This was inevitable isn’t it ? I wonder how many watched the Nokia n97 video review posted in my last post. Its been nearly two weeks playing with Nokia N97 and I knew I would be able to provide a review which would be able to help you deciding what to expect from this device. However, I might end up covering all positives, so make sure you ask your doubts or your questions in the comments sections. So without much more frills, here goes a short review of this device.

The Nokia N97 Review

Its a big brother of Nokia 5800, and those who follow this blog, must be knowing how much I crib about Nokia 5800. If you are a power user, text a lot , and  a proud owner of a full touchscreen phone (without buttons attached), it becomes so difficult to adjust the lack of a physical keyboard after some time. But again , at the same time , you may not want to keep on pressing so many buttons to navigate to a certain menu item, when its available on just a distance of  touch. Here is where Nokia N97 comes into picture. The power of a Touchscreen with a Full QWERTY keypad.

Price

Price is something which many people are concerned of. Everyone would agree with me that Nokia 5800 is most feature rich phone in the particular price segment. Nokia 5800 started with US$ 400 and Nokia N97 is around 699US$ or US$600( if you buy it at Amazon ). So lets see, what all you are getting in this 200 to 300 US$ price gap.

1. 3.5 Inch full touch screen compared to 3.2 Inch Touchscreen
2. Increased speed  of processor from 369Mhz to 434Mhz.
3. a Full QWERTY keypad with a D pad, with slide out Tilt Design
4. FM transmitter
5. LIVE homescreen
6. Digital Compass which can be used in Nokia MAPS
7. 32GB internal Memory, expandable upto 64 GB ( with 32GB microSD card )
8. 5 Megapixel Camera ( way better than 3.2 Megapixel ) with slide out lens cover.
9. Chrome finish with touch Sensitive buttons ( Call and End Call)
10. High Power Battery
11. Loads of preloaded application

So judge yourself whether are you getting worth for your money or not ? When you bought Nokia 5800, and proudly agreed that its worth, why not Nokia N97. I feel its much worthy the upgrade. But again, its upto you and your budget whether you would like to go for the upgrade or not.

Overall Hardware design

With the highly complicated slide out tilt design, many eyebrows were raised , whether Nokia would be able to do it right? Many said No, but again with the hardware reviews you must have read regarding Nokia N97, all rumors are proved totally wrong. The slide out design is rock solid and believe me, its just so convenient for using a phone. The more you use it, the more you get used to it and can not prevent yourself from praising it. Why not refresh yourself with Making of Nokia N97 video.

Its much better to have one proper viewing angle, rather than having many improper ones. The phone is just so comfortable to use, with your daily work, that it just become a part of your daily routine. And, having said that, while I am writing this review, two music albums are getting downloaded on my Nokia N97, and I can see the progress with just one touch. I don’t have to lift the phone, to see what’s happening. This is what a convenient viewing angle can do in your mobile phone experience.

Regarding the keyboard, there are lots of concern about the right side placement of the spacebar. Right side placement of the spacebar is in reality no problem, but once you get used to it. It might frustrate you a lot initially as everytime to insert a space, your thumb will automatically move towards the center, later realizing that the spacebar is on the right. I myself got frustrated, but again it was just a matter of time I got used to, and now I dont have any problem with it. It just how fast you get used to it.

Overall keypad is good, but the main negative point lie with the keys. I have no problem with the dedicated numeric keys absent on the keypad. I am absolutely fine with the keypad. The only concern with the keys is that, they dont make you feel as if you are pressing buttons. They are pretty flat, and at times, you wont realize that you have pressed the button, which inturn lead to many spelling mistakes. And at certain time, you might feel that you have pressed the button, but the letter does not appear. But again , this is also a temporary problem which you will get used to so easily once you start using the phone.

Another noticing factor, if you notice the hinge and slide out mechanism take a lot of space in the keypad, which must have resulted in space for  only 3 rows of keys. Now, I think its individual choice to have a highly complicated and better slide out mechanism with 3 rows of keys, or, a normal slide mechanism with 5 rows of keys. As for me , I will prefer to go with the former.

