Nokia N97 Review – So Close, Yet So Far

Every now and then I come across a new gadget or piece of hardware that should impress me, but somehow, after spending time with it, there is something missing. You cannot quite put your finger on it – its just a lot of small things that all contribute.

Recently Nokia delivered the Nokia N97 to me – and it really is a beauty. Its hardware is sleek, and solid. Similiar to a lot of phones these days, it has chrome surrounds, and a seemingly buttonless front dominated by the screen. Small inconspicuous buttons for the phone and menu are on the front as well as a front facing camera for video calls. It flips open to reveal a full qwerty keyboard – and the action of the slider is just about the most impressive feeling mechanical slide in any phone I have felt. When opened, the rear of the hinge looks like a bragging list of features: 32GB, 5MP camera, 3.5” screen, A-GPS, Bluetooth 2.0, WLAN, HSDPA, etc.

So far, good start.

On the slightly rubberized rear is a 5 MP camera covered up with a slider, which automatically activates the camera once opened. It also includes a powerful flash, so I guess photography is covered then? It uses a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, and it charges using the new charging standard – micro USB. So far I am still impressed.

But then you fire it up – and here things start going a bit pear shaped. While I have always loved Symbian, I cannot help that somehow the N97 is underpowered. Clicking things on screen take a while to react, prompting me in many cases to try and click it again. Connected to the fact that it does not have a capacitative screen, the interface can sometimes be infuriating. OK, so if the screen takes a little used to, at least it has a keyboard right? Yes, but the keyboard has almost no tactile feedback. In fact, many times I find myself rather using the onscreen keyboard whenever possible. People’s biggest complaint with touchscreens are that there is a lack of tactile feedback – well this is the perfect example of how a poor keyboard is not better than a touch screen. On the N97, at least there is some haptic feedback when clicking on screen. This is still something that I think all touchscreen phones should get. Also, I cannot see how Nokia can make the stylus not slide into the device like the 5800 Tube. Instead the N97 has a little stylus that hangs of a little string.

The screen automatically rotates to landscape when needed, but it is hard not to notice that Symbian is not really designed for changing orientations – suddenly the soft buttons take up two thirds of the screen estate, which does not really add to usability. While in idle mode, with the screen on, the widgets are pretty cool to use and keep you informed. I stuck to the standard widgets including Facebook and AP News, but also used the new News24 widget, which is slick, but nowhere near as cool as the iPhone app. However, the widget system is really great to use and see info at a glance. I love that its apps download news and info in the background – other phones should take notice.

One major problem with Symbian in its current guise is still the use of “access points”. This feature has been part of Symbian for a very long time, and it is still a overcomplicated mess to organize your connections. While you can setup access point groups with priority lists, the phone will still in many cases first want to ask you to confirm what connection to use. All other smartphones these days understand the principle that if I walk into my wifi zone, I don’t want to use 3G. And no, I don’t want to confirm it every time. While I am sure there is some convoluted way to set this up on the device, it is definitely not simple. Please fix this Nokia.

OK, but say you get used to these oddities, and face it, the owner probably will. How is the features, and how do they stack up when actually used? Being a N-Series device, let’s start with the multimedia features. The screen is bright and has a nice high resolution – nothing wrong there. But I cannot help but feel a little cheated. Nokia’s recent N86 8MP has a OLED screen which has perfect pitch black darks and great battery life – For Nokia’s top of the range device, I think they should have looked at OLED.

The camera specs look fine – autofocus, 5 megapixel, flash. While photos looked great during the day, the photos were washed out when using the flash. Needless to say, the Nokia N86 8MP has much better camera and flash. So if photography is important, I wont say this is the handset to go for.

Storage wise, there is 32GB built in, and another 16GB can be added via SD card, which is quite amazing. While I realize this will probably all be used for multimedia, it is quite amazing to think how far we have come with mobile storage. Videos stored on the device looked okay, but I was not really blown away. It is no way close to video playback on a iPhone or HTC Magic, even if the resolution is higher. Again, I think a OLED screen could have helped the colours “pop” a little.

One thing the N97 does pull off is GPS navigation. Nokia Maps is included on the device, and it works a treat. However, like most GPS navigator phones, it sucks the battery dry very quickly. Good thing that Nokia includes a car charger in the box for South African buyers – I don’t think all countries are this lucky. Another plus is that unlike Google Maps, Nokia Maps can have entire country maps downloaded on the device, so you are not reliant on network data like on Apple and Android devices.

