Nokia N97 Mini – Improved and with better features
Thumbs Up:
Nokia has made improvements in the performance and design from the previous N97. It has free voice-guided navigation access to Ovi Maps with weather forecast and premium content. The smartphone has full range of email options, 5-mega pixel camera, and a spacious QWERTY Keyboard.
Thumbs Down:
The user interface is quite confusing to use and it still needs to be improved. The inbuilt web browser is a bit difficult to navigate. The slider to open the phone is stiff. Support for video codecs and formats are limited.
Inside the Trunk:
Technology: WCDMA (UMTS)/GSM
Band: WCDMA (UMTS)/GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Phone design: Slider
Caller ID: Yes
Other features: 5-megapixel camera, spacious QWERTY Keyboard and faster processor
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
Nokia N97 Mini is based on WCDMA (UMTS)/GSM and supports the quad-band WCDMA (UMTS)/GSM 850/900/1800/1900. The inbuilt operating system is Symbian OS 9.4 Series 60 v5.0 Firmware 2.0. Some of the basic features are calculator, reminder, alarm, calendar, vibrating alert, polyphonic ringer, call timer, voice recorder and speakerphone. It supports the call conferencing facility and wireless interface including Bluetooth 2.0 EDR, IEEE 802.11 g/b. The smartphone can be synchronized with PC using MS Outlook. The inbuilt memory is 8 GB and it has a microSDHC card slot to support the cards up to 16GB.
Nokia N97 Mini has a small 3.2-inch touch-screen display having QVGA 640×360 resolution that supports 24-bit (16.7 million) colors. The display illumination color is white. It has inbuilt ambient light sensor to adjust the screen brightness automatically as per the environment light. It also has an inbuilt accelerometer and proximity sensor to change the screen orientation from portrait to landscape when you tilt the phone.
The additional features include Class 32 GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), EDGE (Enhanced Data Rate for Global Evolution), HSCD (High Speed Circuit Switched Data), Nokia Mini Browser and HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access). The phone also supports Mobile Email including POP3/IMAP4/SMTP email protocols. Macromedia Flash Support, PDF Support and Microsoft Office Support are also available.
Nokia N97 Mini has inbuilt 5-megapixel camera that is equipped with Carl Zeiss Vario-Tesser lens, it has various editing options, 14x digital zoom, geo-tagging, auto focus and a dual-LED flash. The still image resolution is 2584×1938 and supports the JPEG/EXIF image format. The video recorder resolution is VGA 640×480 that supports MPEG-4 format.
The media play supports various formats of music including eAAC+, AAC+, AAC, WMA and MP3. Whereas, H.264 and MPEG-4 formats are supported for video playback. Nokia offers an online web store to download video files, audio files, ring tones, wallpapers, screensavers, games and themes.
The connector types available on the Nokia N97 Mini are 1x Headset jack, 1x Audio / video out and 1xMicro-USB – Mini phone. 1200 mAH lithium ion battery has battery life of 430 minutes talk time and 320 hours idle standby time. The Nokia N97 Mini comes packed with a software CD, a cleaning cloth, reference material, wired stereo headset, USB cable and AC adapter.
Razzle Dazzle:
Nokia 97 Mini is a mini version of N97. It measures 4.4×2.1×0.6 (height×width×depth) and weighs 4.9 OZ. There is a slight difference between the sizes of N97 and N97 Mini. Nokia N97 comes in cherry black color and this solid phone is a pocket friendly device. The plastic body cover is replaced with a stainless steel cover, which gives a more substantial feel.
Inside Dope:
Nokia’s flagship model-N97 Mini is armed with long list of features and a touch-screen. The Nokia smartphone sports nice specifications like a 3.2-inch touch screen, full QWERTY keyboard, 3G HSDPA support, Wi-Fi, A-GPS, 5-mega pixel camera and support for microSDHC cards up to 16GB. But these features still don’t save the Nokia’s sinking ship. The N97 Mini has a poor performance and the user interface too is not that good.
Nokia N97 Mini comes unlocked at $470. The performance has been improved as compared to its predecessors. Nokia is equipped with similar traditional features, its user interface is still frustrating and confusing. We cannot see the N97 to attracting users other than die hard Nokia/Symbian lovers. The devices of various companies like Android, Palm Pre and Apple iPhone has better features and performance than Nokia N97.
Nokia N97 Mini’s display is vibrant, sharp and has an ambient light sensor to adjust the screen brightness automatically as per the light in the environment. Not only this, it has an inbuilt accelerometer and proximity sensor to change the screen orientation from portrait to landscape when you tilt the phone.