Touch sensitive Call and End Call button brought a sigh of relief for me. I know how much I hated those hard to press buttons on Nokia 5800, and I feel that Nokia heard me. However, one thing which I think Nokia should have given a thought on placement of charging cum data cable slot. As for my preference, it should have been placed between camera button and the volume rocker. I becomes inconvenient to use the phone while its connected or its charging. Its almost the same concept that of a laptop where the charging or the data slot is always either on the side or at the back.

The 3.5inch touchscreen is very bright , responsive and is amazingly legible under direct sunlight. I think its one of the best even when compared to Nokia 5800. The phone is also highly comfortable for single handed usage , as even while holding, whole screen is completely accessible via your thumb.

Over all software design

I found the software much stable compared to Nokia 5800. Even though screen rotation is still not the way I want it to be, but overall you can see a huge change in software. Again , I get a feeling that Nokia nearly answered all my problems with Nokia 5800. The major change in software part are as follows :

1. A proper album management software : Now viewing pictures and video comes with various options. Album viewing option is available month wise , albums or tags.
2. Nokia finally replaced the Edit button with Mark Multiple in photo gallery, which make it so much in managing your pictures and videos. Now marking multiple items is just a breeze.
3. You can use shift key and touch combination to mark multiple items.
4. Full screen browsing with Kinetic scrolling is so pleasant. Bigger screen means, more visible area. Combination of QWERTY keypad means, you can select the link as you type, as per previous viewed pages. Download manager has improved a lot . You can download multiple files at a time and also, if you are downloading a music file, it starts playing even if its partially downloaded. Great step forward Nokia.
5. With the use of QWERTY keypad, searching music tracks has become so easy.
6. Refreshing phone book design, now you can add favorite contacts which always display at the top of the list. Marking multiple and searching contacts has become much easier with QWERTY keypad.
7. Video manager now turned into Video and TV
8. Finger slide for lifting the call when the keypad is locked.
9. Inclusion of timed profiles.
10. Bigger screen means bigger buttons, texting in Alphanumeric mode is now all the more pleasing with huge buttons.
11. Inclusion of predictive text while using the QWERTY keypad is a huge plus. This makes typing so easy and so much fast and quite pleasing too.

and many more improvements here and there.

And Why I bought a Nokia N97 ?

With boasting so much about Nokia N97, it does make me feel that I should make my readers aware on why I decided to buy the Nokia N97. It all started with planning, so first I got rid of my Nokia 5800,and sent it my sister couple of months before Nokia N97 was about to be officially released in UAE. However, to come to the decision was not that easy. For me the major points for buying a Nokia N97 are as follows :

• A full QWERTY keypad with Touchscreen :  Believe me or not, its just a deadly combination. You have all the goodness of a touchscreen + a QWERTY. They both compliment each other, and as per my experience, with either one of them, you are missing a lot in your mobile experience.
• Nokia MAPS  : Another reason, I dont have a Data plan, so I cant afford to keep downloading MBs and MBs of maps data everytime when I am on a move. Nokia MAPS comes handy, you can download the map via your PC onto your mobile, and save a lot of your time while on a move.
• Multitasking : Something which I cant live without. Consider my Nokia phone, I have my Google Talk running in the background, my browser is downloading 7 to 8 files simultaneously, I am listening to music and at the same time texting my friend. To add more, I have one touch access to all my applications running in the background.
• FM transmitter : I want everything to be plug and play. I hate wires and want everything around me to be wireless. I hate burning CDs , and want one place access for all my music files. People know how much time do you waste in morning and evening traffic. How good it is , to just listen to a podcast or a song or an audiobook directly on your car stereo via your phone. No wires , and no duplication of data and music. Just play it on your phone and one touch access transfer it to your car stereo.
• Wide range of Applications for my phone : I love to install different types of applications for my mobile. I keep searching stuffs on OVI store and keep trying and downloading the application either just for timepass or for the productivity.
• A LIVE homescreen : A homescreen where everything is accessible with just one touch. I should get my news updates , my friends updates and plus my favourite applications accessible to me with just one touch.
• YOUTUBE : I am a youtube addict and I am proud to say that. I needed a phone whose browser can support youtube videos and should be a pleasure to watch on.
• A BIG SCREEN with Good resolution  and Ease of viewing : It just compliment the above point mentioned. Viewing pleasure can only come when the screen is big enough with good resolution. Also, it should be available at a very comfortable viewing angle without trouble your palm.
• A good Camera with Great Video Recording Capability : Nokia N97 video recording capabilities are not hidden with anyone. Widescreen Video capture just make it awesome to watch recorded videos, and are also a pleasure to share with friends. If you still doubt the video recording capabilities of Nokia N97, watch the video below which I took from my Nokia N97.

