Nokia N97 - black (unlocked)

• Average user rating: 2.0 stars out of 16 reviews
• My rating: 0 stars

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• 10 stars

  Just keeps getting better.

  by foodus99 on July 24, 2009

  Pros: Wi-fi, FM Radio and Transmitter, 3.5mm Audio Jack, 32GB of Storage, Physical Keyboard, Solid Build quality, great looking screen, great 5MP camera with dual LED Flash. Run applications in background. Customizable ringtones!

  Cons: Keys on keyboard take getting used to. Auto-correct for texting is awkward. Occasional lag on internet pages.

  Summary: I went from a 16GB iPhone 3G to this phone and let me tell you, its a huge improvement. The main thing that really angered me with the iPhone was ...

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  Summary: I went from a 16GB iPhone 3G to this phone and let me tell you, its a huge improvement. The main thing that really angered me with the iPhone was the restriction of everything with that phone. The camera, terrible. iPhone's camera should be quite close to the same thing I'd give an infant as a digital camera. Not to mention the quality was abhorrent.
  
  I wanted a new text ringtone, but no, not possible (iPhone fanboys, quiet, I don't want to jailbreak my phone, shouldn't have to).
  Also, I want to make one of my songs a ringtone, but no, I either pay 99 cents or go through some absurd work around in itunes.
  
  Now with the N97 I can do all of that and more. Plus I've found a program that allows me to sync my itunes library with the N97. Effectively replacing the Mp3 player function the iPhone had.
  
  Enough iPhone bashing though. As the n97 still isn't completely perfect. It has what may one day be similar to the App Store, but right now the Ovi store is a bit of a joke. (Doesn't bother me because the apps feel like a big gimmick anyways). The phone comes with everything on it that I need.
  The internet browser is sufficient, though feels slow at times (flash heavy sites). I have a feeling that will be addressed in the next firmware update. Which brings me to my next point. The firmware updates do wonders for this phone. I used the phone for a day with the original firmware and was disappointed with some rather stupid glitches, but after the one update they had available the device improved ten-fold in many areas. Overall speed with navigation and other tasks work perfectly now. It's also nice to see that Nokia puts out these updates somewhat frequently and allows users to submit changes they want made. Nokia is putting forth a lot of effort into making this phone very successful.
  
  As for the price, with a little bit of hunting, this device can be picked up for $470-$530 unlocked. People may see this as high, but lets take into consideration the prices of similar unlocked phones (32GB iPhone 3GS - $700-$800 on ebay).
  
  Overall, I'm happy to have this phone instead of the iPhone or anything else. The pros I mentioned above are great and the mp3 player function (which is why I bought the iPhone a year ago) is great. Sound quality sounds the same as before (which is great) and the 32GB of storage is especially great.

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  2 out of 3 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 3 stars

  The worst phone I've ever used

  by 110010110 on December 13, 2009

  Pros: 32GB Memory, 5MP Camera with AutoFocus, FM Transmitter Software, WLAN, Nice keyboard and The Dictionary Software.

  Cons: User Interface(Symbian 9.4 is the WORST UI EVER), Slow Camera(takes forever to process a photo), Slow Internet Browser, Resistive TouchScreen(The screen is not very responsive) and it's unstable.

  Summary: A few months ago I bought my Nokia N97 for $600 or something. It has an ARM 412MHz Processor, 32GB memory, 5MP camera with AF, GPS, Symbian OS 9.4, ...

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  Summary: A few months ago I bought my Nokia N97 for $600 or something. It has an ARM 412MHz Processor, 32GB memory, 5MP camera with AF, GPS, Symbian OS 9.4, a useful QWERTY keypad and a resistive touchscreen. It looked beautiful from the outside but it was ugly in the inside.
  
  The Symbian Operating sucks! It's so slow that it makes a snail look like a cheetah, LOL! Sometimes it automatically restarts and It isn't very good at responding too and it didn't support Kinetic Scrolling until the new update came out in october. It's probably the worst Operating System in the whole world.
  
  The resistive touchscreen on the N97 isn't very responsive and it lacks Multi touch input. It takes forever to zoom into a photo or webpage. The touchscreen is just too primitive. Web browsing isn't very easy on the N97, it's really SLOW! The facebook application on the N97 doesn't have notifications and live chat and sometimes it crashes.
  
