Nokia unveils flagship N97 phone

[Biolizard]

Not an iPhone killer. The hardware isn't a bad attempt and I don't mind the sidekick, but the software is holding it back. iPhone OS, whilst based on OS X, is relatively new whereas Symbian OS has been around for 10 years+; it just can't compete. Nokia need to get their new acquisition to rewrite the thing from scratch, and S60 could use a graphics overhaul while they're at it.

I do want Nokia to put out something that can compete though. The last thing we need is Apple getting arrogant because they have a massive market share.

 

[cenetti]

The Good
And the iPhone will undoubtedly be upgraded to 32gb by the time this thing actually ships sometime next year. So this is no real advantage.

I am bored with iphone. No MMS, No cut&paste, no Flash, toy camera with "impossible to take self portraits" interface. and NO GPS! ( oh yes, it has a chip for novelty purposes...lmao!)

Oh let's not forget the " OH you're one of those douche bags" comments I get everytime I use my phone.

Give me something new with all the options I mentioned above... I am gonE..
My last 2 phones been iphones...I am tired of waiting, all these firmware upgrades, still nothing useful. BAH!

 

[Daremo]

I love when products like this come out. It will hopefully force Apple to add in the features we've been missing, or create some new innovation to add in. Competition is great. The consumer always wins.

 

[johncarync]

This is it?

This is the amazing phone they've been working on in a shroud of secrecy? A Symbian phone with a 5mp camera? Not groundbreaking at all. Nokia didn't even find it special enough themselves to give it a new name. It's the N97. Nokia also makes the N73, N75, N76, N78, N79, N81, N82, N85, N95, N96, and N810. This is yet another phone in an already crowded line.

 

[daneoni]

I am bored with iphone. No MMS, No cut&paste, no Flash, toy camera with "impossible to take self portraits" interface. and NO GPS! ( oh yes, it has a chip for novelty purposes...lmao!)

Oh let's not forget the " OH you're one of those douche bags" comments I get everytime I use my phone.

Give me something new with all the options I mentioned above... I am gonE..
My last 2 phones been iphones...I am tired of waiting, all these firmware upgrades, still nothing useful. BAH!

Amen. I like the iPhone but i'm bored of it now...gimme a viable alternative and its sayonara

 

[applepies]

Promo video and youtube video are like night and day.

Kind of like with the iPhone advertisement that was found illegal in the UK?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaN1Nz1Dyls


Only the difference is that this one here is a very early prototype (apparently hand built).

 

[miketcool]

What's interesting for Nokia is that they have been working for years on a touch interface. They have had this long project that is finally starting to see the light of day. Apple was in a better position because they had all the R&D done and just needed someone with direction to say, put the pieces together.

I have long respected Nokia, they make excellent phones. I feel part of this sluggishness that has come about in their mobiles is due to the acquisition of Symbian. The refinement is coming.

Nokia Road Map

I am excited, I carry my phone primarily as a phone, and secondarily as a camera. My N82, only complaint is the speed of the OS. The last update fixed most of that.

 

[happydude]

I wouldn't mind if the OS is stable and responsive. But nokia bragging about the hardware alone just raise red flags in my head about their software. The UI seems cluttered on the video.

For the record, I'm still using an old non-camera phone.

agreed. as with many smartphones coming out now to compete against the iphone, i'd assume the software was ignored in order to rush out something that looks iphone-ish.

of course until these are in the wild, that's just speculation. from the movie, i'm not impressed. though if that thing can copy and paste . . . they're ahead of apple. . .

 

[minik]

As a current iPhone 3G user, I like the N97. The Symbian OS is pretty solid as well.

 

[happydude]

I am bored with iphone. No MMS, No cut&paste, no Flash, toy camera with "impossible to take self portraits" interface. and NO GPS! ( oh yes, it has a chip for novelty purposes...lmao!)

Oh let's not forget the " OH you're one of those douche bags" comments I get everytime I use my phone.

Give me something new with all the options I mentioned above... I am gonE..
My last 2 phones been iphones...I am tired of waiting, all these firmware upgrades, still nothing useful. BAH!

exactly. great we have street view. who the f$#k cares. i want the iphone to be functional for my work and life, not so i can see stupid views of times square.

 

[TLewis]

The hardware specs are impressive, but the severe lack of quality applications (compared to the iPhone) is a HUGE hurdle. Nokia's going to have a hard time in the US (although, from what little I understand, I'm guessing that this will sell well in Europe).

 

[sandman42]

I doubt the Nokia phone will allow you to do all the things shown in the video in under a minute, as depicted. I wonder if they'll have to change their ads...

 

[juanster]

Amen. I like the iPhone but i'm bored of it now

I love the iPhone it has so much potential but firmware after firmware all we get is more "useless cool bloat". Sure it s nice to get street view. Sure it's very nice to get directions in our maps or emojicons. All great stuff. But what about stuff that that could actually be useful and people are asking for it. Landscape mail. Landscape SMS. Where is mms? Copy and paste? All hat kind of stuff.

 

[Agathon]

This phone is a joke. Nokia just don't get it.

It's the software, stupid.

You can put out all the great hardware you like, but if the software sucks/is antiquated, it's a non-starter. Symbian sucks almost as bad as Windows Mobile. Sure, it might be better than previous phones, but we are now talking about mobile computers, and people need a desktop class OS for those. Symbian ain't that.

The only true iPhone competitor is a touch screen phone running Google's Android OS.

 

[TLewis]

exactly. great we have street view. who the f$#k cares. i want the iphone to be functional for my work and life, not so i can see stupid views of times square.

I agree.

