TechLounge

Today we were sent Nokia’s latest mobile phone the N97.

Our first and biggest issue with the device was that, although it was a review sample, it didn’t come with a UK mains charger, but a European 2 pin plug. Thankfully we could connect it to our PC via the USB cable to charge the phone, but it is a lot slower to charge up than the standard mains adapter. This will undoubtedly be resolved when the N97 is released in the UK.

When powering up the device the first thing that struck me was, I couldn’t work out how to get into the main menu system, but then we found that by pressing the silver button in the bottom left corner you got full menu access.

It comes with a 5 mega pixel camera with built-in flash and video light and has a huge 32GB of internal storage, which can be expanded up to another 16GB via the microSD card slot, just in case 32GB isn’t enough.

The N97 is rather large in size (117.2 x 55.3 x 15.9mm to be exact), because of its 3.1” touchscreen display and slide out QWERTY keyboard, so if you’re looking for a small phone then this definitely isn’t for you. It seems to be aimed at people that need to be on the net all the time so pretty much social media people.

The GPS and Nokia Maps work well together and the compass feature is rather nifty. The only problem that we had is that we struggled to get a signal and the actual device thought that we were in Huddersfield, so it was a good 50/60 miles out, but again this problem will probably be rectified before release.

The 3.1” screen is really nice and sharp and is capable of displaying 16 million colours on its 360×640 pixels, which makes web browsing a pleasure, the BBC’s Iplayer will look really nice on this phone and it will be a lot easier to watch compare to some of the smaller Nokia devices.

All in all The Nokia N97 is a great device, it is fast and the QWERTY keyboard is nicely designed. There were a few teething problems with our device, but nothing major, so if you are in the market for a decent Smartphone with lots of features then the N97 is worth a look.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 at 11:35 am and is filed under Mobile Phones. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.