Hi everybody, I have been playing with my N97 the whole weekend and I can now come to a nice review about this piece of gadget. You have seen now the unboxing in my previous post. The N97 comes in a black/grey minimalistic box, with only few info in the box, very different from what we are used to see in Nokia retail boxes. However it is a nice box and it comes with a embossed N97 on the front, very nice detail.

What happens when you open the box? You are greeted by your device sitting in there along with the battery and the stylus. You can lift the tray and you will find the other accessories. These include:

-cleaning cloth
-charger adapter (for previous chargers)
-headset with control
-OVI suit
-user manual
-usb data cable.

So there you go, you take the battery and proceed to install it. This part is kind of tricky. It is not very clear at first time but the battery door kinds of pops in/out. You have to apply enough pressure to open it. I was afraid of breaking the cover, but after trying it, finally the battery door opened. Poped in the SIM card, micro SD and the battery. I turned it on and there it was. Nokia in all of its brightness.

The screen is giant, it is a pleasure to watch movies or see pictures in there, the pressure to make it work is perfect, not too sensitive and not too hard. The user interface has been improved at the homescreen, now it has widgets that you may edit at your own will. The rest of the operative system is almost the same, but has been improved for touch interface, making buttons biggers along with other items.
The materials used are plastic mostly, with a chrome bezel around the screen. The back cover is matte and the front is glossy.

The plastic used are of great quality and wont break or scratch easily. Overall the build quality is very good, I don’t get any cracking or wobble. Despite I have the white version it does not get dirty easily, even if it gets stained is very easy to clean it up with some humid cloth. The phone sits very comfortly in ones hand, and you may manipulate easily enough.
They keyboard is spaced enough and soon you will be writing long texts with no problem. The hinge mechanism is good, but I have the fear that it might break some day. On the front face there is no other button than the menu key, everything else is touch screen.

The system is pretty fast, some people had the fear that the processor was not going to be enough, but that’s not the case. The phone flies and rarely hangs up or lags. Even when multitasking, the phone is very responsive, so don’t have that fear, symbian has been improved for this phone.
I have tried the facebook widget and it is good enough, but is missing some other functions that real facebook has. Not that I miss them. To upload pictures from the N97 is very easy, it is easier to upload it to facebook than to send it to the computer. There are some bugs here, sometimes when you type on the qwerty, the arrow key works as if it was pressed even if it is not, so instead of writing letters you will be typing symbols.

The browser is one of the strong points on this phone. Opening it up you will see the bookmark list and a recently visited sites along with a space to type any url you want to visit. The websites render very fast. You can swipe the screen and the screen will flow and you will see the kinetic scrolling. Very usefull to navigate trough the websites. I find this feature very helpful. This along the qwerty makes the browsing experience very satisfying.

As far as I have tried, there are not many apps out there for this particular model. I visited the OVI store to download some apps that where for the 5800 but some aren’t entirely compatible, besides they are missing the widget view. On the other side, some apps that I was using on my N85 will work on my new phone. Even so, some themes I had been using on my previous phones work with the N97, that was kind of a surprise. About the OVI store I gotta say that it is pretty forward to install applications, I cant wait to see the apps released for the N97!

The input methods: qwerty, screen T9 and handwriting recognition. The qwerty is fast and easy, the T9 works as any regular dictionary we have seen before and it is quite easy to type. The hand recognition is great, it is fast enough, as If I was writing on a paper. So any input method is good, so you have the choice.

So to round it up. I can dare to say that the N97 will be a success for Nokia, easy to use, fast to use, very appealing to the consumers and very useful. Lets wait and see.
The good:

- Big screen with touchscreen
- Very fast system
- Touchscreen with perfect touch
- QWERTY with keys at perfect size
- Browser with kinetic scrolling
- Homescreen with customizable widgets.

The bad
- The widgets and the browsing drains the battery so fast, and it will take up to 2 hours to completely charge it. Might get 1 day and half with moderated use and browsing.
- The connection manager needs improvement. When I get ouside the Wifi range, the widgets will go crazy trying to connect again.
- NGAGE is missing, and the home media server manager is also missing.

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