While Nokia might call it a N-series device, there is definitely a hint of series in there – it does include a full qwerty keyboard after all. As a messaging device it is hard to fault – setup of email accounts is even easier than on the E75, and I never had a single problem with messaging. Clearly Nokia has some experience in this field.

As a phone the N97 is not bad at all – everything works as it should. The sound quality is brilliant, and I did not have any issues. I am aware of other reviewers of the device complaining that the device would often lock up in the middle of a call, I had no such issues. The battery life was OK, but I did expect more. It has a large battery, but it does not last more than about 30 hours, not more than a day when actually used. While it sounds bad, it is not worse than most other phones that has this level of features.

As a whole I am still impressed by the N97. Its only once you start weighing up its competitors that you start seeing the issues. And this is truly a sad (but also exciting) state of affairs – a few new phones have spoiled it for the rest of the old legend manufacturers. But still, there are some truly revolutionary things appearing – be it in software, or in hardware. When looking at N97, it is hard to fault the hardware – it is truly stunning. When looking at the software, I think Nokia should look long and hard at Symbian. Currently Nokia owns Symbian, and it is being made opensource, which is great. I really believe Symbian is modular enough to be more suited to touch screens (hopefully capacitative) over time. But Nokia is now shifting to Meamo for its new N900 device, so we might see some strange things happen with Nokia and Symbian.

My honest opinion? I would still rather go for a Nokia E71 or E72.

Pros:

• Solid Build
• Nice big 32GB storage
• Sliding Action is without peer

Cons:

• Keyboard is almost useless
• Camera could be better for a top of the range device
• Symbian feels dated
• Device feels underpowered

Rating:

6 out of 10 (I want to give it 8, but it is not a cheap handset)

Hands On Review: Nokia 5800 "Tube"

First off, I am going to come out and say it. The 5800 is not comparable to the iPhone. If you think it is Nokia’s answer to the iPhone, you could not be further from the truth. I also made the same mistake when I first got it, and only once I stopped having a iPhone comparitive look did I start seeing the phone for what it is. It is currently around R5100 cash from most cellphone dealers.

I stopped using my other phone for about two weeks, except for once when I was in Mtunzini and I had sync issues with the 5800. I really wanted to see what Nokia has been up to since that other phone came on the scene. I have always been a fan of Nokia, especially the E-Series, so I had high hopes for Nokia’s first consumer touch screen phone.

Look and Feel:
The phone is light and easy to hold in your hand, with a perhaps slightly plasticky feel. This phone is not meant to be compared to higher end devices which normally have metal cases, even though the pricetag might tell you otherwise. It is much smaller than the iPhone and N95, but it is also quite a thick phone which feels fat in your hand. The device has a nice coloured ring around it’s edges which does lend itself some uniqueness compared to other phones.
The screen is currently a 3.2 inch, 360×640 display which is amazingly sharp. It is also true 16:9, if you are someone who is bothered by aspect ratios. The big downside to the screen however is that it not capacitative – it is resistive which requires you to press down on the screen for it to react. This results in the screen not always reacting to your touches, unless you use the stylus. However, it should be pointed out that the sensitivity is much, much better than the old PDA’s of a few years back.

There is three buttons on the front, and the slider and power switches on the side of the device. After using the device for a few days you typically never use the green and red buttons to answer and dial calls – that functionality is available on screen as well. Many will appreciate the hard buttons though, especially once you have to use the device without looking. There is also a hard dedicated button for the camera at the side, which is handy is you want to quickly snap something.
There is also a standard headphone port at the top which works well enough. But here is another problem I found with the device. When listening with headphones, and you suddenly pull the plug, the music starts blaring out of its own very loud speakers. This is one area where I would have appreciated it to automatically pause like many other phones or music players… Little things…

The Technical stuff.

The phone is running Symbian S60 5th edition, which has been altered to cater for the touch screen. It is well thought out, and there is almost no learning curve coming from a keypad based Symbian phone.