  So the Nokia N97 is the WORST phone in the whole Universe! Even my old Nokia N95 was better than the N97!
  
  A lot of NOKIA FanBoys might think that I'm crazy. They'll see when they buy the thing.

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  1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 2 stars

  Could be the worst phone ever manufactured. Seriously.

  by mrthux on December 7, 2011

  Pros: There are none.

  Cons: This phone does everything poorly.

• 1 stars

  Really bad made from Nokia.

  by boopathikumar on February 10, 2011

  Pros: I can't say anything good about this handset. I have / had lot of problem with this mobile. Still I am using this mobile, because I paid 630 Euros.

  Cons: Very slow. Cmera is not working well. When you use flash, half of your photos with flsh light. Bad touch screen. Bad service from Nokia.

  Summary: Touch screen: very bad
  Camera: Very very bad
  OVI maps: very sad
  Price: overpriced
  You wont be able pick calls when it is locked.
  Sluggish performance
  Bad operating system
  
  
  Waste ...

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  Summary: Touch screen: very bad
  Camera: Very very bad
  OVI maps: very sad
  Price: overpriced
  You wont be able pick calls when it is locked.
  Sluggish performance
  Bad operating system
  
  
  Waste of your money. I wasted already.

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• 5 stars

  There are some bugs in N97

  by sameirmohan on May 22, 2010

  Pros: Good design. QWERTY-slider keys are too good.

  Cons: Base memory is less and it become full quickly.
  Image quality is poor in default settings.
  You wont be able pick calls when it is locked.
  There is no much control while scrolling the contact list.

  Summary: Good support. Most of the issues are solved by updating the software. We can do this using Nokia PC suite.

  Summary: Good support. Most of the issues are solved by updating the software. We can do this using Nokia PC suite.

• 1 stars

  worst speed

  by abdulrazeedmech on May 6, 2010

  Pros: good clarity

  Cons: processor speed

  Summary: worst speed, low responsibility,non detection of mass memory automatic shutdown,hanged songs

  Summary: worst speed, low responsibility,non detection of mass memory automatic shutdown,hanged songs

• 4 stars

  Great multimedia phone...

  by Vincenzo_23 on March 2, 2010

  Pros: The phone has great multimedia features, call quality is good, speaker phone is good, full qwerty keyboard was nice to have.

  Cons: The user experience is just awful. The phone crashes, freezes, and forget about web browsing; the browser will crash constantly! The interface is not intuitive, and its response to tapping is not very good.

  Summary: When Nokia released the news that they were finally coming out with a touchscreen phone, I was immediately sold. Having been a fan of the Nokia N series after using ...

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  Summary: When Nokia released the news that they were finally coming out with a touchscreen phone, I was immediately sold. Having been a fan of the Nokia N series after using the N73, N81, N82, and N95 devices, I could not wait to get my hands on this baby. Needless to say, I was a Nokia fanboy. This phone left me shaking my head and ripping off my Nokia fanboy badge.
  
  Let's start with what all phone reviews ought to start with -- CALL QUALITY! This is a phone you know.
  
  Call quality is good on this phone. I was always able to hear callers on the other end, and they heard me clearly as well. Speakerphone was good, and even having the phone approximately two and a half feet away from me, people still heard me well enough in speakerphone mode. So, no gripes here!
  Composing texts and emails were easy enough. The full qwerty keyboard was nice to have. The buttons were responsive, and it was nice to have them raised off the keypad to help differentiate the keys from one another. Yet, the space bar was in an odd place...on the bottom right hand side... This just felt very unnatural and often slowed me down when composing a message, email, or what have you. The slider felt smooth and sturdy and brought the screen into a tilt position making video viewing, browsing, and so forth a more comfortable experience. The D pad helps when going through files, pictures, and so forth. Why do I say this? Well...
  
