Nokia’s giant N97 :: Everything you might need in a phone, but it could weigh you down when running for the bus

The good: The Nokia N97 features a touch screen, a full QWERTY keyboard, and 32GB of internal flash memory. The smartphone also offers 3G support, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS and comes equipped with a 5-megapixel camera.

The bad: The N97's touch user interface isn't well integrated and can be inconsistent and confusing, especially compared with the competition. We would have preferred a capacitive touch screen instead of resistive.

The bottom line: While the Nokia N97 is packed with features and offers the freedom of an unlocked phone, its clunky touch interface, sky-high price tag, and outdated operating system make it hard to recommend when there are better touch-screen smartphones on the market.

The summer of 2009 has definitely been a sizzler for the world of smartphones. It's only June and we've already seen the launch of some of the hottest devices, including the Palm Pre, the iPhone 3GS, the Google Ion/HTC Magic, and now we can add the Nokia N97 NAM to the mix. As soon as it was announced in December 2008, the comparisons to the iPhone started given all its advanced features and the addition of a touch screen and full QWERTY keyboard.

However, that was almost a year and a half ago and the N97 is just coming to market. In that time, a lot has changed: new players have entered the field (hello, Pre) and others device manufacturers and mobile operating systems continued to push forward but, unfortunately, Nokia didn't come along for the ride. Don't get us wrong; the Nokia N97 is absolutely filled to the brim with functionality. However, it's not enough to match a competitor feature for feature anymore. You have to provide quality hardware and a good user experience, and sadly, the N97 falls a bit short in those departments with an inferior resistive touch screen and clunky user interface. The steep $700 price tag doesn't help either. While the Nokia N97 might appeal to Symbian and N series loyalists, it faces a steep uphill battle against the aforementioned touch-screen smartphones.

Design
From a design standpoint, the Nokia N97 isn't exactly a showstopper. It doesn't quite have the wow factor of the distinctive Palm Pre and like the T-Mobile G1 and HTC Touch Pro2, the N97 is a bit of a handful at 4.6 inches tall by 2.1 inches wide by 0.6 inch thick and 5.29 ounces. It doesn't quite have the high-quality build of the Nokia E series and we're a bit weary of the flimsy battery cover, but overall, the smartphone has a solid construction and is a nice departure from the Nokia N95 and N96, especially with the addition of a touch screen and full QWERTY keyboard.

Features
There's no denying that the Nokia N97 is one feature-packed smartphone. It comes with a whopping 32GB of internal flash memory, which can be expanded to 48GB via the expansion slot, and Nokia preloads the device with a number of extra apps, including a dedicated YouTube player, Qik (for sharing videos from your phone), Boingo Wi-Fi service, Psiloc World Traveler, AP News, and Guitar Rock Tour. The N97 also supports the recently launched Nokia Ovi Store where users can peruse the large catalog of Symbian apps and download them to the device. This is, of course, on top of S60 platform staples like QuickOffice for viewing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents, Adobe PDF, a file manager, and other PIM tools, such as a Zip manager, a calculator, a notepad, a measurement converter, a clock, and a voice recorder.

Source: reviews.cnet.com