Operating the phone is easy enough until you have to enter text. Here you have a choice of entry methods, but not all of them are useful. There is a fullscreen qwerty, mini qwerty, handwriting and standard T9 keypad interfaces. And here the small screen plays a role – the only keyboard I found functional with my fingers was the keypad version. I personally do not want to take out a stylus to send a SMS.

Scrolling is easy enough, but the screen does not allow flicking as with other touch screened phones, instead a user drags their fingers up and down the screen, and eventually it will scroll along, at a increasing pace. Once you get used to it is quite intuitive.

Perhaps the thing I like most about the 5800 is its haptic feedback. What this basically does is cause the device to make a tiny vibration when you press on screen elements, and the feedback only occurs when it reacts to your press. While not everybody likes this (like @dchetty) at least the user can switch it off. When going back to other touch screen devices I suddenly wish to have that little functionality back.

The interface is connected to a accelarometer which automatically changes to portrait or landscape, just like most new Nokia phones. It is however a tad slow in changing, which causes many people to just switch it off…

The music player is pretty standard, but the one advantage is has is the simultaneous launch of the Nokia Music Store which enables the user to download tracks over the air, similar to the iTunes store. There is also a nice big 8GB card included, so you can stuff the phone quite full of music. You are however bound to the Nokia Music store, but you can use iTunes (provided you install the iSync plugin), but then you have to stick to non DRM tracks. While in no way as elegant to sync as the iPhone or Palm Pre, it works.

The camera is pretty great for a phone – although it is only 3.2 MP, it does feature a Carl Zeiss lens, auto focus and a flash, which all dramatically improve the image quality. The user also has a tremendous amount of control over the camera in terms of lighting and colour balancing etc. Video recording is also at a 640×480 resolution and 30fps which is pretty decent, even compared to modern point and click digicams. I was very impressed with the camera all in all.
The Maps application is also brilliant – I have always used Garmin Mobile XT on my Symbian devices, and Nokia has improved the Maps application a lot in the last year. The interface is well designed and the routing worked accurately every time I used it. It did take quite a while to lock on the GPS signal though, many times more than 2 minutes even in perfectly clear skies.

The browser is not that great. I honestly though Nokia would have improved the browser in all this time, but it was a headache to use. Even though it is technically a WebKit browser such as the iPhone, it is simply not easy to use. The other major concern with the browser is that it almost necessitates the stylus to get anything done. Clicking links with your finger is just not easy. Hopefully Opera will make a Mini browser for it soon enough (I could not seem to find one). What should be pointed out however is that comparing it to anything other than iPhone and Android, the browser is actually quite capable.

In terms of work-related functionality, I had almost not complaints. Syncing it to my Mac was as easy as installing the plugin for iSync and all my contacts and calendars were available. There is also a “switch “ app for users who have another Symbian Nokia before it, and in my testing it works surprisingly well. Pretty awesome for people who do not backup their contacts to their PC’s (which they should…). Calendar functionality is great, and the high res screen is especially useful on things like week and month view. Messaging also worked well, and SMS’s and multiple email accounts worked well. Connecting to popular mail servers such as Gmail and Yahoo was especially easy seeing as the phone auto configured most settings for you.

The battery is a 1300mAh version which lasts surprisingly long. It lasted in many cases more than two days, which is reassuring once you have worked with other large screened devices. This is one area where Nokia always seems to do well – battery life.

Conclusion

Overall I am quite impressed by the device – not compared to all other phones however. Once you start using very high end phones it is easy to compare other phones to them, and this is the first phone that really makes me do that. Seeing as it has a reasonably well designed touch screen, it makes me automatically try to compare it with iPhone or Android, which currently has all the industry focus.

The device is however cheaper, and focuses on a younger demographic. While not much cheaper when buying cash, it is much cheaper once contract subsidization kicks in. Nokia phones are available on all networks, thus there is no exclusitivity involved for a network to provide it, therefore competition kicks in. It is for this very reason why iPhones and current Android phones are so expensive – its all about exclusitivity.

The reason why there is suddenly so much focus on touch is that it is the ideal method to enable ground breaking software, which is where the real focus currently lies. In the case of the 5800, you feel as though the device is not fully realized – it needs services to make it truly great. Something tells me the upcoming N97 might be that device.

The 5800 is ideally suited for someone who needs a lower priced alternative to the iPhone but mainly wants to focus on multimedia, and not so much on internet productivity. Its music and movie abilities are great, but these are just about its only drawcards.