  Onto the screen. First of all, it's a resistive screen...now this may be old technology...but I decided to give it a chance. I was a Nokia fanboy after all. But like I also said, that has changed. The screen was not very responsive to the touch of my finger at times. It often skipped or missed commands of my tapping. When scrolling through the contacts menu, I would accidentally open a contact's info because the phone would take my initial placement of my finger as a command to open the contact's info even when I would swipe my finger to scroll. This happened way too often for my tastes. Now as for viewing web pages, pictures, files and so forth, I mentioned that the D pad was a wonderful aid. This is because of the choppy scrolling and terrible responsiveness of the phone. On numerous occasions, I would try to scroll down a web page, or my photos, or just downloaded files, and the scroll would be terribly choppy and would sometimes become stuck for seconds in a still position before being able to scroll again. Freezing during navigation never happened with the D pad. It was definitely an eye soar watching the choppy navigation, but it was much more efficient than scrolling. Pressing down on the track of the D pad allowed you to select a link, folder, file, photo, etc. The D pad also made it easier to edit texts, since tapping on a specific word automatically highlights it. If you try to do this in order to edit a word, it is difficult. Say that you type out pone and want to insert an H between the P and O, it is easier with the D pad, since clicking between P and O can lead to you just selecting PONE altogether. Now the brightness of the screen was mediocre. I say mediocre because compared to most phones, it's on par. But, you're not buying just any phone, right? The N97's screen compared to other high end phones, like the Iphone, HTC Hero and Pro Touch 2 is poor. It's dull and the blues seem a bit off here and there.
  
  If I were Charles Barkley, I would call the web browsing on the N97 TRBL. But, I am not Sir Charles, so I'll settle on calling it TERRIBLE! The browser crashes constantly. I tried this on Edge, 3G, and WIFI. This is why I wish Nokia would have at least given the phone a more powerful processor. 433 MHZ just doesn't cut it. There is flash support, but whoopty doo if you can't keep the browser running.
  
  The widgets were actually pretty cool, but the live widgets are glitchy. I do not know how many times I had to log back into Facebook from the widget. The weather app was nice, but it kept asking me to re-add my location here and there. It happened to much to not be annoyed. The news app eventually stopped loading it's front page whenever I would open the app, but it would load just fine on the widget on my homecreen. Otherwise, system widgets work fine. The friendster widget never worked out for me. Overall, it was actually a very disappointing experience.
  
  The phone is not exactly user friendly. The interface can be a bit annoying. Some items require two taps, some one. Apps are hidden in an application folder. You can bring them out to your home menu screen, but then that screen gets clogged up. Also, everything is choppy on the phone and loads slowly. What holds the phone back seems to be the Symbian OS. This was great a few years ago, but it is not 2010. Android 2.1 and Iphone OS 3.1.3 are out. Using the N97 made me feel like I was living in 2003.
  
  Camera, Video Recording, Voice Recording, Video Playback, and Musicplayer were all strong.
  
  This phone crashes and restarts on its own a lot. N97=overpriced

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• 3 stars

  Beta-grade device

  by caygill on January 26, 2010

  Pros: - lot of tempting features
  - compact.

  Cons: - buggy software
  - memory issues
  - design flaws
  - faulty GPS-design (can be fixed as warranty replacement)
  - faulty camera design, severe flash halos.
  - sluggish performance

  Summary: A phone that promise a lot and has all the feature on could ask for. Unfortunately very few of them functions as expected or as promoted by Nokia. The device ...

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  Summary: A phone that promise a lot and has all the feature on could ask for. Unfortunately very few of them functions as expected or as promoted by Nokia. The device out of the box is rather a proof of concept, than a finished product to be offered customers.

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• 8 stars

  Fantastic phone providing necessary functions and more!

  by alimalik04 on January 20, 2010

  Pros: Good user interface, good processing speed, user friendly, excellent functionality.

  Cons: The music player needs a bit speeding up. Syncing with a computer is a constant problem especially if you want to add media using Windows Media Player. No Mac OS connectivity is a serious bummer.

  Summary: I love this phone despite some of the issues. The keyboard is great after you get used to the key layout. The camera is fantastic for both video and stills.

  Summary: I love this phone despite some of the issues. The keyboard is great after you get used to the key layout. The camera is fantastic for both video and stills.

• 4 stars

  i regret this phone!!!!

  by dduarte008 on December 10, 2009

  Pros: keyboard!!! laggy features!!

  Cons: really laggy!!! bad os!!! internet really sucks!!! it stop turning on after 2 weeks of use!!!

  Summary: bottom line is that ispent my money on this!!!! thank god i got a full refund!!!dont buy best advice 2 give

  Summary: bottom line is that ispent my money on this!!!! thank god i got a full refund!!!dont buy best advice 2 give

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