It's the phone that Nokia should've used to introduce the world to Symbian S60 5th edition, but is it the "hero"-type device that it was marketed as? Nokia's
N97 is undoubtedly expensive, debatably beautiful and thoroughly polarizing (as
two of our own found out). While it's impossible to say the handset was introduced to go head-to-head with Apple's iPhone (the whole "only sold off contract" thing kind of hampers that), there's little doubt that this phone was Espoo's most significant attempt yet to make a name for itself in the full-touchscreen smartphone market. If you handed over the handful of C-notes required to take this bad boy home, why not tell us exactly how you feel now that you're an owner? What would you like to see changed on Nokia's next attempt? What measures up? What falls short? You've got one shot (maybe two, depending on the mood of our comment system) -- don't screw it up.
posted August 15th 2009 2:02AM
Bring the price down and remove the N-Series tag.Called it the Nokia 5900.
This will silence all critics ;-)
Well a few things need to be done. First off increase the clock speed, it was done with the 5800Xpress from 369mhz to 434mhz. A nice boost to 500mhz would help greatly. Secondly virtual ram, Maemo uses this and it would certainly help out multitasking. Next flick scrolling throughout the interface, again the low end 5530 has it but the flagship does not which is a joke! The UI transitions need to be put back in, it was in the prototype but at retail we were left with very poor theme effects nothing like the demo or adverts! Another thing is single click for everything! Some places need to double click and others single, it makes no sense at all. The C drive needs organising better, not enough space! Finally sort out the LAG as things like messaging can have have a big delay when opening which is unnaceptable on the flagship.
Maemo?
Improve the touchscreen, upgrade it to a smooth capacitive type. Double up the ram. No chance of Nokia upgrading the OS to anything approaching modern until they get a foothold with the maemo platform. In the short term, they will keep the feature pack gloss on s60. Stick a MOAB (mother of all batteries) in it, and stop gouging customers with exhorbitant ovi store application prices!
I have one and like it a lot, but there are a couple of things I'd change.
The homescreen is excellent, and you can swipe to make it disappear. So why not extend that swipe detection, and let me have multiple homescreens - one with my email/comms, one with weather/news, one for work etc.
With enough shortcuts and homescreen widgets, I'd never have to go into the applications menu, which isn't a nice place to be
Very happy with the N97 and much better overall and cheaper than the iPhone (data plan expensive, general hardware is lacking or low end, not full internet web browser since no java/flash support, etc.,).
Improvements: CPU speed increase, ram size increase, 802.1x support, avi/divx/xvid support, slide/flip out hampers decent phone protective sleeve (nice rubber one piece sleeve).
Depending on user: touch technology is fine, size of phone fine, o.s.,gui is fine, slide/flip is fine.
EOT
Burn it?
Kev
Bought the black one but sold it to a friend cos my bro bought me a white one.. Back to discussion..
-Faster CPU .. Preferably Dual Arm II or anything better
-Graphics chip like N95 = faster interface (not on games only)
-Faster ram
-Xenon flash + Dual LED (Xenon for photos, Dual led's for video)
-OLED resistive screen (better contrast, better touch control)
Do any of you even have an N97?
How about the annoying "sym" and alpha-shift key? Put those buttons somewhere else and make a dam 4 row keyboard with numbers and the stupid spacebar where it should be.
Yes, I do bought one directly from Nokia, website. Still very disappointed.
aah yes.. totally forgot bout the keyboard.. i hate the fact to get a dot " . " i have to press the blue key.. sigh..
I have a N97 and use it extensively for web browsing. I am pretty happy with it. But there are some points I would like to have improved:
- Make the back cover smooth. I do not like the sharp edges when I type on the physical QWERTY keyboard.
- Make the browser fully controllable from the physical dpad and keyboard. A finger is not a very accurate pointing instrument.
- Maybe put a dpad also on the front of the phone.
i love the fact that playing songs while downloading em is possible . :D
Wow, I can't get over how many dumb comments are on here. I mean I expected the usual, "get an iPhone" or "put Android on it" but I'm really impressed with how many people came to say stupid things. Good to see some constructive comments though. The form factor is perfect. You can't possibly ask for a more compact device given all that it has. Sound quality over headphones is superb, I love S60 and the homescreen here is wonderful, the camera is great, but here's what I'd change after a month of owning this:
High priorities:
1) Better processor, 600mhz +
2) More RAM, at least 256MB
3) Kinetic scrolling throughout the entire UI, but keep the scroll bar. I like choices and some of us like to use it at certain times.
