CTIA 09: Hands-on impressions of the Nokia N97

My posting on CTIA was a bit lighter than planned because my wife’s 90-year old grandmother passed away and I had to leave a day and a half early to fly home and attend to matters. That said, I am trying to catch up and post thoughts on things I saw that are related to Nokia and the S60 platform. I was able to get my hands on the Nokia N97 a few times and I have to admit my desire for the device has cooled a bit, while my enthusiasm for the Nokia E75 has increased so let me explain below.

The Nokia N97 is not a shirt pocketable device, but that isn’t a criteria that I personally care too much about as I want a device that pretty much does it all and can be carried in my pants or coat pocket. The N97 has a very nice display and like most all Nokia products is very well constructed. I am not really sold on the value of the widgets available on the Home screen since there is very little information that is actually viewable in the widget itself. It is a nice way to quickly see if something has been update and to quickly launch the full widget for more details, but I prefer to have a home screen like I what you see on the Nokia E71 or E75 with upcoming appointments, email status, notification pop-ups, etc. and find this type of information more valuable than 4 widget status updates.

I am pretty adaptable to most QWERTY keyboards on mobile devices, although I think the one on the Nokia N810 is pretty poor since I constantly hit the wrong key or multiple keys when entering text and it is too closely mounted under the display. I have only spent about 15 minutes total with the N97 keyboard, but overall I am not impressed with it. There are only three rows of keys and I personally consider four rows the minimum, with five rows the optimum for fast text entry. With only three rows you are going to be using the Function and Shift keys a lot to enter punctuation, numbers, and other characters. I also find the right side placement of the space bar a bit odd. Unlike the FANTASTIC keyboard on the upcoming HTC Touch Pro2 (this device will be mine) the QWERTY keyboard is also laid out a bit strangely with the Q directly above the A which is directly above the left shift key. HTC is now getting it right with their keyboards that have offset QWERTY keys similar to what you find on a real keyboard.

One thing I did not know about that I discovered at CTIA is there is currently no support for software keyboards like the two found on the Nokia 5800 (mini QWERTY and full screen QWERTY). This means that you will have to open and slide the keyboard out to enter any text on the device, similar to what we see on the Palm Pre. I would rather see Nokia give the user the flexibility to use software keyboards and keep the device in closed mode if they desire. I think there were a couple of options (handwriting and a phone keypad) that were supported though and am now wondering if the particular software build on the devices I saw just had the two other keyboard modes removed or if this is what we will see when the device ships out in a month or so. I’ll have to keep my eye on this functionality. There is no stylus silo on the N97 either so it seems Nokia hopes you use your fingernail for navigation and keyboard for text entry.

Check out my full first impressions of the Nokia E75 to see why I am really enjoying this device. The device is zippy and responsive, while also giving me just about everything I could ask for in a smartphone. The Eseries all have excellent quality and the E75 continues that tradition with an exterior that makes you want to hang on to it all the time.

I am also really liking the Nokia 5800 and think this can easily fill the role of a touch screen Nokia device rather than paying double for the Nokia N97 with keyboard I really don’t think I will like. The 5800 display is beautiful and this last weekend I watched an Amazon Video On Demand movie, Office Space, that played flawlessly on it. The retail box is packed full of goodies and you should really consider this device if you are looking for a touch screen Nokia. The camera is not that great though and I am actually finding the E75 camera to be quite good. I plan to post up comparison shots of the E71, E75, and 5800 3.2 megapixel cameras here in a day or two.