32GB|5MP Carl Zeiss|nHD3.5″- The Grand Nokia N97!

It was finally on Jan 15th 2010, when i got the trial Nokia N97 and HF-510 speakerphone from Nokia, through DHL courier. Thanks to the shipment Tracking system provided by DHL , it was fun to track the device. I thank WOMWorld NOKIA for giving me this opportunity. Also as a pleasant surprise , Katie from Womworld had sent 1GB usb stick for self, filled with the award winning apps from ovidailyapps , Thanks again team!
First lets start off with the N97.



Boxing of N97 was awesome – sleek , sexy & rich with N97 embossed on top cover wow! Unboxing I found the mighty white N97 with a cute litte stylus next to the device.
Contents
- Charger
- Stylus
- BP-4L Battery
- Instruction manual
- DVD with OVI suite
- USB-cable
- Charger Converter
Initial impressions
The sexiest Nseries yet. The white N97 give’s your hand a gr8 look. It looks awesome, superb, pretty, good looking, these are the comments which i got from my friends and family. The chrome finish around the screen of device is a great selection of design. The QWERTY keyboard, when open with the slider, the whole experience of holding the N97 makes it feel like your carrying a mini computer. There is nothing to complaint about the design. The device felt good, neat, lovely etc.. I like the way it feels “BIG”, that’s how high end devices are supposed to feel , Bold and Beautiful. Pretty cool homescreen, widget’s works great, the good old Symbian^1 UI with not much of an eye candy transition or effects.
*click to enlarge.
- On to the right side of the handset the volume rocker and the dedicated two-step shutter key, ” It feels Nseries”.
- The left side mated with the stereo speakers at each end and a wobbly screen lock knob in the middle. Also the micro USB slot having a cute little charge indicator light as its neighbor.
- The 3.5mm standard audio jack is on top center of the Nokia N97, along with the power key to its left. I like the placement of audio jack , it feels like your carrying an awesome music player with you.
- The backside of the handset features the 5 megapixel camera lens with cover and the dual LED flash. And a nice looking back cover with a sleek raise at bottom end of the cover for grip.
- And a cute little stylus , which does its job right. But its a bit too heavy to tag it along with the device , i prefer my fingers.
- On front below the 3.5″ screen you can find menu button , touch sensitive call and end button with Nokia’s signature color – Green to call and red to end.
- On front above the screen N97 has an ambient light and a proximity sensor, with a front facing VGA cam.


- Symbian S60 5th edition OS provides a great and stable UI , simple and easy to use. Apart from that, i’ve to say that Symbian OS needs a refreshment , the UI is not 2010 standard, i definitely need a UI with smoothness all over, also there’s a need for multiple homescreen which is missing in this Flagship device.
- Widgets are always a welcome change , ” I mean only this widgetized homescreen differs from 5800″?. Its a flagship device we expect something more awesome.
- Kinetic scrolling with the v2.0 software works smooth and it was hard to use the device without this feature out of box.
- Gallery works just too great , snappier, soft, nice making complete use of kinetic scrolling.
- Music app has both radio and music player option’s under single base. Kinetic scrolling works great here too.
- Kinetic scrolling works everywhere. Menu, setting, reading lists, songs etc etc.
Preinstalled Widgets