4) Fix the keyboard so all the keys feel like the middle row, where you can actually feel a distinct click to the key.
5) Amount of phone memory left is pathetic, especially after you install Nokia Messaging and don't even think about updating to the newer Quickoffice. There should be at least 512MB left at your disposal when you start it up.
6) The stereo speakers are a disgrace for an Nseries flagship. They're not that loud, and they've been tuned to make voices only sound good. Give us the N95's speakers but make them clearer and louder. I want my phone to play music over them like the N95 but better.
7) Remove double tap. Add tap and hold to give you an options menu for a specific thing, with a menu option to select multiple things which would allow you to easily add music to playlists without having to constantly tap and hold to do something. Make a smarter options menu as well that knows what menu you are in, and what the menu choices are, and what Help contents to show you if you want to select Options > Help for example.
8) Fix the video recording from the main camera. It doesn't want to record sounds properly, and acts like it has noise cancellation every time someone talks.
Medium priorities:
9) Why doesn't Nokia try a little harder to push the device, find the errors and correct most of them before they ship the phone out? I've only had 2 different ones thankfully, otherwise its been a mostly stable device.
10) A more sensitive resistive touchscreen. I've decided that after having this for a month, I enjoy the fact that I can use anything on the screen, but I would appreciate if it were slightly more sensitive.
11) 8MP camera, HD video recording, Dual LED flash, panoramic shot, face detection, all that stuff, and a lens cover that doesn't scratch the lens. I don't think there’s enough room to put a Xenon in there as well.
12) 800x480 OLED screen.
13) I would like the keyboard to act like the one on the E71. When you press and hold Q, I want 1 to pop up, not QQQQQQQQQ.
14) More applications.
Oh, and I would fix the back cover so it doesn't creak so much. They need to put those foam tape strips found on the E71 cover on the back of this one too. They would have to be thinner and shorter but it would definitely solve the problem. Fixing the lens cover should also be a top priority, #1 in fact since its destroying the lens. It should've been made like the N86 one.
And fix the poor GPS performance too. Change the antenna to a better one.
Change up the Symbian UI and make it MUCH more thumb friendly.
Do that first, then take care of the hardware.
Thank you.
Add a GPU, and more RAM. Obviously, more stable firmware, but that's pretty much it. Otherwise, I really do enjoy it.
1) Improve the processing hardware. 434 Mhz ARM11 just doesn't cut it anymore. Put in (an atleast 600Mhz Cortex A8) equipped OMAP3430/similar with dedicated 3D hardware. Also please put in at least 256 MB RAM. I agree to all observations like: Symbian doesn't need more than 128 MB on it's own, but what about heavy usage of apps especially on an OS allowing 3rd party app multitasking. We want good firmware running on good hardware, not tweaked firmware designed to perform on crappy hardware. Flagship devices should at least have decent hardware not ages old 434 Mhz ARM11's any more.
2) Change the UI. The UI is heavily inconsistent. Bring in uniform flick scrolling, kinetic scrolling, swiping and single click. Please no click to highlight in some areas and click to select in others. Multitouch also possible perhaps? Now that even Android and WebOS are supporting it, come on Nokia!
3) Upgrade to a capacitive touchscreen. They are more responsive and allow for easier multi-touch input. Perhaps introduce a small resistive screen for chinese character input alone with a stylus/launch a separate resistive version for Chinese,Japanese, and SE Asian markets.
4) Improve the onscreen keyboard. I agree that 3 keyboard options are there but Nokia's keyboard is not even in the league of the HTC hero, leave alone the iPhone. Multitouch support may make a difference here.
5) Symbian's UI is definitely in need of a massive makeover. Features often go unnoticed/unused because they are hidden deep inside chains of menus. Even changing a theme requires navigating through so many menus.
6) Improve the Ovi store. It's now nothing but a pathetic mockery of Apple's app store.
7) Please change the placement of the spacebar key to the center. The spacebar key at one end is so odd.
