11 January 2009

Weekend Watching:
Nokia N97 Hands On Videos From CES '09

This week at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Nokia has made the first public debut in North America of the highly anticipated Nokia N97 'mobile computer' which has been repeatedly commended as one of the most stylish, the most functional and the most impressive converged mobile devices to date.

Many lucky CES attendees got an opportunity to get hands on the one of the most eagerly awaited phone of the year and the luckiest of them all got a chance to spend some time with the best Nokia Smartphone and review it.

So, here are the two N97 CES videos, the first one is the little review from folks over at CNET and another one is actually a demo made by Nokia Spokesperson filmed by The Reg Hardware in high quality.

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!

*click to enlarge

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.

From other hand, 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 N97 will be pretty successful product.

Note for Nokia: I need one desperately!