Overall: 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Pictures courtesy of allaboutsymbian, I was too lazy to take my own.

Next review: The Android G2 / HTC Magic…

Nokia 5800 "Tube" First Impressions

Well I received the 5800 yesterday morning. First off, I should make clear that I have been pretty spoiled when it comes to phones in the last few months – I have been using an iPhone, and despite its shortcomings it is a revolutionary device.

Out of box experience of the 5800 is similar to any Nokia device – there is decent documentation, nice earphones, and of course the phone. A rubberized sleeve bag is included with the phone which is very nice. It protects the phone well enough and I doubt too many people will replace it. Have to say I appreciate that Nokia is starting to supply cases with some of its phones (Are you listening, Apple?).

On first impression you realize how light the phone is compared to other smartphones. This is perhaps attributed to its very plasticky build, but it seems solid enough. The screen is a traditional plastic one, not glass. While this is fine, I would like to know how this screen lasts againsts scratches. Maybe long time users of the phone can maybe give some feedback? The phone feels a little fat in your hand, but not overly so. It should be noted that the phone is quite small in hand, and actually a bit more comfortable in your hand than the iPhone.

The rear of the device is rubberized, which I like, but again, how will it stand over time? The dark red details around the casing is also classy. The top of the device houses the power button, earphone adaptor, charging port and mini USB port. However, it is not a standard mini-USB, but rather micro-USB (thanks @perelson), which is the supposed new standard for mobile phone, but only time will tell. I don’t like using the phone while the power is plugged into the top of the device however. Also, the device is supplied with a rather oversized charger, something the E-series Nokias have left behind a while ago.

Unlike the iPhone, the 5800 has dedicated keys for phone operation. The funny part however, is that it is really not necessary. At the end of the day I kept using the red button as simple way to get to the home screen. But I guess some people might want it. My biggest compliment that I have is that I really appreciate the haptic feedback which give a slight buzz every time you click a button on screen. Excellent!

Overall I think it is nice enough, but it definitely does not beam quality like the Nokia E-Series and iPhone. The plastic build is not quite up to scruff. But lets not write it off quite yet. I will spend the next two weeks with the phone as my primary phone, so I will be able to give an accurate report on what features are appreciated and which ones not.

Here’s hoping I don’t miss my iPhone too much, and I hope the Nokia will suprise me…

PS: After spending my second day with the device I realised that constantly comparing it to the iPhone is going to frustrate me terribly. It is clearly a different class of device – it is much cheaper, and caters for a different market in my opinion. So in the next parts of my review I will move away from the iPhone referrals. (Might also make me sound less like a rabbid Apple fanboy, which I am honestly NOT.)

Broadening my Horizons

For the past 8 months I have been using the iPhone 3G, and I can honestly say I have never been happier with a piece of hardware. I actually bought it cash, and yes it was worth every penny. However, in my pre-iPhone days I was completely sold on the Nokia E-Series. If anyone asked me what phone I would recommend these days, my first reply is typically any Nokia E-series. They are built well, have excellent battery life and they easy enough to use. In fact I advised people to get a Nokia E-Series before I would recommend an iPhone – but this was also a cost issue.

While I see the value of a qwerty keyboard, I believe the true innovation in interfaces on current phones currently lie with touch screens. I have tremendous respect for a well designed, intuitive interface like an iPhone. It has truly opened up a world of new competition between phone makers.

For this very reason I feel it is time I revisit some other brand’s phones just to see how they have caught up to the iPhone in these 2 years. (Sorry for hammering on about the iPhone, but it is currently the yardstick with which every other phone will be compared.) In the coming weeks I will spend some time with the Nokia 5800 and then after that I will use the Blackberry Storm. I am also looking forward to using the new Nokia E75, seeing as I want to see how the e-series has developed since I last used it.

Those devices have to be very very very good to prevent me from getting the next iPhone though…

Choices Choices Choices

Well I just ordered my new phone – a Nokia E61. If I have to type another email with a normal phone keypad I might chew my phone. Im quite happy to get a phone with a little larger size, but with the convenience of a big screen and a nice qwerty keyboard… Hopefully it will serve me well. And the Wifi is a great bonus.

I will keep my 6230 for the weekends though…