Nokia N97 - Review

OK. Take the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, now well known and loved. Add:

* a larger screen (3.5" rather than 3.2")
* 32GB of internal flash memory (yes, 32 GIGABYTES)
* a functional slide-out qwerty keyboard
* a mechanical d-pad for game playing
* a more sensitive resistive touchscreen layer
* a much better stills camera (5 megapixels, large aperture)
* a metal screen surround, with higher quality buttons and better build quality generally
* microUSB charging
* a compass
* a bigger battery (1500mAh, rather than 1320mAh)
* a new, much better widget-based homescreen
* N-Gage applications, the Nseries image gallery and other associated applications
* improvements to Web, with kinetic scrolling

... and you've got the N97. That's quite a list of improvements. The big question is whether the improvements are worth the extra £200 or so that Nokia are asking for the N97, SIM-free. Arguably yes, I've been impressed so far (a few caveats below not withstanding), and with many people eventually getting the N97 on contract, in which case it will be 'free', the price issue will all but go away.



What follows is my initial tour of the Nokia N97 and my thoughts along the way. Over the next two weeks, we'll have further review parts, looking in more detail at every aspect of the N97.

In the hand, the N97 adds a few extra millimetres in width (allowing for the larger screen), in height (ditto) and in depth (due to the qwerty keyboard), but the overall device is still great to hold, with the bottom of the rear face curved downwards to both provide a natural handhold and stabilise the N97 when on a desk being typed on. It's still quite a bit narrower than other competing full-face devices, e.g. the iPhone, but the difference from the 5800 is enough that the N97 feels less of a touchscreen phone and more of a miniature tablet computer.

One with a rather well hidden secret. There's a hinge mechanism (with struts apparently made from a metal alloy, thankfully) and the screen slides and tilts up, as shown above. The thing is - the build quality of the mechanism is so high that it takes a few seconds for you to even work out which way the screen slides - the fit when closed is that tight. Some great mechanical design here and one which I'm sure Nokia has patented. HTC and Apple, to name but two, will be eyeing up this design enviously. It brings to mind the great Psion palmtop designs of old and, like the Psions, there's a ribbon cable allowing the magic to happen while keeping data flowing to the screen. However, we're talking a ribbon cable with more maturity and suppleness than the clumsy component in the Psion - so I don't anticipate ribbon cable problems here. Here's a shot of the cable itself:



One side effect of the stable and sturdy hinge is that the space available for the qwerty keyboard is rather restricted, in terms of rows of keys. A further restriction comes because of the need for a mechanical d-pad (needed for compatibility with all the N-Gage games). And then, because of the sliding mechanism, the keys are constrained vertically as well. The end result is a keyboard that's constrained into a rectangle measuring only 85mm by 20mm, with key travel being only a millimetre.



It's all a far cry from the Psion Series 5mx, an old device which, ostensibly, this has a lot in common with. Qwerty keyboards have been steadily declining in size and usability in portable devices - the N97's is only slightly quicker to use than the on-screen 'virtual' qwerty of the Nokia 5800. In part, the lack of speed is because of the size, but it's also because of the weird layout imposed by only having three rows: the space bar is shuffled off to one side, for right thumb use, for me the single most frustrating element of the design - in fairness, you do get used to it, but having to relearn where the most commonly used key is located is annoying.

Another design element which would have been trivial to fix is that the current key legends are comparatively small. They look clear enough in the photos, but use the N97 in real life in average light and your eyes have to be pretty good to always see which key you're about to hit. Larger letter legends would help enormously here, Nokia. Changing the key layout and then making the legends tiny is not a good combination... It's worth noting that in, low light, the keys are backlit beautifully and the experience is transformed, with no visibility problems.



To re-iterate what I said in the podcast yesterday, the Nokia N97 is better seen as a touch-screened Nseries device that happens to have a d-pad for gaming and a miniature qwerty keyboard for ad-hoc use, rather than as a crossover upgrade from an E90 or E71, both suited to much longer text entry - coming from either of those smartphones you'll probably be frustrated by the keyboard here. It's fine for short text messages, but writing anything longer would drive me crazy.



