Nokia N97 Fanatics » N97 Reviews

Nokia N900 – In the hands of a N97 Fanatic

Mike Macias — Fri, 28 May 2010 05:15:00 +0000

It sure is hard to call myself a N97 Fanatic without being laughed at. To this day, even after all the problems that we’ve experienced with Nokia’s current flagship, I am still using the N97 as my main mobile device. Since the N97’s release nothing from Nokia has hit the market that I’ve wanted to spend another $500 on. Many of my mobile blogger buddies have been hounding me to try out the Nokia N900 so I finally got my hands on one. Right now it’s going for $479.99 at Amazon so if I fall in love with this thing it just might be my next phone until the N8 ships (if you don’t know about it, you gotta check it out).

Taking Questions!

So for the next few weeks I’ll be using the N900 of and on. I’ll take any questions that you have about it and compare it to the Nokia N97. Hopefully this will help some of you who have been on the fence about the N900 like I have. I’ll also be open to video reviews of the N900/N97 comparison and post them on Youtube. Just ask. Leave your comments below or find me on twitter @mikemacias. I’ll be posting most of my N900 thoughts & comments on twitter and closing out my trial with a full review that will be posted at a soon to be announced website. Stay tuned for that!

Teaser: Now This Is A Homescreen

That is just one of my FOUR homescreens on the Nokia N900 – fully customizable. I can arrange each single widget wherever I want.

Lastly, be sure to check out quality coverage of the N900 and the Maemo operating system over at www.maemofanatics.com where you’ll find our popular author Kyron (EverythingBlaxx) showing the mobile world what the N900 is capable of.

To Mini Or Not To Mini? The Smaller N97 Is Calling My Name

Mike Macias — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 22:00:36 +0000

I’ve been checking out the Nokia N97 Mini since it was first announced. At first I wasn’t turned on by it at all for many legit reasons. But after reading some hands-on reviews on the N97 Mini my opinion began to change. People are saying the Mini feels much better in hand, having a more solid & refined feel to it. The main gripe I have with my N97 (besides the RAM) is the size of the device. I feel like it’s slightly too big and chunky, especially when pulling it out of my pocket or holding it with the keyboard closed.

Besides the size of both devices, here are a few other issues I’m pondering in my head…

Keep in mind I’m leaning more towards the N97 Mini and I have NO hands on experiences with the Mini – yet.

N97 Mini has a weaker battery. 1200mah battery compared to the N97’s 1500mah. The standby time is 310 hours on the Mini and 400 for it’s big brother. This is a big deal to me, although I think I’ll be fine if I keep an extra battery in the car for emergencies.
N97 Mini has a smaller screen. 3.2 inches compared to 3.5”. Not a huge deal for me, and the Mini has a sharper display since they both have the same amount of pixels.
N97 Mini has a better keyboard in terms of tactile feedback and material. Some may like the standard N97’s keyboard layout better but honestly the change is not a big deal to me. I’d rather have the keyboard that’s easier to type on and so far reports are saying the Mini wins.
The N97 Mini has a bigger C: Drive. This is another big one for me since I feel like the phone runs better with my most used apps being installed to the phone memory instead of mass (ie: Nimbuzz, Gravity, Profimail).
N97 Mini is lacking the FM transmitter. This doesn’t matter to me since I’ve only used it once on my N97.
N97 Mini has 8gb mass storage and a microSD slot. Coupled with my 16gb microsd card I got from Amazon that makes 24gb. That is plenty for my needs.
The back of the N97 Mini has real metal and no camera slide protector. I like it this way better.

Those are the main differences between the N97 vs. the N97 Mini that really matter to me. Like I said earlier – my main thing is the size. Check out some of these N97 vs. N97 Mini side by side pictures that were given to me by @961Ant1 of All About Nokia. Thanks buddy!

As you can see the N97 is thinner and shorter than it’s counterpart.

Here is a great photo of the back of the Mini taken by Norman John and found in the N97 Mini photo gallery at Symbian World.

And lastly a shot of the two keyboards in the gallery found at S60 Blog.