8) Consider using AMOLED displays with a predominantly black themed interface for richer colours/contrast and a better battery life. Also Xenon flash and a better camera sensor (8MPx perhaps with 720p recording?)
I have had this phone for almost 2 months now. In the first week, I almost took it back because I spent more time trying to configure it than I did using it. I love this phone and I absolutely hate it.
The TV ads are straight out false advertising, bad bad nokia, and illegal! On the ads you can see someone rotating the handset and the display rotates like an iphone in realtime, but mine, wooo, it turns off, waits 2-3 seconds and then reappears, and only sometimes works. It's like it was a project by some students, it's something you can see has potential, but in no way is a finished project.
I love the camera, the tilted screen and the dual speakers.. the sound is great with my iphone earphones plugged in. lol
I hate how slow it is and how confusing everything is and how the piano game has no sound and the nokia maps stopped working after 2 weeks, and how little internal memory there is. It's been a long time since I have seen a message saying google maps is now out of memory.. WTF! uninstall and reinstall to mass memory.. geeezzzzzz I also get a lot of bugs and half exposed previous screens, e.g. the messaging area always shows the previous screen between buttons and selections, like an old computer with a crap grfx card.
I loose more calls on it when trying to work out how to unlock it and wait for the dam thing to rotate after picking it up and trying to wait for the accept call button.. this is starting to remind me how pissoff i am at nokia and how I feel my hard earned dollars have realy been wasted by that company.. why o why didnt I get the iphone? I trusted nokia, I always have, not any more.
I have to go to symbols to find the dollar sign, I keep clicking symbols when trying to type messages.. frustrating.
I can live with all this BS, but should I have to? I keep checking for updates every day, sometimes twice a day.. but, nothing. I feel like nokia has taken my money, given me something and left before I could ask questions.
*in short,
*fix the bugs,
*speed it up,
*make it like a finished project,
*provide more updates and fast
*and make it more user friendly
OK, so on the eve of writing these comments, 2 months into my use of this nasty device, I have disappearing imap email (gmail) connects, downloads headers then closes, this has been happening for a few days but I didnt remember, amongs all the other freezes and strange buggy BS.
Next I get a message saying "not enough memory for this operation" or something like that.. and that's it, cant close that message, cant do anything.. have to turn the dam thing off.
ARE YOU KIDDING MEEEEE!!!!!!
Do I seriously have to delete text messages just to check my emails.. NOT HAPPPYYYY!
Can I delete the imap email headers? No, it flashes a 1/2 second message saying they are going to remain in the phone memory.. oh great!
So let me get this straight.. Now I have to delete my much needed sms messages that I like to keep records of... so the phone will work? WTF! It has 32 gig.. but oh no, I can only store my sms and imaps on the measly internal phone memory that seems to be the size of a sim card! Please remind me why I wasted a lot of money on THIS! my love for this phone is dwindling fast and my hate for it is growing daily, where are the updates past 1.2? Why cant I use the 32 gig for everything and not have to delete things just to get it to work.. this is like my old school phone.. this is seriously not good
Make the GPS work!
immediately fixable:
UI issues. make it more finger friendly. scrolling is the first thing that needs fixing.
speed issues. i'm sure with some tweaking, a future firmware can free up some extra RAM whilst making it all a lot more responsive. being able to start the camera app so it is ready to shoot in under a second would be a start.
ship it with an even more powerful battery. try and give us at least two days of decent usage between charges. big up to nokia for keeping with the user-replaceable battery though, means we can carry spares with us when out and about
for the N97-2:
faster CPU. take what would be good (ie 600mhz) and double it to cover for crappy app programming hogging cpu cycles. take being able to browse flash-intensive sites like youtube and facebook as the reference point. if accessing video/content on these sites is too slow, then improve the hardware so it will cope. yes, this is adobe/various website's fault, but until they speed things up to improve performance on lower specced hardware, then we need that extra oomph!
more ram. again, take a useful amount and double it. 512mb would be a good amount.
xenon flash. no need to improve the megapixel count, as long as we have decent optics and a half-decent flash, then we can dispose of that compact camera bouncing around our geek-bags. the N95 was the first phone where i got to stop carrying around a phone AND a camera. 5mp is fine, just give us better low-light performance for a start. optical zoom would be magical too if it can be built in without too much of an effect on the form factor. oh, and a better lens cover.
better keyboard layout. a number row would be nice too. i'll take an extra 5mm on the width of the phone if it meant an extra row of keys. the Dpad thing is horrible too, how about a blackberry style trackball instead?
build materials. it's a high end device. give us proper metal casings a la E series devices.