Video Taken by Nokia N97

And Above all

• An ALL IN ONE NOKIA PHONE : This is where it all ends. Being a Nokia fan, it gets inevitable for me to not to buy a Nokia phone. So since N97 was from Nokia , it made so much sense for me to go for it .

Conclusion

Nokia N97 for me is a complete phone. I have little complains regarding the processor speed , and the stereo speakers which are not as good as Nokia 5800, but having said that, I am so much impressed with this Nokia phone.

You are aware why I bought a Nokia N97, and if you think you have something else to share or ask, feel free to comment, also if you are a proud owner of Nokia n97, how about sharing why you bought this phone ??

Check out all posts tagged with Nokia N97

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Its always good to watch a Nokia N97 video review. I have watched many video reviews, but most of them were failed to impress me, as most of them lacked a complete overview of the device. I am currently working on the text review of the device, which I will be publishing pretty soon on this blog. But if I were to publish a video review, it would have not been better than the below posted video. The guy over technoreview has done great job in creating these videos, which does include many humorous moments. Over all, if you are still confused whether to buy or not to buy a Nokia N97, I am sure these videos could help you decide. These are one of the best video reviews you must  have seen of Nokia N97 ( Read the comments on youtube videos and your will surely agree with me )

Nokia N97 Video review Part 1

click here if you are unable to see the video in the feed reader.

Nokia N97 Video review Part 2

click here if you are unable to see the video in the feed reader.

These videos are available in HD quality too. Just visit the link to view them.

And yeah, don’t forget Subscribe for free now for latest update directly in your inbox.

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Being a Nokia fan, it was hard for me to keep my hands away from the most anticipated device from Nokia this year, and hence I ended up buying the Nokia N97. So does the Nseries Flagship model live up to its expectations , or does it actually justify all the hype that surround it ? Etc Etc Etc …..

Stay tuned as I will be posting my experiences ( as I have been playing with it for nearly last 3 days ) with this phone. N97 is now available in UAE, and retail for around 2750 AED ( around USD 750 ) .

For those who already bought this phone, wait for two days , a new Nokia N97 firmware release is on cards.

Check out all posts tagged with Nokia N97

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Update : Its live worldwide

Nokia today has reached another landmark in providing rich mobile experience to its customers. Nokia’s highly anticipated and much awaited Ovi Store has gone live today.

Ovi (which in Finnish language means door ) , the door to Nokia’s internet services was first announced in aug 29,2007 . However, it was expanded to include an online store for  mobile applications, wallpapers, widgets, games etc and hence dubbed as Ovi store.

Download Ovi Store on your Nokia phone

You can download the Ovi Store mobile app by simply selecting the Ovi Store icon in the Download folder on your device. Or you can get to the Ovi Store by simply visiting store.ovi.com on your phone.

Here’s what Tero Ojanperä, Executive Vice President, Nokia Services, had to say about Ovi Store going live today:

“Ovi Store is open for business and we’ve stocked the shelves with both local and global content for a broad range of Nokia devices. Ovi Store makes shopping for content and applications easy and fun for feature phone and smartphone owners alike.”

Mountain of content

As stated earlier by Nokia,  that OVI store might launch with around 25k+ items which may comprise of widgets, wallpapers, ringtones, games, applications etc. The initial launch itself seems overloaded with content.

I was surprised after visiting OVI online store, as under “Recommendations for your phone” ( Nokia N95 8GB) , there were nearly 900 items.

So guys, what are you waiting for ?? Checkout the OVI store and get your Nokia handset loaded with loads of content.

via : nokia conversations

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Wow, and here the news , which every Nokia fan in UAE must be waiting for . The highly anticipated device , the flagship model from Nokia, the Nokia n97 would be available in UAE soon. UAE will be among the first in the world to be offered the Nokia N97, the Finnish company’s new top-of-the-line handset.

We have seen the latest videos of Nokia N97, which has gone through a huge software makeover from time it was released in December 2008. Nokia N97 is the second official S60 5th ed Touch device from Nokia. Nokia 5800 has seen huge success, by selling more than 3 Million devices , the the countries, where it was launched.

