Our correspondent checks out two phones Nokia hopes will help it conquer the elusive high-end space

N97: Always on
LIVE life online 24/7. That is the Nokia N97’s USP. With a customisable homescreen, widgets of your favourite news networks, Facebook, e-mail, favourite contacts and weather, among others, chances are that is exactly what you’ll be doing. Better get that unlimited Internet plan while you’re at it.
We liked the Facebook app in particular. However, the transition from widget to the app itself was slow and the handset we used got stuck a few times. The N97’s web browser is also nothing to write home about — zooming in and out is clumsy and website rendering is simply not up to the mark. The phone is begging for third-party intervention from the likes of Opera Mobile. Thankfully, Internet browsing is just one of the N97’s many features. In contrast, e-mail is gloriously easy to set up; but that’s more of an industry norm than an exception these days.
The N97 is the first N-Series phone to offer a nano-laptop form factor with a QWERTY keypad that slides out while the screen is pushed upwards by a hinge. And while Nokia’s Series 60 operating system has been tweaked to make the handset more finger-friendly, the N97’s direction pad provides a precise method of navigating through documents and webpages, and selecting text for copy and paste. The lack of number keys can, however, be frustrating and the QWERTY keyboard is too wide for comfort.
The N97’s screen measures 3.5 inches across and packs in a massive 640x360 pixels. The touchscreen is of the resistive type (similar to the Nokia 5800) and isn’t quite as responsive as the best.
The handset’s other features include a 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, GPS, Wi-Fi and 32GB memory. The N97’s built-in GPS receiver can be used to find locations, geo-tag photos and for navigation. The phone’s massive memory can be augmented with the addition of a 16GB memory card.
At Rs 36,166, the N97 is a bit on the expensive side. It rates a 4 out of 5 in our reckoning.

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