You know, the N97, especially here in the UK, has received a rather bad time of it and I was one of them calling for Nokia's collective balls on a plate. But, and this is important, I have since discovered that the network plays a vital role in the perception one gets using this phone. I bought it on Vodafone and I wanted to kill Nokia. Nothing worked. Laggy, buggy and oh so frustrating. Then, on a whim, i decided to try my o2 chip and lo and behold, an almost different animal. Sure there are the odd cosmetics that could do with a facelift and the Ovi store needs to go back to the incubator but, these aside, its a very usable phone. Perhaps the biggest bugbear is tapping in messages while browsing (very archaic) and not being able to get to simple stuff like an @ sign without having to go thru 3 different steps (get the symbol menu up, select it, then another key press to get going again). That could do with some attention. Otherwise, not as bad an effort as I had originally thought and I was all prepared to lambast the Finnish giant. In the end I have to put it down to network and clearly, Vodafone in the UK is shite.
1) scale it up to a 4.1" screen with 800x480
2) 5 row qwerty keyboard
3) dpad on the face
4) Maemo + Dalvik
5) mini-USB (client/data/charging) on the side (near the space bar)
6) micro-USB (host/otg) next to it
7) display out of some form (pref. micro-DVI-I) in between the USB ports (external resolutions up to at least 1024x600, if not higher)
8) At least 512MB RAM, pref. 1GB
9) At least 1GB flash, pref. 2GB
10) dual SIM cards
11) quadband GSM + AT&T 3G + T-Mobile-USA 3G + Euro 3G, all in one edition
12) comes with choice of a Pony or a Puppy
Love my N97. Sometimes wonder if I have the same phone as it's very stable, I routinely run 5-6 apps at a time (including vNES emulator, the built in facebook app, gravity twitter app, ngage, etc). Call quality is most excellent, I have about 15GB with music, 7 full movies / DVD rips, have taken over 300 pictures without issue (some of the autofocus algorithms could use a bit more optimization)
And I'm not restricted to Apple's "walled garden" and no deal with Satan aka AT&T or arbitrary Apple "no a ONE button mouse!" insanity restricting my otherwise basic functionality (thank you OBEX, thank you plain mp3 ringtones, thank you tethering!)
That said, these would be my top improvements:
1) 4" 16:9 with 848 x 480
2) 4-row keyboard for that extra real estate
3) xenon flash for still pictures while retaining dual LED for video
4) optical zoom (if Chinese pseudo-KIRFs can do it, I'd like to see a good phone company like Nokia or Sony Ericsson do it ) and won't mind the bulk if it can accomidate both 3 and 4!
5) wireless-n (not so much for the speed, but so I don't have to run mixed wifi at home)
6) 256-512MB of RAM. Like horsepower and resolution, can never really have TOO much.
7) maybe SDXC support, but definitely retain 32GB and microSD capability.
A better processor (600+ MHz) and an Infrared port would be fantastic !
I'm not touching on the S60 v5 features that need a bit of improvement.
How about make it like car shopping: you can choose what you want: capacitive touch or resistive, xenon or LED flash, keyboard or no keyboard, 5 or 3 MP of camera, etc. Then assemble as needed with slightly varying prices.
Oh and processor, RAM size, internal memory size, for sure.
12.2.024, is the new firmware upgrade
I've had a phone for 2 weeks and while I was intially SO EXCITED to have this powerhouse of a phone in my hand the charm was soon faded by the following problems:
1. MAKE A STABLE SOFTWARE. It crashes almost 60% percent of the time I receive a call and slide that slider thing to answer. The phone freezes on the slider screen and doesn't allow me to hang up the call because some GENIUS thought making the call/hang up buttons using touch aswell is a great idea. Dooch. This reason I've gone back to my E71 (solid as a rock). I'm waiting for a firmware upgrade but I might just sell it instead. Regardless, READ ON.