The other effect of the hinge is, of course to angle the screen, Psion Series 5-style, so that it's automatically at a good angle for viewing when sat at a desk. I found that using the N97 in this mode, with the screen raised (as in the top photo here) was fairly practical, even though you have to brace the device slightly for finger taps in the top half of the screen.



The screen is still TFT LCD and with a resistive top layer, of course, but the N97's component is of much higher quality than that in the 5800 XpressMusic, with the result that it's slightly more responsive to finger taps and drags, and with there being significantly better contrast outdoors in bright light - although the TFT does get harder to see the more you angle the screen into the sun, it stays clear for much longer than the 5800. This is especially valuable when taking photos or video, as the chances are that you'll have the sun behind you. Of course, a transflective screen (such as on most traditional S60 phones or on the Apple iPhone) would have done even better - maybe making a resistive transflective screen is a problem? Anyway, perhaps that's an option for a future device - I don't think many people will be too disappointed by the N97's screen overall.



The cameras in Nokia's Nseries smartphones haven't really improved much since the classic N95 - the specification has remained identical, while we've seen minor variations in colour handling and video focus. We now have dual LED flash, which is obviously better then single LED, but light years short of the Xenon flash on the N82 and 6220.



In use, stills results are excellent and even better than those from the N95, with slightly better colour accuracy, to my eyes at least. Here's a sample photo from the N97 from this morning:



There will be much more on the camera side of things in a future review part. Video capture is at the same spec as on the 5800 - with no initial focussing yet again and with focus set at infinity - I much preferred the N95/N82 style capture, focussed at a metre or so and aimed at making people in focus rather than the distant background, but I guess it depends on what you want to shoot. Those looking for initial focus in video mode will perhaps be looking at Samsung's i8910 HD instead. Here's a brief (overcast but bright) video clip shot on the N97 in its default widescreen mode - again, wait for my review part for detailed samples in wider light conditions.

Of special note is that the sound levels in recorded clips are too low. I'm really hoping that this is a software issue that can be fixed in firmware - maybe levels were set low so as to cope with people recording video at concerts, or maybe the automatic gain control is just not working right yet?

Also of note in the N97 on the hardware side is the huge 1500 mAh battery, the same one as in the E90, E61i and E71 - it's a proven power source and it's good to see here. Battery life shouldn't be an issue.



In terms of processor speed and general performance, the core chip runs at almost 20% faster than that in the 5800, resulting in a speed-up that's noticeable. Everything's that bit snappier and most of the time I had no complaints about the speed of S60 5th Edition. Free RAM after boot-up (and after all homescreen widgets had loaded) was 46MB, but I'd expect this figure to rise in future firmwares, up into the mid 50MB range, at least.

Is 50MB or so of free RAM enough? This is an argument that could run and run. 95% of users will have no problems, but power users will start hitting the limits in normal use. For example, running up Web (with a big page loaded), the N-Gage client, Music player, plus the Ovi Store and a few PIM applications - a not unreasonable workload after a few days of use) - results in some of the initial loads (Facebook, AccuWeather, etc) being closed down, to save memory. As the firmware is tightened up by Nokia, I'd expect the free RAM to rise and these minor issues to go away. Yes, Nokia could have stuck in another 128MB of RAM, as Samsung did with the i8910 HD, but there are cost and battery life implications. A tough one to call.

Taking a long hard look at the software bundle in the N97 is something that will take us a few review parts to get through. However, here are some of the standout highlights, bearing in mind that this is a 'first impressions' piece:



Homescreen - never mind the schizophrenic mess that is the 5800's home screen, the N97 nails it here. Mixing live social panes (e.g. showing current Facebook messages, Hi5 and more...), live weather (via AccuWeather) for your actual location, application shortcuts, email and more, you'll never have used the home screen so much. Great job. GREAT job. And a single side swipe removes all the widgets, for both privacy reasons and so that you can admire any wallpaper. Very neat. I dearly, dearly hope that this homescreen also finds its way to other Nokia S60 5th Edition devices...

Web - as Rafe already reported in detail, Web now has kinetic scrolling, plus other enhancements, such as defaulting to full-screen view once a page's HTML has been parsed.

