Two weeks ago I had the great oportunity to travel up to Montecarlo to the Nokia Developer Summit 2009. I was competing in the Nokia N97 Widget Competition, and along with Plusmo and Yalla-Ya I worked in the Hackathon to deliver the best widget-application for the Nokia users. The result was Rocket, a Social Location App that you will see very soon!

But apart from that, I took my time to test the new Nseries, the Nokia N97. As you may know this is the most expected phone of the year. It was announced on december of 2008, and will be released next month, causing great hype amongst the mobile users. The expectations are hight, this phone is thought to change the way we use the internet.

Equipped with a 3.5 in resistive touchscreen and a full qwerty keyboard, the N97 separes itself from the rest of the Nseries. And if you are a Nseries fan, you may know that these are two characterisitics that we were waiting for so long ago. So let’s start!

What I liked*

The N97 is solid. The screen flips out and tilts on a 40 degree angle to be easily visible for the user. I loved the mechanism. It doesnt creaks, and has zero play on the sliding mechanism. It is great! The resisitive screen is beatiful and big enougn. There are many concerns around the resistive screen. People saying that it is not responsive enough like the capacitive, but I tell you, this screen is perfectly responsive and it doesn’t lag or hangs. The OS is the fastest Ive ever seen in an Nseries. But I would reserve my final word until I have all my widgets and memory loaded on. There are two colors, white and black, the white color is awesome, I’m sure I will get the white one.

The qwerty keyboard is spaced enough and the keys are well distributed. I was typing long texts as soon as I had 10 seconds trying it. So it will do good even for people with big thumbs. The materials are plastic and with a silver strip on the screen border, it feels good and not cheap.

The camera is great, the people of Carl Zeiss had been working hard I guess. This cellphone takes the most beatifull pictures I have seen on an Nseries, after the N82. Overall, the phone feels right in the hand, a bit big, but nothing too big we have not seen before

What I did not like*

Well, I was getting used to the N85 which is the slimmest Nseries around, and using the N97 makes me feel like Im back with my N95 which is kind of big. It is also a bit heavy. It is on the very edge of the pocketability, Im very sure I will be carrying it with a case hanging on the rim of the jeans’ pocket or on my belt. But I have read that Nokia considers this a mobile computer insted of a phone, so I guess having a computer so small is now a benefit.

The white model has a light leak under the red and green button, I’m not sure if Nokia pretends to fix it before the mass release but if they don’t they will have upset consumers. I mean, such a expensive phone should at least try to be perfect at this kind of things. The black one has the fingerprint magnet syndrom, one of the reasons I chose white instead of black.

And finally, the hinge seems a kind of fragile, and if you watch it by the sides, you can see the screen ribbon. I hope it won’t be a problem. One of the things that may worry me is the dust from my pocket or from the environment gathering around the ribbon or inside the phone. So I hope the screen closes thight inside one’s pocket.

To round it up*
The N97 pretends to be the most selling cellphone of this year. Nokia has been hyping it up since the announcement, and they have done well. Im sure it will sell very well. Since I won the widget competition Nokia will send me a free N97 as soon as it is realeased on the american market, that will be likely in July, so expect a full review of it when I get it. So, what about you? What are your concerns? Your expectations, tell us in the comment section!! I WANT TO HEAR YOU!!

David Castro