N97 – the pros and cons so far…
Time to sum up on the good and bad points about the N97 so far. As I’ve stated before, I have a feeling the upcoming firmware update will change the landscape for the N97 and make it more generally accepted. Still, many users – including myself – have been using the phone for 3 months or more now, so it’s definitely time to sum up how it’s been treating us until now.
Don’t hesitate to comment with your own opinions and experiences!
The good stuff
- The home screen and the home screen widgets for Facebook, e-mail and more. It’s really changed the way I use my phone!
- I can’t believe it’s only been 3 months since I switched from using my old N95, it feels and looks really ancient now…
- 32 GB of internal storage!
- The touch screen. Not as good as iPhone (yet!) and why the heck wasn’t full support for kinetic scrolling included from the beginning? Still, once you’re used to it you don’t want to go back…
The not so good stuff…
- USB connections are still unstable and slow. Although working much better since the last firmware update, still not nearly good enough and a bit embarrassing for a flagship device to have this kind of problem!
- Camera software does a poor job on many occassions. There’s no doubt the N97 is capable of taking stunning pictures, but too often the software seems to get in the way. Camera software is one of the areas where Nokia have always been good at improving quality with firmware updates, so there’s definitely hope for the feature here.
- Free memory and performance. 256 MB anyone?! Or at least support for virtual memory… And sad to say, too often the N97 lags in different areas or just behaves unresponsive. Since the phone works beautifully most of the time, let’s hope the performance issue are mostly software related and that virtual memory will indeed be supported in the future (although it doesn’t look like it…).
Overall, I definitely don’t regret going for the N97, and there’s no model available on the market (at least not yet…) that I would rather have. Still, it’s vital that Nokia gets the upcoming firmware update right. All 3 of my bad points above should be more or less taken care of.
So… What do you think? Are you a happy N97 owner or a miserable one? What’s your experiences? Leave a comment or discuss in our forum.
7 Comments on “N97 – the pros and cons so far…”
Honestly i switched from a samsung omnia to the n97 i truly dont understand the big deal with kinetic scrolling… i can live without it until the next update. The only thing that gets me about this phone is the lag it gets once you run too many applications… is they’re a way to fully close down some apps? also whats the deal with the ovi store? it seems most of the apps and games were made from people that didn’t give a rats ass about quality.
Kanine: If you hold down the menu key for a sec or two to bring up the task manager and then select an app for a few seconds you will be asked if you want to close it down. Doesn’t work for apps on the homescreen, but should work for all other apps.
I have N97 for 2 weeks – not so long, but I had before E61 for 3 years… I see how Symbian is improving, but most of it’s problems still there
Cons: Also, the touch screen tech is less attractive for me now, due to poor app support (imho). Nokia’s web Browser still the same – look at Apple Safari, that’s how it should look like (with all that touch tech).
Home screen widgets – too few and those are useless for me, since GPRS traffic still expensive, but where is handy widgets for SMS, Contacts, GPS ???
Address book still disappointing.
Pros:
I like the body – looks great, mechanics looks promising.Opened device much better usage than other similar mobiles/smart phones.
Kinetic – very nice!
Karabas: Totally agree on the web browser. Think I’ll do a comparison review once the new Opera mini is released.
Pros: a real keyboard that is pretty comfortable to use. FM transmitter has proved useful. Video recording quality is great.
Cons: the UI asks way too many questions when trying to do something. Takes a lot of actions to do basic stuff. Camera is shocking in low light situations. Ovi store has no real useful apps – I have a tonne of useful utility ideas for any developers out there, such as “switch between GSM & Dual network”. How about custom icons on the homescreen for browser shortcuts?
I’ve had mine for a couple of months now and I still like it, but there are times that I have to remind myself of the things I love about it, due to being temporarily uber-frustrated by on of the many problems.
Things I love:
keyboard – it’s so responsive. It’s probably my favourite feature of the phone.
Video quality – we’re talking playback here, I can upload episodes of say “IT Crowd” and they look stunning. Captured video isn’t too shabby either.
FM transmitter – only having a tape player in the car (don’t laugh) is no longer an issue.
Things that annoy me:
web browser – to be fair I didn’t have much of a problem with it till I experienced what the iPhone browser’s like.
Music transfer – now I have over 3500 songs on the N97 it takes about half an hour to transfer a new album to the phone. It takes Nokia Music an eternity to start the transfer. I don’t know why, if it’s indexing what’s on the phone that seems silly for a device wih so much memory. Utilising the memory almost cripples it.
RAM must be more (Nokia Ltd was totally mad as iPhone new 3GS has more RAM >> smart iPhone buddy)
more signal support(ya its phone any way)
more symbian changes (which are useful in regular life ) like in camera app settings are saved like in profile, camera sound on/off. etc which are silly Nokia why not understand.
Finally Nokia must give good support. As for old Phones like N73 has RAM problem must be solved.