Nokia UAE front page is now features Nokia N97, and sooner , “Availabe Now” button will appear.

Price

Price play an important role, but N97’s price range was already declared and would be around Euro 599 which may turn out to be around 3000 AED .

The release of the N97 comes as mobile handset sales are falling at the fastest rate ever recorded. Sales of devices in the first quarter of this year were down 15.8 per cent from the same quarter last year, according to the research firm Strategy Analytics. The slowdown is being felt most strongly in the middle of the market, where consumers are delaying the purchase of new phones, and choosing instead to keep their older handsets for longer.

UAE’s National Newspaper has posted a video walkthrough of the phone, in which it look a little sluggish, might be due to slow processor.

My advice with the awaiting Nokia fan’s would be, to wait for some time after the phone is released, as I am sure, that the price of this phone will drop really fast and also we may get some review with real production unit. S60 5th edition platform is still not bug free and considering the problems I faced with my Nokia 5800, I will prefer to play safe with this device.

The advantage with this device is that , its made for both the segment which like to have a touchscreen mobile , and also the people for whom touchscreen doesn’t matter. The full QWERTY keypad add this advantage to this mobile phone.

Anyways, if I am buying this phone, I will consider the white one .. What about you ??

Check out all posts tagged with Nokia N97

via:  the national , Video

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Samsung’s mobile phones portfolio is increasing day by day , and every new addition is touch enabled. These new additions are certainly going to strengthen Samsung’s hold in the most lucrative mobile phone market i.e. India. Samsung has launched Star (S5233) , Star 3G (S5603) and BEAT DJ in India, and all these are very competitively priced under 20k INR. So, after launching high end touch enabled mobile phone like Omnia HD , Samsung is now eyeing the mid range  segment with these mobile phone. All these mobile phones are equipped with Samsung’s TOUCHWIZ UI , which provide a widget enabled touchscreen, providing high level of user customization.

Samsung Star (S5233)

• 3.0-inch WQVGA full-touch screen and Samsung’s TouchWiz User Interface with Mobile Widgets and an accelerometer sensor
• “Photo Contact,” to call a contact by touching an appointed image.
• 3.2 mega-pixel camera with smile recognition
• multi-format playback and Samsung’s DNSe sound engine
• recognition using Shazam’s “Find Music” service
• 50MB Internal memory, expandable up to 8GB via microSD cards
• Google applications like Google Search, Gmail, Google maps; online widgets and photo blogging
• Gesture Control is a new feature added that allows the user to unlock the touch screen or run an application by just giving a gesture command. User can assign alphabets from A to Z to these applications or commands, and just by drawing these alphabets on the idle Homescreen, the program is launched.

Samsung Star 3G (S5603)

• Same features as the S5233 including Gesture Control
• 3G enabled phone,  with full Internet browsing support
• accelerometer sensor for auto-rotation
• 3.2 mega-pixel camera with Power LED Flash and 80MB Internal memory expandable up to 8GB.

BEAT DJ

Samsung’s intuitive DISC User Interface, the BEAT DJ comes fully loaded with Bang & Olufsen audio technology. It was announced in Mobile World Congress 2009 . With the Beat DJ UI , users will be able to add preloaded voice samples and sound effects to their favorite songs and record it. Users can also ‘scratch’ the records by swiping their fingers across the display.

• 2.8-inch AMOLED touchscreen display (240 x 400 pixels with 16 million colors), accelerometer
• 50MB internal microSD card slot (up to 16GB)
• 3MP AF camera, Geo-tagging, Smile Shot, Face Detection
• HSDPA, EDGE
• Bluetooth v 2.1, USB 2.0 (micro)
• GPS with A-GPS
• DivX, XviD, WMV, MP4 playback support
• 3.5mm AV socket, DNSe, SRS Virtual Surround
• FM radio with recording
• 50MB internal memory,  expandable to 8GB with the micro SD card
• built-in real stereo speakers – powered by B&O’s ICEpower amplifier

Beat DJ video

Pricing

Here comes the most important part as we know, behind the success of any handset, price also play a very important role, atleast in India,and, Samsung has taken care of this aspect as well.

