Nokia 97 is one cool phone!

Last December, I was in Barcelona for the Nokia World event. The highlight of the show was the N97 phone which left everyone in awe. We were allowed to handle a beta version of it and everyone wanted to get their hands on it. Just to feel it and get a sense of what it’s like to hold such a glorious device.

If you think Nokia’s E71 is a cool-looking phone, wait until you see and get a hold of the N97. It’s the first Nokia phone that has the kind of “wow” factor normally associated with Apple products.

The N97 is what you’d call a slide-and-tilt phone, so named because when you slide the phone to open it, the front screen tilts at a 35-degree angle. It’s not the first slide-and-tilt phone in the market. HTC had one much earlier. But it’s the most elegant.

When opened up, it looks very much like a mini-computer. In that sense, it’s like the clamshell-styled Nokia Communicator. Except it’s less bulky and a whole lot sexier. Notice how the Communicator is called the E90 (signifying it as a business-phone) while the N97 with its “N” preface indicates it’s a – for want of a better description – “fun” phone.

That doesn’t mean it can’t be used for work purposes. It has a full QWERTY keyboard, making it easy to type out longer documents. Some attendees at the Barcelona event pointed out that the space bar, which is located on the lower right hand corner of the keyboard (near where your thumb would be) is awkward but actually, it’s just a matter of getting used to it. I personally think it’s quite natural to have it there since the way you type on a small QWERTY keyboard is with your thumbs. It’s not full-fingered typing like you would on your laptop.

One key differentiating factor from the Communicator is that the N97 has a touch-screen, which is the hot trend right now with smart phones, I think in no small part due to the iPhone. And the N97 is supposed to be a cool fun phone. So, it has a touch screen. It should also been mentioned that the home screen can be personalized, allowing you to move around the various widgets and applications on your phone.

Like all good smart phones, it can play movies and music but that doesn’t really matter to me. I never use my phones as multimedia entertainment devices because battery life is very important to me. I can’t afford to have my phone die out on me. I need it for work, even if it is a cool phone.

There are many other features that I will not detail here such as a application that allows the “sharing of one’s social location” because I really don’t think I will be using such features (nor would most people).

The top three things that I look for in a phone are strong speaker-phone function (because I hate wearing ear pieces), easy text input (which necessarily requires a QWERTY keyboard) and good Internet capabilities (Wi-Fi ready, big screen and capable browser). The N97 has all that and is stylish to boot. What’s there not to like?

Comments

[sabre23t]

If you're constantly using your phone on the go, rather than at a desk, I believe you'll find the "two handed" or "one hand with desk" required to use the slide qwerty keyboard to be too limiting.

That "one handed" use feature of E71, TreoPro and ilk, makes them the choice of those who thumb type on the go. ;-)