wi-Fi with UPnP support is also at hand. There is no shortcut key for the Wi-Fi manager, but it can be easily found in the Connectivity menu and connecting to a WLAN network is two taps away.

All kinds of network connectivity are at the user disposal - GPRS, EDGE and 3G with HSDPA. By the way if you want to know which version of the N97 you should get - the one with dual-band 900/2100 MHz UMTS or the 850/1900 MHz variety you might want to consult our Worldwide Network Bands distribution database.

Finally, the Nokia N97 has a memory card slot, which can usually give you the fastest data transfer rates and can take up to 16GB cards.

Web browser speeds Flash, but slows touch

The web browser of Nokia N97 is about the same as on the 5800 XpressMusic. And this is just not satisfying. A great browser indeed, but hardly touch-optimized.

Panning and kinetic scrolling are the only things that are done by sweep gestures here, and zoom/out zoom are controlled by tapping on the screen twice. There are no options for fit to width or fit to height, which makes convenient positioning of the text on screen a nightmare .

The web browser has much room for improvement

There is a Page Overview option, which is a sort of a minimap of the webpage that eases navigation.

At least the page rendering algorithm is quite good, making all the pages look as if browsed from a desktop PC. The high resolution is also a welcome bonus here, as it allows more content to fit on the screen.

Finally, the web browser has full support for both Flash and Java, which means that you can enjoy flash videos straight from your browser without having to use the mobile versions of sites like YouTube.

So, generally speaking, the second S60 touch-browser is nicely equipped but fails to satisfy some common ergonomics shortcomings that we frowned at quite a few months back when 5800 was introduced.

Organizer has all you need

The S60 organizer didn't obviously get too much effort beyond the actual touch optimization. Well, developers were right up to a point but, given the progress of most competitors, some new functionality would have been nice - like copy/paste of events in the calendar or a new calculator.

We have to admit though that the calculator is much more comfortable to operate with fingers than with a D-pad, almost as if it was designed for such use from the very beginning.

The calendar has four different view modes - monthly, weekly, daily and to-do, which allows you to check up all your To-Do entries regardless of their date. There are the same four types of events available for setting up as on S60 3rd edition - Meeting, Memo, Anniversary and To-do. Each event has unique fields of its own, and some of them allow an alarm to be activated at a preset time to act as a reminder.

Some of the calendar viewss and available settings

Mobile office is also very well geared, with preinstalled applications able to open Word, Excel and PowerPoint files seamlessly. The PDF viewer was preinstalled on our unit but it’s only 15-days trial version (duh!) and after that you need to buy it from the Nokia download center.

Only viewing of documents is supported out of the box

Unluckily, editing documents is not supported by the included Quickoffice version. If you would like editing enabled you will have to get the upgrade from the Nokia Download center for a fee.

The organizer package also includes a great unit converter, calculator and voice recorder, as well as the Notes application.

Some of the other organizer apps

The Active notes is advanced application for managing notes. It allows you to attach pictures, sound files or video clips to your memo and has nice and touch-friendly user interface. It’s not so daily used app, but still it will find its fans for sure.

The Office menu, Active notes, settings

The alarm application allows you to set up as many alarms as you want, each with its own name, trigger day and repeat pattern. If this seems too complicated, there is a quick alarm setup where all you do is set the time and you're good to go. This is quite convenient for, say, setting up your wake-up alarm.

In addition, the number of alarms is not limited. Thanks to the built-in accelerometer you can also snooze the alarm by simply flipping your phone, much like with the Nokia 8800 Arte and 5800 XpressMusic.

We are quite fond of the alarm application

Games: oh, they forgot them

There are no preinstalled games on the Nokia N97. Not even the so popular Snakes. That’s a real shame.

As an N-series smartphone Nokia N97 has full support for N-Gage so you can buy and download as many N-Gage games as you like. Once of course, N97 is added to the official list of supported devices on the N-Gage website.

GPS will show you the way

Nokia N97 comes with a built-in GPS receiver and judging on our experience it’s a fairly sensitive unit but nothing spectacular. The handset managed to acquire satellite lock from cold start in about good 5-7 minutes upon the first attempt (A-GPS turned off at the time). Nokia 5800 XpressMusic had it somewhat quicker, but still after you get the satellite lock, keeing it locked is not an issue for N97 even in dense urban environments.