STAR (S5233) : INR 11,100

Star 3G (S5603) : INR 14,499

BEAT DJ : INR 18,990

As the price of these full touchscreen phone are very competitive, I think other mobile handsets, which also planned to launch cheap touchscreen mobile phones, are really going to have a tough time in future. Samsung, has already taken a lead in this segment and time is not far, when Samsung will become No.1 mobile manufacturer around the globe.

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Much of you might be knowing , and many might be unaware, Google Chrome is the web browser by Google, which is made possible by Chromium Open Source Project. Even though its long time, that Google Chrome is launched, you can still feel how young it is, once you start using it.

Even with its shortcomings, Google Chrome became my favorite, mainly due to following two reasons :

• Fast Initial Startup , with thumbnail snapshots of most frequently visited websites .
• No space wastage in terms of Menu, BookMark links , titlebar etc , which provide high display area for website content and less scrolling. This also prevent the browser from getting cluttered.

Google has kept the second point in mind while creating the advertisement to display how Clean and Simple Google Chrome is. But the major problem with Chrome is that , its still very far from browsers like Internet Explorer and Mozilla, in terms of perfection . Still, there are many websites, which find it very hard to re-organize themselves on Google Chrome, and you will end up switching to IE or Mozilla . Moreover, in this advert, Google, nowhere states that Chrome is a browser.

Have a look at the video

I wish Google should have started promoting Chrome once its as competent as other browsers .

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How many times have you tried using the SMS shortcuts, to try and limit it to 160 characters. Did that ever made you wonder, that why SMS are only limited to 160 characters? I had the urge to find out many times, but was too lazy to search it on Google, but I always knew it has something to do with Bits and Bytes Math . This really become a must know information as of now , as we have already celebrated SMS’s 15th Birthday couple of years back.

Now, after Giz revealed the real reason why the sms are of 160 character , I found it real hard to digest as according to them

Apparently, it’s because some German dude thought 160 was "perfectly sufficient."

Friedham Hillebrand was a communications researcher who was working with a group on developing a standard for cellphones to send and receive text messages. So he sat down on his typewriter and banged out a bunch of random sentences and questions, counted up the number of characters it took, and decided 160 was the magic number.

I am not sure , whether this is the real reason , but it made me Google a bit, and I found the answer at Mattcopp’s blog. He explained it quite clearly

The issue is that it is a limitation of the GSM system. GSM is the name for the way in which almost all mobile phones communicate. The actual length of a text message is 256 characters or letters (the term characters are more exact because numbers are not letters and neither is % or #).
Now an SMS needs to have contained within itself who sent the message, when it was sent and who it is going too, these are called overheads and take up exactly 96 characters, which is why you end up with 160 characters left. (256-96=160).

On a side note, each character is sent as an 8bit binary number — you know those 1s and 0s everyone is talking about — meaning you have a maximum of 256 types of characters. This gives you just enough room for all upper and lower case letters (2 * 26), numbers (0-9), a range of symbols ({}[]-+£$%) and some control characters (space, return, null). This is an internationally recognized standard specified as the ASCII standard.

Check out his post for more info on why SMS are actually 160 characters , and also some info on MMS size also.

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Hi readers ,

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Shopping with Amazon is secure and, you can add multiple items to your Shopping Cart. Amazon also, provides the best shopping price among all the other Online shopping websites. So, guys Check out our online shopping store and browse around, and ask questions if you have any.

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Ahhh .. so was our wait was worthwhile ?? Yesterday we had 4 new phones leak from Samsung, and Today we have latest shots of a , could be Nokia 5530 Xpress Music phone , or , Nokia 5900 Xpress Music , or , a Chinese fake. However, chances of a Chinese fake are more prevalent due to the highly cheap front panel design. Actually guys over nokia are also not so good in designing ( as they keep cloning models from their own portfolio , Nokia N86 for Example ). The backpanel of the phone looks quite good, and the thin colored strip running on the side of the phone, do give it a Nokia XpressMusic feel.

Here are the pics ,

Nokia really need to expand its touchscreen lineup as fast as possible, to regain its losing market share. After Nokia 5800 saw amazing success in the countries in which it was launched by Nokia and passed 3 million mark.

If at all this is Nokia 5530 XpressMusic, I really hope they change the front panel design. Rest everything looks fine. What are your opinion about this phone ??

Via : itbbs.pconline and it168.com  (both are Chinese site , but you can use google translator i.e translate.google.com)

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