Comments on: Nokia's mystery device? The Nokia N97

Nokia officially unveils the Internet-focused Nokia N97, a full-QWERTY smartphone with a touch screen. Will its style and substance compete with the iPhone, G1, and BlackBerry Storm?

[Ilgaz]

It seems Nokia has to fix the USA problem (Carriers etc.) first. Nokia does make some great devices and they don't even get mentioned in USA because of stupid networks, horrible locks etc.
Europeans gets shocked why iPhone was such success. The major reason is, iPhone is a less locked device than Network provided N95. Unbelievable but true. No American (except very techie types) have seen the power and openness of Symbian. Even J2ME is a problem thing.

[abeautifulhaze]

Very true llgaz.

We need to start a petition for better American Nokia support.

I want to be able to download nGage Metal Gear Solid over Ovi for this thing....

[Ilgaz]

I was blaming Americans to be fooled with Apple ads when they get amazed by features my basic Nokia 7650 (first ever S60) had years ago. When I checked deeper, I found the amazing facts that you can't even install a basic J2ME application on some networks let alone installing full feature Symbian "mega apps".
I felt sorry for Nokia. Really. Especially those Symbian developers. I wondered how come Steve Jobs could claim "Nobody wanted Java". Well, nobody wanted because they didn't see what that tiny thing could do. Same for iPhone. They go crazy for apps which exists since 2002 since they have never seen anything like that before.

[Ilgaz]

As a note for particularly very high end Symbian phones (E series and N series). Don't buy them if you can only afford Network locked, controlled ones.
Buy "Sim Free" or don't.

[t8]

Buying this phone is really buying Symbian.
My money is on Android and Cloud Computing.

[Ilgaz]

Your money is at wrong place IMHO. With the big decision of Nokia opening Symbian, a very stable, progressed OS which already has everything available and Sun opening up J2ME, Android became some Google execs toy. Nothing else.

[mikeburek]

Bonnie Cha rocks!

Just sayin'.

[mpilon98]

This confirms what i've always believed to be true. Nokia is at the top of the cell phone chain

[Gunady]

Wow.. seems like a great device.. hope it launches world wide includes Asia in Q1 2009.

[davidmcelroy_dotmac]

The hardware seems very powerful, but the UI looks terrible to me. It looks flashy, but it looks as though it would be confusing and unclear for someone who just wants to use a device instead of treat it as a hobby. For gadget geeks, it will be popular, but I think Nokia needs to quit worrying so much about long lists of features and just simplify the experience. THAT is what's making the iPhone sell so well. Nokia has better phone engineering than Apple does at this point. If their engineers could think more like real people instead of like engineers, I think their software would be much better. (Obviously, this is just my impression from watching the promotional videos and the demo videos today. I'm thinking back to the original promotional videos for the iPhone. There's no question which was more friendly for non-geeks.)

[Gandalf2050]

Yeah definitely the us is not the only market, and for some reason it seems Nokia doesn't like the way the us does phone business with the locked phones and junk, if I understand it correctly most overseas locations don't lock your phones. Oh and its 40% market share last time I checked they went up. And just so everyone knows the next highest market share I think is 16% that's a wopping difference. Oh yeah and Nokia phones last forever as long as you don't totally smash them around, they can take a fair beating.

[johnnyp500]

I can NEVER switch from my Blackberry Bold to anything no matter how pretty it is.. I love the Blackberry :)

[Zacm05]

Other than 32gb storage, not impressive at all. I am very happy with my iPhone 3G, thank you.

[johnqh]

Did anyone actually pay attention to the video?

It shows why people like iPhones.

This Nokia has no animation support except the item you are dragging. Nothing zoom in, zomm out, or move.
The tapping is not consistent. Sometimes, he tap once to select, then double tap again to open. The in another case, he tried to double tap, but it actually opened after the first tap.
When he played video, tap once to bring up the controls, but it seems the controls goes away too quickly. Several times, he tried to tap a button to change something, but the button is already gone.
Overall, the UI seems to be not very responsive.

The attention to detail is what got iPhone there, not touch, gps or whatever features.

[Dalmatian28]

O yeahhh....finally! The phone has everything that I like about iPhone and eliminates everything that I hate about iPhone. How can you not like 5 MP camera that shoots videos, ability to use cut and paste, screen resolution that is among the highest out there and I think best of all... it combines big touch screen with keyboard. I gave my iPone to my girlfriend because the "junk" keyboard was so hard to use and it was so inaccurate. I think that N97 will be the first phone that truly does almost everything right!!! It was about time!!!!!

[pakijawan]

I have no clue why US does not let Nokia in deals,or maby Nokia does not want to come in US(i know nokia has small cells with att and other carries but im talking about big cell like this one),OR maby its just some money thing.But seriously,till up do date,this seems like one of top best cell phone coming out,the seize might be a little issue,but with 32gb,flash,and good battery life.I'm gonna sell my iphone for it.Iphone can do a lot of upgrades that can keep it on the top,but the way apple is acting,i dought we will get what we want soon or ever.

[esp275]

Will it have WiMAX?

[iamtooawesome]

The Nokia N-96 is already out in the U.S.
It's on sale at Best Buy. But for $899.99, i think i can do a little better.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp;jsessionid=LBFB53X1FFSLHKC4D3GFAFI?_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&id=pcat17071&type=page&st=nokia+n96&sc=Global&cp=1&nrp=15&sp=&qp=&list=n&iht=y&usc=All+Categories&ks=960

[ethanmcdonald]

I love that more competition is coming out for the touch screen phone market.
But the Apple UI for the iPhone is so much slicker, like when it transitions between screens, it just feels better use.

I'm not trying to say that the N97 isn't a nice phone.
It's just that the Nokia user interface not nearly as polished as Apple's.

This is coming from a PC guy but unfortunately the video demo of the N97 really did quell my want for an iPhone. ?
After owning an iPod Touch for 2 months and being a T-Mobile customer for 12 years I fear will soon move to the AT&T network.

Hopefully though, it will make Apple beef up its camera and add a flash but I doubt it. :)

[xalakox]

In the demo seems to take forever for the apps to load and every function has a delay; I just think that if this is the responsiveness on the promotional the actual phone will be far worse.

[dirty55409]

can't compare a phone that isn't out yet... Nokia N97 is a great looking phone no doubt but I'm afraid it will be just like the Nokia N95 that had a great list of features including 8gb of internal memory, but was too bloody expensive to EVER appeal to the average consumer. Seriously just about nobody (except us tech geeks) has ever heard of a nokia n95. that's because it's still $500 after like 3 years. lol

[srleeplus3377]

Actually, as a owner samsung innov8, u dont need to hold it still at all, it uses still picture technology so you can take hd pictures even though u may be in an earthquake, i suggest u should stop flaming phones that you dont even own.