Maps - although still v2.0, it now works in landscape mode as well. Hopefully this can be retrofitted to the 5800 in the next firmware.



N-Gage - the client for this is built-in (at least on our retail review model - this may vary according to markets) and all N-Gage games that I tried seemed to work fine. No doubt there is room for fine tuning here, not to mention games which actually use the full screen, but it's a start.



Nokia Drawing - a new, simple utility that lets you do quick sketches. More on this in due course.

Quickoffice - as usual with Nseries devices, it's the viewer only, v4 (so no Office 2007 file compatibility), though an editing version is/will be only a paid upgrade away.

Third party bundle - from JoikuSpot to YouTube to Amazon to AP News to Qik to Boingo, Nokia has sensibly rounded up some of the best free apps and widgets and pre-installed them. About time. With the Ovi Store also now in the firmware, more users than ever before will finally get to grips with third party software.



Pros
* Super screen in most light conditions
* Great build quality
* Mature camera system
* Powerful battery
* 32GB of flash memory
* Good external buttons and d-pad
* Terrific homescreen 'live' widgets
* Good third party application bundle
* Kinetic scrolling in Web, Ovi Store and other Webkit-based apps

Cons
* Fiddly, non-standard qwerty button keyboard
* Video camera focussed on infinity rather than on people
* Relatively low RAM
* Cam-based hinge with ribbon cable - however strong, there's the possibility of breakage, failure and dirt/dust ingress - better treat the N97 nicely, everybody!
* No TV out cable supplied in the box
* Immature firmware (typically true of any phone)

Am I excited by the Nokia N97? Yes, on the whole it offers a huge step up from my current 5800 XpressMusic, with comparatively few disadvantages. Do I want one? Yes, definitely, I'm a true geek and this packs a frighteningly large amount of technology into such a small box. Is it the perfect Symbian smartphone, one that will please everybody? The usual answer: No. Camera fiends will be looking for 8 megapixels and above, preferably with Xenon flash - for them the N82 is still the best real world camera-toting Symbian-powered smartphone. Email and office fanatics will be looking for a much better (and more standard) qwerty keyboard (see the E90 comparison photo below - the E90 still reigns supreme here, among Symbian phones, at least). Music fans will find the 5800 XpressMusic better and louder, or might prefer the dedicated hardware music controls on the potentially underrated N96. But between these extremes, there's a space in between where the N97 will do almost everything many people will ever ask of it and will do them very well indeed.

The original N95 was a watershed device that opened people's eyes to what was possible in a world of uninspiring options. We've mentioned the N97 in the same breath in our podcasts, but I'm starting to think the comparison isn't that appropriate. The world of large touch-screened smartphones is itself fiercely competitive these days, and many of them rock a qwerty keyboard too. Will the N97 stand out? It's certainly a desirable bit of kit and, with significant firmware and feature love from Nokia in the next 12 months, might well have the staying power that the N96 seemed to lack.

Nokia E75 vs E71 - Form Factor

One thing I have found myself thoroughly enjoying on the Nokia E71 over the past 5 or 6 months that I’ve been using it daily, is the form factor. Up until the E71, I had never liked the concept of qwertys and I was pretty much agnostic about form factors. But day after day, I started realizing that my views were changing about both statements: I was starting to be dependent on qwertys, and the candybar qwerty form factor was easily becoming my favorite. The E71 changed me, as it did with many of its owners I’m sure. I noticed that because I’ve had a lot of devices in my hand in the past months (N96, 6210 Navigator, N85, N82 to name a few), but my SIM card couldn’t remain in them even one day: it was instantly flowing back to the E71. The E71 is solid, sexy and most of all slim and very well built.

It is with these assumptions in mind, that I found myself opening the E75’s box and looking at the device wondering: how long will my SIM card last in it? Knowing the long list of similarities between the E75 and E71, on a hardware and software point of view, the main difference between them remained the form factor. So how did I find it?