To finish this off I’ll show you a few quotes by Ant1 from All About Nokia…

- It feels very solid; it’s like an Eseries. (perhaps should have been dubbed “E97”?)
- It fits very well in the hand – identical to the 5800XM
- Sliding mechanism feels more robust than the N97’s
- The keys on the keyboard are more spaced out, less slippery
- Tactile feedback on the keys is improved. The keys have been softly raised to provide that.
- There’s no camera lens protection
- The device feels so slim
- Nokia N97 mini Designed in Finland

As you can probably tell I’m trying to convince myself that it’s worth it to sell my N97 and get the Mini. I love the fact that the Mini has that “e-series” feel to it. I loved the build quality of the Nokia E71 immensely and it seems the Mini is closer to that. Right now Nokia is having a weekend sale and the price is $479 usd. But I’d have to purchase by tomorrow. Amazon has the Nokia N97 Mini but it’s not shipping yet and still sitting around $532 depending on the day.

What are your thoughts on the two devices? Do any of you own the N97 Mini? I’d love to get some help with this decision. I’ve had people on both sides of the aisle trying to tug me either way.

Nokia N97 v20 Firmware: A Hands-On Experience

EverythingBlaxx — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:27:20 +0000

www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_iajkv2YE8

Video courtesy of The Nokia Blog

I had the privilege of getting a hands-on with a Nokia N97 running v20.0.005 firmware yesterday evening so that I could provide our faithful readers a preview of what to expect when the update is released any day now and to answer more than a few questions that you’ve sent into me over the course of the last week. Now right off the bat, I’m going to set everyone’s expectations. This update is not going to turn your N97 into an N900, nor is it supposed to. If that is what you’re expecting, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. However, if you want this update to turn this phone into what everyone thought it should have been when it launched in June though, it’s got what you’re looking for. NOTE: Let this serve as a disclaimer that I will not be commenting on any third-party apps or widgets that have been added. All I will say is that yes, there are new apps and yes, there are new widgets. Sorry if this upsets you but access comes with conditions.

Let’s start from the beginning and talk about the new firmware at startup. The device wasn’t any faster booting up than my N97 running v12 firmware, however the splash screen has changed slightly (No, we haven’t gotten the “fist pound” splash screen from that early LL Cool J-inspired N97 commercial) but Nokia added their ‘Connecting People’ slogan underneath their logo when the phone boots up. The phone starts up with ~45MB of free RAM and while this sounds very underwhelming and there are many of you who will say that they get more free RAM on boot than that on v12, most of the memory improvements are displayed after a few minutes of active use. Where free RAM would previously dip into the low teens or even single digits on previous firmwares after opening a few apps, the N97 is much more stable with the new firmware and free RAM stays consistently in the 30-35MB range while you’re actively using it. In fact, I never saw RAM dip below 20MB free even with resource hungry apps like Gravity, Photos, Music Player and the web browser running. In regards to free space on the C: drive, there were improvements to the free space but they did not make the total size of the drive any larger so I expect to still have to worry about free space on that drive going forward.

When you get to the homescreen you will find that they haven’t changed too much, there’s no second page for widgets, they haven’t added more than 2 shortcut/favorite contacts widgets and they haven’t made any changes to the existing widgets. There are 2 small additions that I’d like to highlight though. The first is that when you press on the name of the profile currently in use (which is next to the clock and underneath the date), you will see a new option there called ‘Edit active profile’. It’s pretty self-explanatory and not a jaw-dropping feature by any means but when you remember that it takes AT LEAST 6 keypresses to edit the active profile currently, it’s a nice addition. To the delight of many of our readers, I’m pleased to announce that this latest firmware has added letters to the dialpad on the homescreen. Run and tell a friend!

The “longpress for symbol” function of the keyboard has already been revealed and it works as advertised, this will definitely help my one-handed productivity. Theme Effects remain exactly the same and there haven’t been any added transitions, this is reason enough to leave them turned off because, as I learned last night, they severely slow down the phone. A lot of people were asking me if the new firmware adds the Email client that can be found on the N86 8MP and E75, I can say that it does not at this time (remember that this is a very early version of the firmware) but Ovi Contacts is now installed after updating. While the version number is the same as the one you can download right now from Nokia Beta Labs, they have added a homescreen notification (similar to the envelope that appears in the top right of your screen when you receive a text message) that makes the app a lot more useful and pleasant to use. Remember that Call Log bug that has been bitched about by S60 users since….well forever. That has also been fixed so when you open up the Log, you will see the icon corresponding to the detail of the number that you called/called you. Symbianites rejoice!

