03 December 2008

Official N97 Hands On Video
And Symbian Freak’s Impressions?!

With the release of Nokia N97, Nokia’s S60 has finally evolved in something bigger and better and I am not talking abut cosmetic changes and the touch extensions only! The whole platform is greatly improved but without code break and loosing the backward compatibility which is exceptionally important for an average end user of the S60 platform.

The multifunctional, multimode and highly customizable active standby screen is greatly improved and now features the people, content and media that matter the most. It can be fully personalized with frequently updated widgets of favourite web services and social networking sites and I just hope it will be possible to add this to Nokia 5800 as I just can’t wait half year to test it out!

Nokia is criticized a lot lately, here on Symbian Freak as well, mainly because of the lack of the high-end and somehow innovative phones but now it is obviously that they have been focused on developing the internet service and various different software solutions including the 5th edition of the S60 platform and now it is obviously now that Nokia haven’t wasted two years of hard work on the 5th edition development for the Tube only!

The last flagship, mighty Nokia N95 is released more than a two years ago and it took so long indeed, but from other hand there is no great achievement that is not the result of patient working and waiting and Nokia N97 worth it!

Phone is a huge departure from the S60 phones that we use now-a-days a real flagship touch device but considering that we’ll get several new phones next year based on the same or similar user interface it is hard to say if Nokia N97 will manage to keep its flagship title as long as the oldie Nokia N95! Actually I hope it will not and we’ll get even better phones next year!

Don’t get me wrong, Nokia N97 is undoubtedly great phone and I’ll get it without thinking twice and I don’t care about price, I’m ready to spend thousands of euros just to get the proto, but let’s be honest and say that there are plenty of room for improvements. Not to mention that we are living in the fast moving world and that this phone will be available for about half year and by then some of the listed specification might not be as attractive as they are at the moment.

Phone features great 3.5” screen but 360 x 640 resolution is a bit outdate already and competitor products from HTC and Sony Ericsson are already equipped with better screens. If you are here for long enough you are well aware that I’m not crazy about megapixel and that I honestly thank that they should stop megapixel race and start top work on the better optic, more sensitive sensors, extend software with more features and improve quality over all!

From other hand an average phone users cares only about number of megapixel and considering that competition already working on 12 MPX beasts 5 MPX cam sensors will not be as attractive in the middle of the 2009!

The only thing that I can’t understand is the lack of the xenon flash! There is no excuse for that, it is a must have equipment on such device with such high price. I know that good capacitor that is powerful enough to power xenon flash requires lot of place but in my persona opinion device is large enough to carry both, Xenon for still photography and led for video!

What to say at the end?!? Well, Nokia is HUGE, really HUGE, the biggest handset makers in the world and S60 has lot of fans, 80 millions of 3rd edition users. Nokia is so HUGE that it is even not necessary to be the first or even to have the best product to win the race and although it will be very expensive gadget I am pretty sure that N79 will be pretty successful product.

Note for Nokia: I need one desperately!