First of all, I want to point one thing out: the E75 that I received is a french version and hence has an AZERTY keyboard, not qwerty. My E71 is also azerty, mind you. But, there are some differences between both, mainly affecting the punctuation, characters, and numbers placement. For example, some punctuation marks are appended to the Fn button and hence can be accessed by long-pressing the corresponding key, but the period and the question mark are appended to the Shift key, which means that I can only access them by clicking Shift then clicking the corresponding key. Whomever designed the Azerty on the E75 should be shot in the head. Seriously. I still find it counter-intuitive to type on the keyboard, and I still make mistakes all because of that.

For the past 6 days that I’ve had the E75, I had to relearn the placement of all the keys, all the numbers, all the letters. It’s stupidly annoying, and it reminded me why Qwertys suck. There is no default key placement, an issue that we never face on T9 keypads. The 12 keys are always there at the same place, and the appended alphabet is always the same no matter what device you have, no matter what manufacturer made it. We need that standardization for qwerty.

First impressions

At first, I kept sliding the full keyboard, even to type the smallest word. I guess I was too obsessed with the E71. But a few hours later, I found it increasingly easy to type those small words on the keypad, and to only slide the keyboard for full sentences or paragraphs.

For someone self-confessed as an E71 addict, the full keyboard on the E75 took me some getting used to. I was easily able to type fast on it, probably as fast as I do on the E71, with all the keys offering some awesome tactile feedback, but I wasn’t comfortable. The keyboard is double the width of the E71’s, the keys are also a lot bigger and very flat. This means that my fingers had to travel between each key and the next one, a problem I don’t face on the E71.

Six days later

To answer my first question on how fast will my SIM card fly back to the E71, I’ll say that for 6 days, it remained in the E75. That, by itself, is an achievement that the E75 should be proud of. Very proud of. Over the course of these 6 days, I got used to the weird key layout on the E75’s keyboard, as well as to its width and the width of it’s keys. Now, it’s second nature to type on it, and I no longer feel uncomfortable doing so.


The form factor of the E75 also draws some attention from passers by. Everyone assumes that it’s an ordinary phone, until I slide out that full keyboard, the sounding click of the slide resonating when it’s open, then I get some glances as if I did something very Sci-Fi’ish.

Another thing I have noticed over the 6 days, is that although I still prefer the landscape layout on the screen, I have missed the portrait layout which shows a bit more lines and hence a bit more information. The portrait mode is something the E71 doesn’t offer and I like that the E75 gives me the choice. One thing to add is that I haven’t disabled automatic screen rotation on the E75, something I always do on other devices. This is probably due to the fact that on the N96, N85, N82 amongst others, landscape orientation feels forced as the keypad is still in portrait. With the E75, I always have the option to slide open the full keyboard and start typing while still holding my phone horizontally.

On a negative note, one major annoyance I have with the form factor, is the lack of a d-pad, softkeys and menu button on the slideout qwerty. It’s really annoying to have to go over to the top slider each time you want to control the d-pad or select something. I got used to it but it’s still counter intuitive in my opinion.

Another negative thought is that you HAVE to hold the E75 with both hands in order to use the qwerty, and it is impossible to type with one hand. I tried doing it but I failed. On the E71, it’s very very easy to type with one hand.

Which is better?

Many people have asked me if I like the E75 better than the E71, or not. To those I answer, that by the importance of the form factor alone, they’re just different. I like them both, in a different way, and I can see myself using them both. The E71 feels more at home in my commute-filled life in Paris. The E75 would be awesome if I am leading my always-behind-the-wheel life in Lebanon: I text a lot while I drive, and T9 is way safer than qwerty as I’ve memorized the layout. Watch out for tomorrow when I shell out the ins and outs of hardware differences between the E71 and E75.

The Nokia 5800 already supports multitouch

The Nokia 5800 is criticised by some for being a single-touch device that can only register one finger press at a time. But is this actually true? Not quite. With a bit of clever interface design the existing 5800 hardware is already capable of registering two simultaneous screenpresses at once, and you can see how this works in the full story below (you can even try it for yourself, and there's a video of a 5800 game using it). The reason this is worth mentioning is that Nokia is already using a more limited version of this method in their just-released Maemo 5 SDK, which is the latest version of the platform they use on their internet tablets. If Nokia's already using it there, it seems very likely they could use it on their S60 devices too.
How multitouch on the 5800 can work

This example might seem pointless because it doesn't do anything useful, but that's because the QWERTY keyboard hasn't been designed with multitouch in mind. Apps designed for multitouch would use it properly and do stuff that is useful.