As for the existing apps on the phone, I can tell you that the Web browser got a small update from v7.1.13841 -> v7.1.17475, I assume that this was just a stability update because I didn’t notice anything different. The Camera app remains unchanged, no face detection, automatic red-eye removal or panoramic mode. It doesn’t load any faster but images processing is slightly faster. I didn’t have a laptop with me during the hands on so I couldn’t test quality improvements if any. No, there is still no Internet Radio app to be found on the N97 after the update to the new firmware. The Facebook app saw a small update as well but can’t comment on any changes. Skype hasn’t been added either but even if you have been itching for your SIP fix, this might not be the end of the world to you. We’ve all seen that they added Album Art throughout the Music Player but something else that they did that is crucial is add the Artist names to the list view when you’re scrolling through Albums in your Music Library. After you select an Album, the name of the Artist and Album remains at the top of the screen while you scroll through songs. Similar to the demo we’ve seen of the Contacts app where the letter you’re currently at pops up in the middle of the screen as you’re scrolling through them, this is also the case with scrolling through Artists or Albums in the Music Player.

Speaking of scrolling, I guess the addition of kinetic scrolling throughout the UI was the main focal point of this firmware update isn’t it? Well you’re going to fall in love, they added kinetic scrolling EVERYWHERE. Don’t believe me? Quick, go into Messaging, open a New Message and click Options. This menu now has kinetic scrolling. Now scroll down and go to Font size and open the submenu. Yup, this menu has kinetic scrolling too. Who cares if there are only 4 items in the list and there’s nowhere to scroll, there’s kinetic scrolling there now. EVERYWHERE. The scrolling is very smooth throughout the UI, you can actually scroll from A to Z in Contacts with one flick, regardless of how many contacts you have saved. Throughout the hands-on experience, this was my favorite feature. It wasn’t without its bugs though, particularly in the Ovi Store which already had kinetic scrolling but now when you flick the screen, it selects the item you happened to touch when you initiated the flick. I’m sure this will be fixed before the firmware becomes public.

Let me get to some other questions that I was asked. Are there battery life improvements? No, not really. It’s about the same. Are there stability improvements? Other than the kinetic scrolling, this was the main aim of the firmware update and I can safely say that this update brings the N97 up to par with the E71 in terms of stability. It’s not quite there in terms of speed though, although it is much much faster than the v12 firmware. In terms of which bugs have been fixed specifically, I already mentioned the Call log bug, but in addition to that, I was told that the phone no longer freezes during phone calls and your custom ringtone no longer randomly switches back to ‘Nokia Tune’. Any improvements to GPS stability? We did a quick test to see if there was any difference in both time it takes to get a GPS lock and how well that lock is held. We launched the camera app on both devices at the same time with geotagging enabled from inside the coffee shop where the meeting took place (we were sitting next to the window if it matters to you). The v20 firmware was able to get a GPS lock faster than the v12 firmware (which after 3 minutes, never actually got a lock) but it lost it within a minute. Google Maps was getting a GPS lock instantly on v20 from inside the coffee house however. Take that however you wish. Latest version of QuickOffice included in the firmware? No, there is a small update to the Quickoffice suite that’s on the phone but it’s still v4.2 and you still can’t edit documents without a license. Is Ovi Maps updated to the new Beta version? No, it’s updated to the latest version of v3.0 though. Anything else new? Well if you sync your N97 with Exchange, you’ll find that if you use Categories for your Contacts in Outlook, those Categories will be added to your phone as Groups in the Contacts app. It’s not perfect however, as it works a little too well and grabs sub-categories and creates multiple groups. For example, if you have your business category sorted by Company, then you’ll end up with a separate group for each company called ‘Business, Company A’, Business, Company B’ and so on. However, if you sort them by even more parameters than that, that’s where it gets messy. You may end up with 10 groups for the same company with 1 contact in each group because of the way the sync works.

That’s not it but that’s about it for me. I know that there will be a lot of questions about the things I didn’t cover here but that’s what the Comments section below is for right? Since Mark at http://www.thenokiablog.com takes such awesome video, here’s another one

www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8lbeKkCepU

Video courtesy of The Nokia Blog

Nokia N900 Available For Preorder, Cheaper Than White N97

Mike Macias — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:59:46 +0000

You guys all remember the Nokia N900 right? How can you forget? We first showed you the N900 and it’s specs a few weeks back with Timi Cantisano calling it “The Real N97”.