The large high-resolution screen sounds like a serious premise for reasonable use as a dedicated navigation unit. Unfortunately, the N97 has only three-month trial voice guided navigation and you need to pay for more.

The phone comes with Nokia Maps 2.0 Touch preinstalled. As you might have guessed this is merely a touch-enabled version of the standard Nokia Maps 2.0 application. It offers extensive map coverage for free but you do need to pay for most of its extra features such as traffic information or city guides.

As we just mentioned you will also have to buy the voice-guided navigation license, should you pick the application for the purpose. At least the actual purchase itself is quite simple directly via the phone interface. If you prefer an alternative navigation software, you might want to carefully look around for a compatible version.

The touch-enabled Nokia Maps application itself is doing pretty well in terms of features too. It has four different view modes including satellite and hybrid maps. Those however do need an internet connection. The more regular 2D and 3D view modes are also at hand.

Nokia Maps 2.0 Touch application offers four different view modes

The route planning algorithm is also rather easy to customize to best suit your preferences. Toll roads and motorways can be avoided and so can tunnels and ferries. Route selection can be set to either fastest or shortest. The app is also usable for pedestrian navigation or you can switch the GPS receiver off and use the phone as a hand-held map.

Some of the available settings

However, we do have some grudges with the touch implementation. The lack of a dedicated shortcut on the screen means you need to enter the options menu to center the map back to your current position after you have panned in some direction - in a regular keypad handset, the 0 key will take care of that. On the positive side, panning and zooming in the maps is really fast and the high-res screen is capable of showing quite a lot of data.

The overall impression with GPS navigation on Nokia N97 is very positive but, having in mind that a 1-year voice-guided navigation costs a lot and we are not sure whether many people will go for that. But who knows - with an ample screen like that it might easily replace a standalone navigation system.

As it appears, the only officially compatible third party navigation software for the S60, 5th edition UI that we could find is the ViewRanger application. It is available since February 2009 and was first introduced for the Nokia 5800 device.

ViewRanger is an off-road satellite navigation application that fully benefits the touch screen devices and offers simplified navigation for friendly experience. Users can download the the topographic maps directly to the phone via available Wi-Fi or using GPRS connection. Of course downloading the maps on the PC and uploading on the phone remains the main way of installing the navigation software.

The ViewRanger GPS software

The feedback from users, that have already tested the software on 5800 XpressMusic are positive, so it is a safe bet that ViewRanger software will work for N97 as well.

According to user input Garmin Mobile XT 5.0 for S60 3rd edition also runs fine on the new batch of touchscren smartphones but as the support for those is not official your mileage may vary.

Third-party applications

Nokia N97 and Nokia 5800 XpressMusic are currently the only touch smartphones that Nokia has on the market running the new S60 5 edition UI. They do have another one - the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic in the oven but it's far from actual release.

The competition has even less choice with Samsung Omnia HD being the only available device and Sony Ericsson Satio due for release later this year. That makes the new smartphone platform quite limited and thus possibly not as attractive to developers.

Nokia however have gone through a great deal of effort to make the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic as popular as possible with careful pricing planning and the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic will spread the user interface to even wider user base.

So for now, not surprisingly, there are not many third-party applications for these N97. The Symbian S60 5th edition is just too new.

Back in the day when S60 3rd edition was first introduced the situation was pretty much the same. We had to wait a good six months before a reasonable amount of application became available.

Two of the four pages of the applications menu

Thanks to the Ovi Store, however, the users are currently offered to choose among as many as 525 applications, both paid and free of charge, which seems a nice beginning.

Our Nokia N97 comes preinstalled with a load of third party applications, but most of them are simply online shortcuts or at most offer simple menus again prompting for internet browser usage. Of course several of them are very handful tools for reading news, managing and browsing images, weather forecasts, etc.

Of course, since this is Symbian we are talking about, you can also pay a visit to some of the numerous sites for software available online. 8 months was enough time for almost every one of them to make its own 5th edition section. Here is one to get you started, while a simple Google search will show you the rest.

You can download the apps straight from your phone or from your desktop computer and than transfer them as you find fit.