The purpose of this example is just to de monstrate how the 5800 detects keypresses, so you can see how multitouch could work.

The beauty of this example is that you can try it out yourself on your own 5800. Just start an application that uses text entry and select the full screen QWERTY keyboard. Now, do the following...

Hold down Q, and the Q button lights up:


Hold down P, and the P button lights up:


Now, hold down P and Q simultaneously, and the button directly between your touches lights up (either R or T, depending on exactly how you're pressing Q and P):


All you need to do to have a simple multitouch interface on existing 5800 hardware is interpret touches exactly between two controls as simultaneous presses of both controls.

You might be thinking that this is silly because people could activate multitouch by accident if they do a single touch between two controls. However, there are ways to avoid this problem.

You could then tell the device to only record multitouch when another button is already active. This means that if someone touches the screen between two controls it won't activate multitouch by accident, because no other button was active at the time the touch happened. In theory this would prevent multitouch working with two truly simultaneous touches, but you would very very rarely put both fingers onto two parts of a screen at exactly the same time, it's far more likely that you would touch one part first and then another part. Also, application interfaces could be designed to discourage truly simultaneous touches.

You could also design apps in such a way that there's no point in touching the area between them, for example a racing game could have all the controls at the sides of the screen with the middle used for displaying the race itself.

The benefit of this technique is that it requires no extra hardware, and it could work with even the cheapest touchscreen devices, though it may require more careful planning of where on-screen controls go. This is old news really, many developers are already using this method, but most people don't seem to realise that this is possible.

This isn't as flexible as "true" multitouch, as it wouldn't be directly recording the true position of the two touches, but that probably doesn't matter much because the user wouldn't have to ever know how it works. Clever and careful design of app interfaces can make this method function in a way that is virtually indistinguishable from traditional multitouch.

The extra care needed for interface design may make life more difficult for app developers, but the much wider range of devices they could reach would provide them with far greater sales potential. Very few devices do support true multitouch, so any technique which allows multitouch on all touchscreen devices is potentially very valuable indeed. It would also make simultaneous development for multiple touch-based platforms much easier.

Nokia are already using this method in the recently-released Maemo 5 SDK using the name "two-touch", where you hold down your finger on one part of the screen while touching elsewhere in order to activate a status menu: the interface would be registering two simultaneous touches, which is multitouch (of a kind, at least). Nokia could just as easily implement this technique on future S60 touch interfaces, and app developers can already use this technique for 5800 games and applications right now if they want to.

There's more though. As I indicated a few months ago, the timing of the keypresses and their 'release' could also be used. Extending the thoughts above, I can see how the user might:

1. press and hold the screen at 'q'
2. 0.2 secs later, press and hold the screen at 'w'
3. 0.2 secs later again, release the screen at 'q'
4. finally, release the screen at 'w'

There's more than enough information here for the touchscreen driver to pass on coordinates as appropriate, effectively giving multi-touch (more like 'dual touch', since handling three spots at once might get too hairy!) on a non-multi-touch, resistive virtual keyboard. In this case processing the text input "qw", even though both letters were held down at the same time for a while.

Is there a technical reason why this technique wouldn't work?

How to Remove scratches from your Phone's Camera Glass

You'll remember from last year that, through over-zealous attempts to wipe off dust, the camera 'glass' (actually plastic) on my Nokia N95 8GB had actually gotten more damaged than if I'd left the dust on (I suspect). Despite normally being kept immaculate in a case, after three months of use, this is how the camera cover looked:


Although I proved that this had little effect on most photos, it was still galling to have damaged this most important part of my phone.

However, the scratches concerned were tiny and I had the gut feel that they could be polished out easily enough. 'Polishing' here is taken to mean very lightly abrading the surface to bring the level of the top surface of the transparent plastic down to so that the scratches (i.e. the tiny, shallow grooves where dust particles have gouged in) become part of the surface, restoring a nice, clean and smooth cover that doesn't mess with the light coming into the main (glass) optics of the camera below.