Timi said,

It supports cellular signals which means that the internet will be available anywhere you go, and not only internet but calling as well. Why is this device important? By looking at the specifications I think this is what the N97 should have been. So it comes to mind that maybe Nokia purposely put a lower CPU/less RAM in the N97 because it wanted to have a clear segregation between its MID and Mobile devices.

While Timi is right about the N900 specs blowing away the N97, I’m not so sure I’m ready to be without 3g since the N900 will not have AT&T 3g bands, and I’m definitely not ready to switch over to T-Mobile which has the compatible 3g bands of the N900. T-Mobile users should be ecstatic, likewise AT&T users should be pissed. Not sure what Nokia’s reasoning was behind this. Regardless of the carrier, I know many of you are eager to get your hands on this hot item and you should find it interesting to know that you can preorder Nokia N900 for cheaper than the white N97 over at Amazon.com. Oddly enough, the black N97 is currently priced at $529.99, as mentioned here yesterday.

The Nokia N900 showed up at Amazon sometime in the past few days with the price of $588.99. The shipping date has yet to be announced. Amazon says,

This item has not yet been released.
You may pre-order it now and we will deliver it to you when it arrives.Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

Preorder The N900 Now

I’m not sure if this price will go up or down when it actually starts shipping, but I am still shocked at the price point. I expected it to be higher.

Nokia N900 Mobile Computer Unlocked Cell Phone

To learn more about the Nokia N900 visit the official site.

The Grass Ain’t Greener On The Other Side

EverythingBlaxx — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:36:52 +0000

A lot of you may already know me well from HowardForums or Twitter but for those of you who don’t, I’m EverythingBlaxx or simply Blaxx. I’ve gone through an absolute heap of different handsets from almost every manufacturer, running just about every operating system. To run off a quick list of my favorites: Nokia – N95, E71. Motorola – V400, V635. Sony Ericsson – w300i, XPERIA X1. HTC – TyTN, TyTN II. Siemens – SK65. Needless to say, I’ve been around the mobile block a couple times but I’ve always felt most comfortable with Symbian. It’s a powerful OS with an abundant developer community and while the iPhone’s tagline might be “There’s an app for that”, it’s Symbian that originated the practice. While the foundation might be solid, the house built upon it has seen better days. I’m talking about the S60 UI, it’s gotten a bit long in the tooth. It seems with each feature pack, a previous annoyance is fixed by the introduction of a new feature or new option, but that new feature or option creates a whole new annoyance. It’s like expanding your house by adding an additional bedroom but you have to go outside and walk around the whole house to get in there. Taking that into consideration, simply slapping a touch interface onto that same cumbersome UI seems like a terrible idea but that’s precisely what was done with S60 5th Edition (to be fair, Microsoft was the first to shoehorn touch support into an OS not originally designed for it but I digress) and the experience is just as clunky as it sounds.

Now had S60 5th Edition been introduced as the UI running on the Nokia N95 in 2006, it would have been hailed as a giant step forward for Symbian & S60. However, a couple iPhones, Android and a Palm Pre showed us what a UI built with touch input in mind from jump should look like and more importantly, how it should “feel” (pardon the pun). It also shines in the spotlight directly on the fact that touch was an afterthought when it came to S60 (Can you picture an N97 running S60 3rd Edition? I can). Now the N97 is my first foray into S60 5th Edition after a brief dabbling in vanilla S60 3rd Edition (Nokia E62), a long marriage to S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 (Nokia N95 & Nokia E71) and a quick stopover at S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 (Samsung i8510 & Nokia N85). Not a lot has changed besides the addition of touch support and it was probably very clear to everyone involved that this was never meant to be a long term solution. It is now September 2009 and we’ve yet to lay eyes on what the future has in store for Symbian or rather, what Symbian has in store for the future. As such, it’s only natural to take a look at some other options and find out if the grass truly is greener on the other side of the fence or does it just appear to be from here because we’re currently standing on a brown patch. I’ve just returned from spending a couple days with my neighbours (who happen to be “Androids”) and I’ll tell you that it’s the latter. At least on that side of the fence.