2. The phone's software is ANYTHING but pretty. Guys, *gulp* your icons suck. Take advice from the iphone, they have the most beautiful, colorful icons to date which honestly is what makes the device so attractive - everything else about the iphone is absolute rubbish. First thing I did was install a theme on my N97.
3. Develop a real push email software. 'Nokia Messaging' is rubbish - in Australia getting very cheap data plans is still years away. I like to use my WiFi but find that it won't pickup free Wifi spots and use it straight away for email sync like the iphone (even after properly logging into WiFi hotspots.) It's obvious why Nokia is losing marketshare to iPhone and RIM - they can't make a solid push email app and can't make phone as pretty as iPhone.
3. The keys on the keyboard is a bit of a shock. The keys don't 'click' in, they are a soft feeling and you really cant feel any push when typing emails fast. You need something hard. For a good example of keyboard - look at the Samsung F700 (great hardware, size and feel but software is SO rubbish). And - WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH THE SPACE BUTTON TO THE RIGHT?? Put it back in the middle .. SOMEHOW! This is such a slowdown when typing!
4. Make it a little slimmer (refer to F700) ... please. (N97 mini concept sounds excellent)
5. I wish to store my SMS on my storage card, everytime I plug into the computer the storage card somehow locks up and doesn't allow to store on storage again until I go back into the menu and then manually change the setting to the storage card again - Can you fix this Nokia?
6. What the heck is Ovi store about? It's rubbish! Backgrounds for AUD$4.40?? I can buy a lunch with that money! Although some of the free software is pretty cool (spin the bottle, seismographs thing, bloomburg and AP news apps) overall it needs work. There is SO MUCH software out there for symbian, why not add it in here. I'm sure Symbian apps in total have far more then iPhone apps.
It's simple - the s60 5th edition is simply a immature product and not up to the skills and solid build of Nokia's usual style. With time I see this improving but it seems with ALL technology these days jumping on board early only leads to problems. I hope nokia resolves this issue.
First of all, I'm not techie girl. I'm just one of the N97 users... yes I feel that N97 is not as perfect as I want it before I bought it. But people have different needs and wants about phones. I want all-in-one phone, so I got N97 on it. But I want to make it more faster :D So, my idea is to go to Nokia Centre.
I hate touch screen ever in my life but N97 has a big impact on me that I can't resist buying it even though it is touch screen :D It's easier for me to send email to my family and friends, update sites like twitter, plurk and facebook and online games using this phone N97 and wi-fi :D
I also hate both cameras of N97 >:O It's not as clear as I want it to be. N95 camera's are better than N97. Also, my N95 is louder than N97. I don't know what happen but N95 got good qualities than N97.
After all the bad(s) of N97, I still manage to love it in some ways.
Okay, so after 2 months of use, there are really a handful of main issues that I need resolution to immediately or I am thinking of selling the phone on ebay and going back to my N85:
a) sync addresses and phone numbers to Macs via Isync. Without this capability, nearly any smartphone is dead to me.
b) have a simple way to use VOIP capabilities on the phone. it is a shame that the N95 in many ways is more developed in terms of features than the N97.
c) fix the music program so that music can be more easily managed (have checkboxes by tracks so I can quick add to playlists) and podcasts can be more easily managed.
I really like the phone generally and the keyboard works for me, but the 3 issues above are a constant irritation.
Video formats. Seriously. Want to give someone a crappy "switching" experience from an iPod/iPhone? Let them find out that 95% of the video podcasts they used to watch don't play on the device. This should be EASY.
Bring back the built in video editor.
And there I thought I was the only one with N97 issues. After sending it back for repairs after my 1 month usage, it came back more stable. Better software, so so needed!
Hi there,
The Nokia N97 could be a brilliant phone. I love all the features it has GPS/E-Mails/WIFI/3G/Quadband/Keyboard etc.. However, every few days it won't startup (freezes on the NOKIA logo screen) and has to be hard reset, which loses a lot of settings and requires a lot of applications to be re-installed every time. Nokia also won't release the V12 firmware for the UK sim-free phones, which might cure this and other bugs in the phones software (I'm still stuck with V11). It is currently a very frustrating phone, as it can need a hard reset anytime that it gets switched off and switched on again.
I think Nokia should put their Maemo OS/UI on it. (Ofcourse with a faster processor + higher RAM)
Capacitive Touchscreen.
Thats about it.