Finally, with Nokia Download! you can access a variety of content directly from the phone. You can choose from applications, games, graphics, news, ringtones, screensavers, themes, videos, wallpaper and more. We guess the Download! app will become obsolete once the Ovi Store gains momentum.

Nokia Download! app

Preinstalled application

Nokia Drawing is a new and simple piece of software that lets you draw stuff with different colors and thickness of the pencil.

Nokia Drawing

JoikuSpot Light is a free limited edition of JoikuSpot that shares your phone's 3G internet connection over WiFi (WLAN) to laptops and other WiFi devices. For a full feature set, you have to purchase the full JoikuSpot Premium at the Ovi Store.

The trial version on Nokia N97 supports only HTTP browsing, whereas the Premium one has more secure browsing plus VPN support.

JoikuSpot

World Traveler is a handful open platform application developed by Psiloc that is aimed to make the traveler's life easier. The program offers four services - weather, world clock, currencies, and world map. More about this piece of software to be found here.

World Traveler

AccuWeather for Nokia N97 is a Widget, which provides users with weather information for global locations including current conditions, 4-day forecasts, radar or satellite images, 15-day calendar view for a quick check of upcoming weather, hourly forecasts in graph format for visual display of temperature and conditions. It is also displayed on the home screen tab.

AccuWeather

Amazon is a simple application with different categories. There is also a search engine, which opens results directly in the Amazon site. You are also allowed to choose in which country you'd like to look for an item, which is great for the local buyers.

Amazon application

AP Mobile, which was announced this month with the launch of Nokia N97, is an application that enables users to choose their news, offering personalized delivery of content set according to their preferences. Consumers can scroll through stories and AP photo galleries as well as watch AP videos. Interesting images, videos or news can be directly shared via Twitter or Delicious.

AP Mobile is great for the Associated Press readers

Bloomberg application brings you up to date financial information. It has four tabs - news, markets, my stocks, and search section. If you are into finances, you can find out more about it at their website.

Bloomberg application

The final noteworthy app is the Reuters Slideshow, which gets you galleries from the mobile version of Reuters.com. It's not a news application, it just displays images from the several available categories with short explanatory texts.

The Reuters Slideshow

Final words

It's an Nseries device we are talking about and we can't complain about looks. How's that for a nice start? Now seriously, the Nseries are back on track and we don't mean that as a mere comparison to the misfiring N96. All-in-one is the game and the N97 is ready to take charge of the Nokia multimedia squad. It has an arsenal full of (almost) all contemporary high-end weapons and Symbian smartness securing its rear.

Nseries used to stand for the ultimate in mobile technology but evolution has seen to it that if you want all the top features you're not to find them in a single device. And as things are these days - not in the Nseries. The best touch interface is elsewhere, higher-res WVGA screens are found elsewhere as well, there are better places to look for HD videos, and for 12 megapixel snapshots - you get our drift...

Samsung i8910 Omnia HD • Apple iPhone 3G • HTC Touch HD • Sony Ericsson Satio (Idou)

There was a time when being top of the Nseries pretty much equaled top of the whole affair. Well, no more - and it definitely isn't simply the N97's fault. We guess the Nokia Nseries need to come to terms with the evolving market, much like the Series 60 5th still need some time to come to terms with touchscreen. That's not necessarily bad news though. The news is never good or bad, it's what you make of it.

But there's no need to be too smart. Here's what we mean. Remember Nokia N95 and its 8GB offshoot? Well then, no need to tell you it used to be the sum of all fears. That's some weight to carry for its successors! No wonder the N96 crumbled. Well, the N97 is not crumbling; it just inherits a changed world.

All right, if that's how things are on the mobile market, we guess the Nokia N97 needs to have a lot of guts to get to grips with its inheritance and do its thing on top. And, here's another newsflash: the N97 does that alright. If a device can stand its ground against potent rivals like HTC Touch Pro2 and Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1, it can hardly be wrong. Not to mention the bold newcomer Samsung B7610 OmniaPRO.

HTC Touch Pro2 • Samsung B7610 OmniaPRO • Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1

So, the latest Nseries flagship is not a royalty but a focused and capable handset with a firm foot in the segment of smart QWERTY touchscreen all-in-ones. The ultimate device as we knew it is dead, Nseries live on.