The HTC Hero

I picked up an HTC Hero recently to see what all the fuss is about. For months, I’ve been hearing that the HTC Hero is everything the N97 should have been from a hardware standpoint and at first glance, it would appear so. Faster CPU, more RAM, capacitive touchscreen, 7.2Mbps HSDPA/2.0Mbps HSUPA. However, take a closer look and you’ll see that everything that glitters ain’t gold.

RAM, CPU, & Memory

First things first, the CPU has a clock speed of 528MHz and wihle that is faster than the N97′s CPU, which is clocked at 434MHz, the difference is negligible, you’ll notice this for yourself when you power on the device and start using it. This thing sure does lag at times. This is never more evident than when you have to use the on-screen keyboard or change the screen orientation (if it even lets you change screen orientation. More on that shortly). The entire show stops and the phone freezes for a few moments while the keyboard comes up on screen or the view changes from portrait to landscape. This was a problem for me when I was using the phone while lying down and the screen orientation would get changed inadvertently. The lag also ruins the Photo Widget, which is otherwise a great idea, by ending the smooth transition animation from one image to the next with a low res placeholder while you wait for the next image to load. I have nothing but good things to say about the 288MB of RAM that the Hero is loaded with. The multitasking is a bit strange though. It’s actually forced because once you open an app, you can’t actually close it, it just moves to the background when you’re done with it. Weird but at least all that RAM gets put to good use. I don’t necessarily need or want to press the shortcut for the browser and have it show me the last page I was on instead of my homepage but its not a big deal.

Hardware

Hardware-wise, the phone is built solid. You should expect nothing less from a phone with just one moving part. Speaking of that moving part, the trackball is located below the screen and is pretty much useless. It’s placement makes it difficult to use with just one hand and I often had to hold the phone in one hand while working the trackball with the other. Cute of them to include it but it’s much less of a hassle to navigate with the touchscreen. The ‘screen’ part of that touchscreen is vibrant and clear, I was actually very surprised when I learned that the resolution is just 320×480. The ‘touch’ part of the equation doesn’t quite match the looks but we’ll get into that in the next paragraph. I don’t know exactly why HTC designs all of their Android devices with that angled “chin” at the bottom seeing as it serves no functional purpose and it definitely does not look attractive. To top it off, it makes it even more difficult to use the trackball. Nothing special really about the rest, 3.5mm headphone jack (thank you for complying to industry standards this time around HTC) up top, volume rocker on the left, nada on the right, extUSB port on the bottom (forget what I said about standards), 5MP camera around back and MicroSD card slot under the battery cover. All of these worked as advertised so I didn’t spend much time going over them.

Touchscreen Experience And Typing

I’m not about to get into the whole ‘capacitive vs. resistive’ touchscreen debate in this space, let’s just say they both have their advantages and they both have their drawbacks. However, regardless of what technology is used, a touchscreen is only as good as its software. That being said, the HTC Hero’s touchscreen leaves much to be desired and the blame lies squarely on the software. The experience is far too inconsistent and I think HTC’s Sense UI is a big part of the reason for this. The touch response ranges wildly from too sensitive to not nearly sensitive enough and back again. For example, the homescreen (which is the crown jewel of the SenseUI) is far too jumpy and has a difficult time differentiating between taps, swipes, long presses and drags. Too many times, I would tap an icon and the phone would think I was starting a swipe. This is doubly annoying because unlike other phones that would respond to this swipe with an animation to a different screen (ala N97′s homescreen), the Hero requires you to “pull” the next page into view yourself so a short swipe will pull the current page a bit then it will snap back with a little recoil action as it sways back and forth a bit before locking back into place. The reason this drives me crazy is because the phone doesn’t accept any input from the touchsreen unless the current page is perfectly still. This results in having to try 2 or 3 times to open something from the homescreen. On the other end of the spectrum, the on-screen keyboard on this device is awful, just plain awful. It is far too cramped in portrait view even though the letters are incredibly tiny with a good amount of space between one another. Despite the decent spacing, the phone is never really sure which letter you were trying to press anyway and if not for the above-average predictive text, I don’t see how they would have gotten away with this.