In the original N97, some menu items required single tap and others required multiple taps to load. Sometimes we had to perform multiple steps for a single task and scrolling through lists was laborious. Things have changed in the N97 Mini, it comes with 2.0 firmware update and it does not give such problems.
Various improvements have been made in touch-screen interface to provide better user experience. We also did felt that display was responsive enough. Scrolling through menu items is easy. However, there is no simple and uniform menu system which is ubiquotoes in a smartphone these days. This would would make it hard for the N97 mini to compete with other smartphone big wigs such as HTC and Samsung.
Nokia has removed the traditional D-pad which gives you a bit more space on the phone. You get a more ergonomic and spacious keyboard which decreases the chances of mishits. We found the keyboard was easy and decent to use. The keys are slightly stiff to press and the space key is still off-center. Space bar is long which is good for typing bit it is moved over slightly to the sides.
The slider to open the phone is solid, but a bit stiff. It requires a strong push to slide open the phone. While writing this review we asked a friend open the Nokia N97 Mini. He ended up pushing the phone so hard that it almost flew out of his hands. This is certainly not a deal breaker though, you will get hang of it after a while.
Touch sensitive Talk, End and Main menu keys are located below the display, whereas, the 3.5mm headphone jack and power button are on the top. A lock switch, Micro-USB, a camera button and a volume rocker are located on the right side. The camera is located on the back and it does not have any protective cover over the lens. The camera will activate on hitting the camera button.
Nokia N97 Mini has a lot of features which were offered by N97 in the first place, however, some features have been cut to keep the price and size down. The Mini comes with 8GB internal memory instead of 32GB in the N97; however, Mini has a microSD expansion slot behind battery cover that supports card up to 16GB. FM Tuner is also not included in the Mini.
Nokia has recently announced that it will provide free voice-guided navigation to Ovi Maps for all GPS enabled phones with free text-to-speech spoken directions, weather forecasts, event information and premium content like Lonely Planet city guides. The application can be downloaded from Nokia Ovi web store without any cost.
The call quality of the N97 Mini was enough good and appreciated because it neither had background noise nor voice distortion to distract us from conversation. Although the callers reported good result about the call quality, yet they also heard a bit of echo sometimes. There were no dropped calls and we did not have any problems while using airline’s automated voice response system. The call quality dipped while on the speaker, which is not unexpected. In louder environment, the speakerphone volume sounded a bit hollow.
Nokia N97 Mini supports AT&T 3G bands and provided good coverage and speed while testing. We successfully loaded Microsoft website in 10 seconds whereas MSN and Star Sports website loaded in 5 to 7 seconds. Nokia N97 has Nokia Mini browser, which works great to display the pages and supports Flash Lite. The navigation is a bit clunky as it is not easy to enter the URL to go to a new website. You have to press the arrow button first on bottom right-hand corner, then press the globe icon and then enter the web address. You can simply double-tab on the screen to zoom. As you have to click on the link by fingertip, it becomes difficult sometimes to touch the correct hyperlink on a small screen.
Nokia N97 Mini has a media player that supports eAAC+, AAC+, AAC, WMA, MP3 formats. It allows you to create on-the-fly play lists and has inbuilt equalizer. For testing, we played various songs of different format and received good quality sound, however, the speakers sounded a bit sunk. The media player also plays videos but it is limited to support only a few video codecs. While playing some MP4 clips, we received good playback but the image quality turned out to be a little fuzzy sometimes.
While testing the camera, we got fine image quality from various indoor and outdoor shots. The objects were clearly defined and colors were vibrant. The camera can record VGA video at 30fps. We also tried to capture some videos. The resulting video quality was decent.
Nokia N97 Mini is solid, stable and faster machine than N97. The Mini is capable to work with multiple applications at a time and there is noticeable responsive difference between N97 and Mini.
Nokia N97 Mini has a 1200mAH lithium ion battery that gives a battery life of 7.7 hours talk time on 3G and 7.17 hours talk time on GSM. The idle standby time is 14 days for GSM and 13 days for 3G. According to FCC radiation tests, the Nokia N97 Mini has a digital SAR rating of 0.91 watt per kilogram.
Nitty Gritty:
Nokia N97 Mini is more stable and strong device than usual N97. It also have better improvements, however, the user interface is still frustrating which gives it tough market competition. We recommend it the users who want a better phone than the previous N97.
