“There will,” as Jane Austen once wrote in Mansfield Park,“be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much.”
That could well be the case here.
According to Cnet, “Nokia fans who can count are at fever pitch over the upcoming launch of the N97.” It is, says Trusted Reviews, “one of the most eagerly anticipated handsets of 2009.”
Expectations are such, reports Knowyourmobile, that “Nokia claims the N97 is the most anticipated N-series phone to date.”
As a result, suggests Mobile Choice, “responsibility for knocking the new iPhone 3GS off its perch has been left squarely on” its “broad shoulders.”
Certainly T3 thinks the N97 a “scrumptious, feature-packed ‘mobile computer’,” Trusted Reviews acknowledges it’s “full to the brim with features” and Stuff agrees it’s “fit to fight for the smartphone top spot.”
But the question still remains, is the N97 as good as, let alone better than the competition?
Doubts do exist over the design. “A little on the chunky side,” thinks Trusted Reviews, “which is strange,” says Techradar, “considering it's only 15.9mm thick.” “It's rather lumpen,” concedes Cnet, “and the physique of the black version didn't attract many oohs and aahs.”
Mobile Choice found the keyboard “spacious”. And, says T3, “the rubber keys are nicely spaced.” However Trusted Reviews felt the keys “relatively small”, even though “for tapping out text it was pretty comfy.”
Knowyourmobile was less convinced, claiming the “keys have a somewhat spongy feel, making it less than perfect for typing at speed. Neither the Qwerty nor the slightly clumsy touchscreen are amazingly good for inputting numbers.” Stuff were in agreement, calling the keyboard “certainly no match for the Blackberry Bold, and the lack of number keys is frustrating.”
But if the keyboard itself failed to meet with universal approval, reviewers were far more complimentary about the way in which, as Cnet puts it, “the Qwerty keyboard pops open with satisfying gusto.” And, “as you slide,” Trusted Reviews explains, “the upper part moves to an angle of about 45 degrees, a convention we first saw a long time ago in the HTC TyTN II and which recently resurfaced in HTC's Touch Pro2. It makes viewing the screen with the phone on your desk a pleasure.”
|
|
Techradar were not alone in thinking “the hinge mechanism on the phone is one of the most solid yet.” “The result,” said Stuff, “is an ergonomic joy.”
The screen is “palatial” concedes Mobile Choice, “but its 640 x 360 pixels don't match the highest resolutions that are currently on offer” warns Trusted Reviews. It is, accepts Knowyourmobile, “a whacking great big touchscreen” and “responsive considering it uses resistive technology, but isn’t on par with capacitive rivals.” Cnet would have also been happier with a capacitive screen, “like the iPhone’s”, adding “for viewing photos and videos, the N97's 89mm (3.5-inch) screen isn't as bright or sharp as some of its competitors' displays.”
Similarly, “compared to rivals like the HTC G1 and LG Arena, the N97’s home screen seems clumsy, ugly and lacking in customisation options,” argues Knowyourmobile. “Nokia has rehashed its Symbian S60 OS for the fifth time on this handset ,” declares Techradar, “but has sadly decided against making any wholesale changes, which is a shame as it means the lag and general bugginess of navigation through the handset is still very much apparent.”
“The user interface is dull throughout,” despairs Cnet, and “isn't as intuitive as that of some other phones.”
Techradar was alone in finding “the internet experience was a real pleasure in both portrait and landscape modes, especially using the previously excellent Symbian internet browser.” Conversely Mobile Choice thought “zooming in on pages a bit sluggish.” Cnet “really missed multitouch zoom,” while Stuff decided the browser “appears to be stuck in the 1990s. Zooming in and out is clumsy and, criminally, there's no web search box.”
As for the camera, Stuff went on, “the N97's 5MP autofocus produces excellent shots in daylight, but at night it's let down by the weak LED flash.” Mobile Choice also found it “more than adequate” and “consistently effective in low light environments.” Cnet were less impressed, arguing “photo colours are slightly washed out,” conceding “but on the plus side, there's hardly any shutter lag.” Nevertheless, as Knowyourmobile point out, despite the Carl Zeiss lens, “the camera doesn’t cut it against the best of them.”
Mobile Choice celebrates “the massive 32GB of on-board memory (bolstered further by an optional 16GB microSD card)” providing, to quote Cnet, “an elephant-sized total of 48GB.” Stuff calculates that’s “enough for 10,000 high-quality MP3 files”, making it, according to Knowyourmobile, “a viable alternative to a hard disk MP3 player. The 3.5mm headphone jack seals the deal.”
T3 is not so sure, bemoaning “Comes With Music has done another runner for a start.” Techradar accepts “media is going to figure heavily on this phone, and it certainly does with photo, video and audio playback all on offer, as well as the usual sound recording options.” But, they add, “what is more confusing is how underpowered each one of these options is when used to the full extent we've come to expect thanks to great handsets from the likes of HTC, Apple and Samsung.”
Cnet shows no surprise “that battery life is poor on a phone that runs power-hungry features simultaneously, and our N97 didn't even make it through a full day of testing,” they add. Techradar fared slightly better, getting “around 1.5 days out of the phone on an average charge,” but managing “to run it down in a day twice under very heavy usage conditions.” So, with Trusted Reviews advising to “budget for daily charging,” it was probably just as well Techradar found the battery “could be charged fully in roughly two hours.”
On balance Knowyourmobile decided the N97 “feature set is fairly impressive,” with Trusted Reviews explaining “there is a huge array of built in apps including the BBC iPlayer, YouTube player, Nokia Maps and - at last - an Ovi Store link. QuickOffice is here, too, for viewing Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents and there is a PDF viewer.”
Unfortunately “Nokia Maps is still a poor man's Google Maps,” points out Techradar, and “couldn't find Oxford Street despite us typing it in three different ways.” Not that this was a problem for Cnet, who found “it brought up fast, accurate maps for us in central London.” And, as Stuff notes, “with integrated compass and A-GPS, the N97 is a fully-featured satellite navigation unit that can be used on foot, in the car or – with a bit of ingenuity – on a bicycle.”
Techradar did experience difficulty using the N97 as a phone, “with nearly all the calls we made on the test handset not connecting the first time despite having more than enough signal.”
Surprisingly, nobody else commented on call quality. But perhaps some reviewers think handsets are now so sophisticated users no longer bother with voice calls.
More pertinently, Cnet summed up the consensus as well as anybody, concluding “With the iPhone, the HTC Magic and the Palm Pre taking touchscreen phones to a higher level, the N97 is up against stiff competition. Its touchscreen talents can't measure up to theirs, but it could be the right choice for avid typists, Nokia lovers and those who want to take advantage of the wealth of Symbian apps out there.”
In essence the N97 is good, but not as good as either its competitors or as many of us originally hoped. But perhaps we all just expected too much.