But what to polish with? Screen cleaner? No, that would just add a layer of polymers over the top of the scratches. Toothpaste? That's been said to do the trick, but there are so many varieties - do I use 'Whitening' paste? Following a recommendation on Twitter, I bought some 'Displex' on eBay. Costing £3, including postage, this claims to both polish out small scratches and (if necessary) fill in any deeper ones in a useable way.

Displex comes as a small tube of creamy liquid (enough for about 1000 applications!) and a lint-free cloth:


Now to work:

1. I followed the Displex advice to mask off the surrounding plastic with tape, just in case.

2. Adding a couple of drops to the camera 'glass', I firmly rubbed the Displex in with the cloth, using a circular motion, for about 30 seconds.

3. Almost all the scratches were, somewhat magically, gone. I repeated the treatment with another couple of drops and another 30 secs polishing.

Here's the result:


Rather impressive, I think you'll agree. The virgin phone did, apparently, have an extra, anti-glare coating applied to the 'glass', and the polishing action has removed most of this, but I've noticed no difference in terms of photo quality.

As ever with this sort of tutorial/feature, I'm eager to gather data points. Have you tried something similar with one of your camera phones, and if so, what were your experiences?

How to make video calls on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

The 5800 has a built-in secondary camera in the top right corner of the front of the phone, which is mainly intended for videophone calls. You can make and receive video calls very easily, in fact they're almost as easy as ordinary calls.

Video calls will only work if you're in a 3G or 3.5G network, so make sure you can see the 3G or 3.5G logo under the call signal bar in the top left corner of the screen before attempting to make a video call.

Note that video calls usually cost more than ordinary phone calls. If you're unsure how much they cost, ask your phone network operator about their video call charges.


How to make a video call to people in Contacts (the address book)

1. From the main standby screen, select the Contacts icon (the person icon).

2. Double-click on the person you want to call.

3. Select "Options".

4. Select "Call" and then "Video Call".


How to make a video call to people who aren't in Contacts

1. From the main standby screen, select the Dialler icon (the keypad icon).

2. Enter the number you wish to call.

3. Select "Options".

4. Select "Call" and then "Video Call".

How to customise the main menu on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, including folders and sub-folders

How to customise the main menu on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, including folders and sub-folders

You can customise the menu system on the 5800 by changing the menu type, by moving icons from one place to another, and by creating folders and sub-folders.


How to change the menu type

1. Go to the menu system by pressing the white menu button.

2. Select "Options".

3. Select "Change Menu View".

4. Double-click on the menu type you want.


How to move icons around the 5800 menu system

1. Go to the part of the menu system where the icons are that you want to move.

2. Select "Options".

3. Select "Organise".

4. Drag the icon you want to move to the place you want to move it.

5. When you've finished moving icons, select "Done".


How to move icons to another folder

1. Go to the icon you want to move.

2. Select "Options".

3. Select "Organise".

4. Select the icon you want to move.

5. Select "Options".

6. Select "Move To Folder", then choose the folder you want to move the icon to.

7. Select "Move".

8. When you've finished moving icons, select "Done".

Useful Tip: You can move icons to the front page of the menu system by selecting "Root Folder" as their destination.


How to create folders and sub-folders

You can create as many folders and sub-folders (folders within folders) as you want. These are useful if you want to organise icons by particular themes, and can bevery useful if you've installed lots of new applications.

1. Go to the part of the menu system you want to create a folder or sub-folder.

2. Select "Options".

3. Select "Organise".

4. Select "Options".

5. Select "New Folder".

6. Give the folder a memorable name, then select "OK".

7. When you've finished creating folders, select "Done".


How to delete folders and sub-folders

1. Go to the part of the menu system that contains the folder you want to delete.

2. Select "Options".

3. Select "Organise".

4. Select the folder you want to delete.

5. Select "Options".

6. Select "Delete", and then "Yes".

7. When you've finished deleting folders, select "Done".