Image by intomobile.com

The keyboard is a bit better in landscape because of larger keys and an even better spaced layout but it still struggles to detect exactly which key you want to press. The other problem with the landscape keyboard is that quite frequently I encountered application or certain menus in the UI that simply didn’t support the landscape QWERTY. At first I thought the phone didn’t have an accelerometer but the fact that the landscape QWERTY is just sometime-ish instead is far more disconcerting.

Widgets, Shortcuts, & Android Market

Image by gratisgadgets.com

My experience with the HTC Hero wasn’t the greatest but there were a lot of things I loved. The 7 pages of the panoramic homescreen is definitely #1 on that list. More than enough space for me to customize, organize and prioritize my widgets and shortcuts. I spent at least 2 hours just creating different ‘Scenes’ as HTC calls them. The device comes with pre-installed Scenes to get you started but it does not allow you to edit them at all which kinda depreciates their value but you can create as many of your own that you want. The shortcuts that can be added to all these Scenes go way beyond simple links to applications or bookmarks (they are there too if you need them), you can set shortcuts to turn Wi-Fi or Bluetooth on/off with a tap, instead of a shortcut to a contact card with options on how to contact them, you can set up shortcuts to make a specific communication with different contacts. For instance, I can create a shortcut to call my mother with a single tap but I might set up a similar shortcut to send a text message to my girlfriend. Very useful. The widgets that come loaded on the device are standard far but there are endless amounts just a click away in the Android Market. The Market is very straightforward and Nokia could learn a thing (or 17 things) from it. Simply list the available apps, ringtones, videos, utilities, etc., give a brief description of it, show me the price and rating all on one screen. A click later, my desired app is downloaded and installed. No fuss, no muss. The fact that the first thing the phone asks me to do after turning it on for the first time is my Google username and password is a nice touch but it was far too hard to locate the wizard in the menus if you choose to skip it or if you need to change something later. I never thought I’d say this but I kinda missed the Nokia Welcome app.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, there’s not much new here. Instead of being everything the N97 was supposed to be, the HTC Hero is pretty much the same phone. Great flagship phone but far from perfect. As the “New kid at school” luster starts to wear off, Android is just going to be another operating system if everyone keeps making all Android devices look the same. It’s a shame too because there is all kinds of potential under the hood (like the insane amount of integration with social networks in this phone) that would be better showcased in devices with a little more flavor and identity. You would be hardpressed to find major significant differences between the Dream, Magic and Hero if I were to lay them all down on a table in front of you. I would love to see Andorid on a device like the HTC Touch Pro or Touch HD (without having to hack it on there) or even a device with the form factor of a Nokia E71 or Blackberry with a larger screen and touch support. Until manufacturers start showing some originality, there isn’t much to write home about when it comes to Android.

Photos: N86 Camera Lens Protector Was Done Right – Why Did N97 Fail?

Mike Macias — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 04:52:54 +0000

This isn’t going to be another huge and long post about the horrible N97 camera lens protector problem and the nasty scratches it’s creating. Instead I’ll keep it simple and short. The Nokia N86 is Nokia’s newest flagship device, featuring the same great hardware as the N97. On the outside of both devices the camera lens protector looks the same. But upon close inspection, the N86 was slightly modified to prevent this problem that the N97 is having.

My twitter pal Nikki (@shewhowearsred) tweeted me an image of her N86 lens protector close up, asking me if she might eventually have the same problems as my N97. Look at the two images below to see yourself what the difference is…

Nokia N86

See the small gap on the yellow pad where it would cover the actual camera lens? The gap is big enough to prevent dirt particles from being pushed up hard against the glass or whatever it is made of. Now look at my N97…

Nokia N97

You can see how there is a something underneath the blue pad that is flush with the N97 camera lens. I imagine small pieces of dirt getting caught in there and rubbing up and down against the lens every time you flick it open. It is obviously a very simple design flaw, and it’s shocking this wasn’t caught by Nokia’s testing department. Even more shocking that a device that comes out at nearly the same time (n86) was done correctly.

Mark from The Nokia Blog recently posted proof that the scratches are affecting his photos, somehow causing light from the flash to flood his pictures. Mark says,

This past weekend (approx. 45 days of usage), I notice photos that used flash were washed out on one side. It looks like more scratches appeared on the lens that are now affecting the photos.

