Nokia N97 Testing Notes: Day 3
Email
So how does the Nokia N97 perform as a messaging device? Well, it’s good. But it’s not brilliant.
The QWERY keyboard is both a blessing and a curse. Yes, it’s easier to use than the iPhone’s cramped soft keypad. But with so little travel in each key, it’s not much more responsive than tapping a touchscreen, and isn’t blessed with Apple’s error-correcting smarts.
Nokia N97 on test
They keyboard is certainly no match for the Blackberry Bold. In fact, the N97′s key layout feels, if anything, a little too big – there are some serious thumb calories burned in sretching for certain lettters, and too much thumb scrunching involved in getting to the awkwardly placed space bar and alt/symbol keys. It’s annoyingly easy to apply symbol lock by accidentally double-tapping the arrow key, too.
On the bright side, the N97′s direction pad provides a precise method of navigating around documents and webpages, and copy and paste is in evidence (if a little fiddly). Plus, there’s a robotic voice that will read your emails to you. Cool, if slightly pointless for those of us with working(ish) eyes.
Nokia N97 - distinctly likeable, and eco-conscious too
Social networking
The Facebook app works very nicely – in fact, I prefer it to the iPhone app. The hompage widget telling you your current status and scrolling the three latest updates from your friends. However, the complete lack of Twitter is astonishing. It doesn’t even appear to be on Ovi, although I couldn’t say for sure because Ovi is terribly flaky and lacking – as far as I can find – any search function.
There are some other social networking apps on Ovi, but as Facebook and Twitter are as far as my networks stretch I didn’t look any further.
The N97 deserves a better browser
I’m getting a bit frustrated with certain aspects of the N97 – in particular the web browsing. I feel like I must be doing something wrong, because I can’t work out how else you’d explain the complete lack of any web search functionality that doesn’t involve firing up the browser and then loading up the Google homepage.
Why not a search box on the homepage? Or at the very least one that’s built into the browser?
Website rendering is poor, too. The N97 desperately needs Opera Mobile. fortunately, that can’t be long in coming. In the meantime I’ll grudgingly make do with Opera Mini.
Still, at least the browser will allow you to download files – in fact, one of the nice features of the N97 is that i’ll can download music direct to your phone from a variety of sources such as emusic and 7 digital as well as the supplied amazon app. Openness is definitely one of the more charming characteristics of the n97 – it’s so nice to be able to send photos via Bluetooth, something sorely lacking on the iPhone.
Screen & camera
What else? Well, the touchscreen works pretty well but sometimes I yearn for a stylus to click on tricky links – something I rarely feel with the iPhone. Still, at least it’s a resistive touchscreen – it’s not as responsive as the iphone’s capacitive screen, but at you can use stylus or gloved fingers.
And the 5MP camera? Well, the autofocus works well in decent light conditions, but the LED flash is next to useless, so the iPhone’s 2MP camera actually performs just as well in low light conditions. I took two tricky backlit pictures of my daughter ava, which I’ve posted below. See if you can guess which one’s iPhone and which is N97 (you can click through to full res versions and the answer is at the bottom of the post)
I’ll do some more thorough photo tests over the weekend.
Test shot 1
test pic 2
Is battery life the deal-breaker?
Finally, there’s the battery life. I managed a whole day of decent-ish useage yesterday. Then I charged the N97 last night using the bundled adapter that converts a normal (but incompatible) nokia charger into a suitable proprietary USB charger. The battery was full at 8am this morning, but by 10.15am the phone was already down to one bar and doing that oh-so-annoying ten-minute beep. Two hours later, it’s still on one bar, and still complaining. And I’m struggling to work out how to turn off push email to preserve battery power.
Let’s hope this is a blip, but battery power was the Achilles heal heel (thanks David) of the N95 and a bit of a problem with the N96. I shall monitor closely.
PHOTO ANSWER: Test Shot 1 was taken with the N97, Test Shot 2 with the iPhone. The N97 definitely has a superior camera – it has autofocus rather than fixed, 5MP rather than 2MP, better photo-taking ergonomics and a better camera app that doesn’t take agonising seconds to load. But despite all of that, the iPhone still takes a good picture. Click through to the full-res pics and you’ll begin to see the iPhone’s flaws, though.
Read Nokia N97 testing notes: Day 2 – Feature hinge
Read Nokia N97 testing notes day 1: first impressions