Inside N97-Deep
- Phone book works simple and useful making full use of Kinetic scrolling. No smart dialer.
- Widgets are movable , and some widgets like email , facebook , music , calender , works very nice and are very useful. I can access all these without need to touch the phone , all widgets are active and runs fine.
- Photo browser, maps and music app’s does the job which it has to without any fussiness . Web browsing is a great experience with help of qwerty keyboard , KS works fine here too.
- Music player has feature to stream music to any receiver via FM transmitter lovely , also music player has 6 preset equalizer , option to set loudness and stereo widening which is cool. Also podcast and radio in music app does a nice job.
- Maps does a decent job, waiting for the Ovi maps v3 with free lifetime navigation wow!.
- Ovi store App, this is the first phone from Nokia to have ovi store app built in , from where free and paid apps, games , themes , wallpapers can be downloaded which requires account at ovi. Not a gr8 app , it can be better.
- Video player , gives a list to select from last watched video , and video collection , and feed’s. Yes realplayer is the daddy here to play all videos. And sadly no DivX support , which is a big fail according to me.
- Application menu has many built in app’s like office suite , qik , facebook, boing , joikuSpot , Msg.Reader , recorder , camera. And most important of all its got a cool app called SW update which bring’s u all the latest update’s released for phone. All the latest Nseries phones has this feature. Nokia guys had given a phone memory optimizer and latest N-gage app , Nokia maps so on updates using this SW update app.
- First device to port N-gage app onto it. Not really happy with that as it doesnt provide a full screen gaming experience also no real 3D gaming experience as no dedicated graphic processor.
- Cant run loads of apps and switch between them as less available internal phone memory and ram and not the greatest processor , a big fail again.
- Speakerphone quality is good, no problems it does all the tradition phony job’s pretty well.
Camera
- Camera does a normal job, 5mp dual LED flash , with no extra features just the simple features those found in 5800 , nothing to really feel thrilled about , and upon that the cam cover which is intended to protect the lens, spoils them, in turn spoiling the image quality , though lens replacement was initiated by Nokia through NSC , this was not expected from “Nokia” and not in their Flagship atleast.
- Also the camera interface allows you to use both cam’s the front facing as well as the main camera also video record using both. That’s great.
- Options found under camera are 6-Scene modes including Macro(Close-up) , Video mode , Show grid or hide, Self-timer, Color tone, White balance, Exposure, Light sensitivity, Contrast, Sharpness, Sequence,goto Photo gallery and geo tagging option.
- Video recording is pretty neat and useful , option to record video in night mode ,low light condition’s are pretty cool , also stores the video in .mp4 format neat.
- Camera pretty good, but the lens cover spoils the lens, if any of u experience this problem take ur phone to nearest Nokia Care and get the problem rectified.














Nimbuzz / Fring: Two messaging applications that conveniently aggregate all your favorite social network sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Google Talk and Skype.
SMS Preview: Makes incoming texts flash up on your screen as they come in. No need to navigate into your inbox anymore!
Handiwi: Helps you find and connect to WiFi access points, both public and private.
Converter Touch: Kilograms, ounces, miles, knots, stones and many more. This handy unit translator will convert just about anything!
- I am a social networking freak , i hang out @facebook and @twitter , so i found the Nimbuzz and tweets60 damn useful , also the Fring for ip calls wow, then the sms preview is a handy one , which make u more lazy , by showing u a neat preview on top left of ur mobile. Handiwi is again a cool app, then the last but not least “Offscreen technologies” converter touch- i am a big fan of their apps the UI of their app is awe-inspiring. All the apps works like charm , they are mostly made for S60 V5 phones but Nokia phone’s are the priority ! Thats one thing i love about Nokia , the availability and compatibility of apps wow.
- N-gage works pretty nice but not that great. No full screen game play.
- The D-pad works like charm in most of the cases , i love the way its placed . Cant live without the D-pad. Cool stuff.
- Also i miss the 3D graphic accelerator , which make’s me miss all the lovely HD games available out there.
- Quick office to open Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. The PDF viewer preinstalled only 15-days trial version huh!? Yes
- Don’t miss the apps and game’s from the Ovidailyapps site and the Offscreen technologies site , they are the best and brilliant stuff.
Appreciations
- Design , the form factor , feel of the device.
- Wide Availability apps and games and services.
- Battery life
- v2.0 firmware
- D-pad
- FM transmitter
- N-gage
- Great Music quality
Complaints
- Inadequate internal memory
- Insufficient free RAM
- Insufficient processing power
- No 3D Acceleration
- No Divx support outta box
- No Tv-out cable
- Some pre-installed apps that cant be deleted
- Some camera features
- Expected a ground breaking Hardware but no luck.
- Heavy priced
- Old styled headphones
Now guys enjoy some random pics about the Nokia N97. Thanks for ur patience and support. Thanks Womworld , friends and family. You rock!The N97 White Beauty
N97 3.5″ screen , proximity and light sensors , with VGA cam(front)

The angled menu button, Call and End dtouch sensitive keys, slide key(left center)

The keyboard Layout

The Slider opened lovely Mechanism

Slide open , another view

The N97 and cute lil stylus

The volume rockr, cam button below

Nothing much , a stylus hanger

The Micro USB port , 3.5mm AV jack , power on/off button

Also The N97 has stereo speaker on both ends to its left.












Thanks for that owly..