Yet Another Nokia N97 Review

Recently I got chance to try out Nokia N97 for 2 weeks. Basically it is a trial programme and the purpose is to test out the Nokia Ovi store experience. My last Nokia phone was N6100. So that has been years ago before switching to HTC Smartphone and Sony Ericsson.

Hardware

Hardware wise, I guess nothing much to complain about N97. It comes with a 5 megapixels camera, 640×360px LCD screen. The only complain on the exterior is maybe the weight and dimension. However for me, the size is still within my acceptable range.

Nowadays, it is not difficult for the hardware engineers to put together the best hardware, but the real winner is the one with the best software, from the foundation OS to the front end user’s day-to-day using interface and apps. That’s one of the reasons why a lot Smartphones in the market fail to become the iPhone killer. The phone manufactures just fail to further optimize their products, let users get their best experience. They only keep pushing new exterior design and hardware, thinking to use this to capture new users’ attention.

Pros

One thing I like about N97 is the keypad. Compare to normal touch screen keyboard or T9 keypad, physical QWERTY keyboard is still the best input method for your messages. Besides that, the quality of the 5MP camera is pretty good.

Cons

Few issues I have overcome are that the touch interface of the phone is not so responsive. The reason mainly because N97 is using a resistive touch screen instead of capacitive. Capacitive touch screen would have a more accurate sensor for the touch. But in this case, sometimes I would have to touch the screen twice to get it catch my click. It is a little weird, I found out Nokia all the while didn’t adopt capacitive touch screen in their product line.

Another issue most Smartphone facing is the multiple simultaneous background running applications. My N97 had become none responsive at all after I ran too many apps running on the Home. It has occurred twice since last night. Maybe I’m should be blamed for putting too many apps.

Nokia Ovi Store

Jump to the Nokia Ovi store, I wish the store could have a better apps filter, at least show me which the apps are free! Majority of the users love to download free apps. So at least give me a better method to find free apps, rather than let me scroll page by page to find it. Especially the scrolling user experience on Symbian is not that appealing.

What I suggest to Nokia is provide users a desktop application for the Ovi Store, so users can better browse through the available apps on a larger screen. Just like iTunes app, I seldom find the app I need on my iPod Touch, rather than having the iTunes desktop app to find and download the apps I need.

UPDATED: I’ve been corrected that registered users are able to directly visit Ovi store http://store.ovi.com through normal desktop browser and there is filter to separate out FREE and PAID apps.

Read Also:

1. Nokia N91 Review
2. Bought New White iPhone 3GS with Singtel
3. Nokia N80 Review
4. Nokia 7280
5. Nokia Financial Service – Nokia Money

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