Not good news for N97 fans, but hopefully this article brings peace to N86 users like Nikki. Thanks again for the image Nikki!

A Gallery Of Scratches

Mike Macias — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 14:32:58 +0000

This photo gallery is a follow up to last week’s article about screen protectors for the N97 and which to get. I had mentioned that my N97 started to develop very small scratches on the screen which were only visible at certain angles. I didn’t have pictures at the time so author Timi was nice enough to send me some images of his scratches on the top of a Clarivue screen protector he has covering his N97.

Click the photos for high resolution…

Hopefully these images are enough to convince you to protect your N97 if you haven’t already.

N97 Audio Quality: Nearly Perfect, Rivals iPod Touch

Mike Macias — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:11:30 +0000

Now I’m no expert in audio quality but I know good sound when I hear it. After all I did play in a metal band for about three years during high school. You really need to have good headphones to hear all the instruments and notes going on that end up messing into a perfect melody – at least we’d like to think. Having excellent audio quality is really important to me since I use my phone as my main mp3 device. I use it the car, at work, and sometimes at home when I’m too lazy to get up and turn on the stereo. What a waste the 32gb storage would have been if the N97 has poor audio quality, right?

My pal Devin from The Nokia Guide came across a nifty little graph that shows the sound frequency of the Nokia N97 compared to the Apple iPod Touch. This should really help you come to a decision about the N97 if you don’t get a chance to hear or touch it before you decide to buy. And since Devin gave the sound quality a big OK, we should take his word for it because out of most phone reviewers I’ve seen he is the most knowledgeable when it comes to sound.

Check out the graph below, courtesy of GSMArena.

As you can see the results are extremely close! Props to Nokia for nailing it on the head in the audio department. Click here to see a chart comparing the N97 to other popular media devices.

For those who already own the Nokia N97 – are you happy with the sound quality?

N97 Photo Gallery: Black vs. White

Timi Cantisano — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:12:50 +0000

For those still on the fence about which color to purchase Ive taken some pictures of both. Hopefully this will help.

Personally I like both.

Nokia N97 vs. 5800 – A World Apart

Mike Macias — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 23:54:52 +0000

Many Nokia 5800xm owners are wondering if the N97 is worth the upgrade. The price difference between both devices is about $300 depending on where you buy. For instance Amazon.com has the 5800 for $289.99 right now while the N97 is going for $654. Below I will briefly talk about some of the main differences between both devices.

Touch Sensitivity & Responsiveness

If you’ve ever owned the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic or played around with one you’d know that the touch sensitivity is not very good. I currently own both devices and the touch experience is like night and day. The N97 is closer to the iPhone sensitivity, a lot more responsive and smooth. This for me was extremely surprising, I didn’t expect the N97 to be that sensitive. Even some iPhone buddies are jealous, saying their device is TOO sensitive, but the N97 was just perfect.

The N97 has a lens protector for the camera.

The Web Browser

The Nokia N97 has kinetic scrolling in the browser just like the iPhone. I really wish the entire interface was like this, rumor has it that it might be coming soon to the Contacts list. The Nokia 5800 does not have kinetic scrolling in the browser which is a huge bummer. The browser of the N97 is also much faster and more usable. When a web page is loading the N97 browser automatically switches to fullscreen while the 5800 keeps the navigation bars on the side. You must manually put it in fullscreen mode. It’s up to Nokia if they want to add this in a firmware update.

User Interface

Both devices run on Symbian S60 v5 and are much alike. The homescreen is much different, the N97 having the option of homescreen widgets or blank, while the 5800 allows you to have favorite contacts communications on the homescreen, blank, or four shortcuts. I would give the N97 the advantage because it’s so customizable. Just check out the N97 homescreen widgets page here at the blog to see what you can do. Besides the homescreen just about all other aspects of the user interface are exactly the same.

The Nokia 5800 is slightly thinner than the N97.

Nokia N97 has a full qwerty keyboard.

Other Differences

- N97 has a slightly bigger screen
- 5800 loudspeakers are better, and louder
- The N97 has a real keyboard – It’s awesome
- 32gb build in on N97
- Build quality of N97 is much better
- The N97 has a much bigger battery.

That’s all I can think of for now. If you have anything to add or questions feel free to leave your comments below.