Unfortunately, street view appears to be one of those, "Oooh, shiny", features that attract customers, much like the way moths are drawn to lights.

 

[Aaargh!]

I'm a N95 user and I love it very much.

I'm a J2ME developer and the N95 is a slow piece of crap. It's really horribly slow. N96 is even worse, that thing is so slow, it's not even funny.

N97

Better camera (real camera vs a toy)

Both are toys. No phone has a real camera, there simply isn't enough room for the lens.

Video recording (quite decent quality too)

Ack. Never used it but it's a plus for the nokia.

More stable OS (no crashing like with iPhone and Safari)

Symbian S60 stable ? Hah!

Multitasking

Nice, but very confusing for end users.

Over twice as much space

Indeed quite nice (Hey Apple, where is iPhone 64 GB?)

Smaller footprint

Can be a selling point.

TV OUT

iPhone also has TV-OUT.

MMS

Owned several phones with that feature, never used it.

Copy & Paste

That's a big problem with the current iPhone OS.

Flash

Flash lite, don't expect everything to work properly.

More apps

What are you smoking ? The apps and the ease of installation are the biggest selling point for iPhone. I've got more apps on my iPhone now than I ever did on my Nokia. I actually have *paid* apps now, never bought an app for my Nokia.

And I'm a freaking mobile phone developer

QWERTY keyboard

iPhone has QWERTY too, and AZERTY and QWERTZ and chinese, japanese, etc. etc.

No need to jailbreak

No need to jailbreak iPhone either.

Better looks

Personal preference

User replaceable battery

Correct, but I've never ever replaced a battery on any of the phones I've used.

Better battery life (1,5 days of continuous music playback FTW!)

Couldn't care less, iPhones battery life is more than adequate for me

Complete bluetooth stack

That's an advantage for Nokia.

Hi-Res screen

That's a disadvantage, especially because the N97 probably won't have the horsepower to drive it properly. It'll mean that the phone will be unusably slooooow, just like the N96, that thing is literally unusable for day-to-day use and it has a normal screen.

So yeah, I'll get one. Looking so forward to it!

We'll get one at work, and I'll give it a good test drive.

 

[TLewis]

I love the iPhone it has so much potential but firmware after firmware all we get is more "useless cool bloat". Sure it s nice to get street view. Sure it's very nice to get directions in our maps or emojicons. All great stuff. But what about stuff that that could actually be useful and people are asking for it. Landscape mail. Landscape SMS. Where is mms? Copy and paste? All hat kind of stuff.

We'll only get those once the G1 and N97 start putting pressure on Apple. Frankly, I think we only got street view because of the G1's bragging rights. If it wasn't for that, I don't think Apple would have added it.

 

[_Refurbished_]

The iPhone is great because of it's SIMPLE UI, not because it's flashy. It looks like OCD Tom put every bit of detail onto a 3.5 inch display. It looks cool, but it's not functional. I'll take the iPhone's UI over Nokia's any day of the week, EVEN if Nokia's OS was as smooth as what was shown in the video.

No multi-touch, no thanks.
Qwerty? I type fine on my iPhone. Make the phone slim.
App Store? Nope. Best feature since the iPhone was released.
Seemless integration with iTunes? Nope.

It will be hard to sway me from the iPhone's UI....it's just that good. Apple just needs to add a few standard features and they will have themselves a perfect phone.

 

[kockgunner]

nokia should be slapped with those false advertisement claims

 

[applepies]

I'm a J2ME developer and the N95 is a slow piece of crap. It's really horribly slow. N96 is even worse, that thing is so slow, it's not even funny.

All the core functions start at least as quickly as iPhone's. No secret that early firmware of N95 was really buggy but later (mine is 30.0.015) is rock solid. Has not crashed / frozen on me even once.

Both are toys. No phone has a real camera, there simply isn't enough room for the lens.

Well N95's is enough for me. iPhone's on the other hand would not be.

Nice, but very confusing for end users.

How is multitasking confusing for the end user? What's confusing of listening to music and browsing the web at the same time? Switching between apps takes 1 push of a button..

iPhone also has TV-OUT.

Really?

Owned several phones with that feature, never used it.

Well they're plenty popular here..

And I'm a freaking mobile phone developer

Then you should appreciate the fact that Nokia does not dictate what kind of apps you can release and restrict your access to the phone's functions.

iPhone has QWERTY too, and AZERTY and QWERTZ and chinese, japanese, etc. etc.

Tactile is still way way better.

No need to jailbreak iPhone either.

Depends on what you want to do. iPhone's usage is very restricted.

Couldn't care less, iPhones battery life is more than adequate for me

Battery life is one of those things where more is always better.

 

[j-a-x]

One problem with Nokia is they can never match the integration on the PC side. My old nokia could sync with my mac via Bluetooth, but there was nothing as good as iTunes from Nokia...

 

[Bonte]

lol, another advertisement to get banned in the UK.

 

[dongmin]

Remember that the N97 is probably still 6 months out (probably longer for the US market). They're saying 1st half 2009. Apple will introduce a new toy at MWSF for sure and the N97 will be outdated before it even hits the market.

 

[applepies]

One problem with Nokia is they can never match the integration on the PC side. My old nokia could sync with my mac via Bluetooth, but there was nothing as good as iTunes from Nokia...

Really? I can sync my N95 with my MacBook over bluetooth and cable. iPhoto, iTunes, iCal all just work

edit. oh yeah and tethering of course. Something iPhone can't do (unless you jailbreak) kind of ironic

http://europe.nokia.com/A4423133

To me all this "iPhone killer" talk is a bunch of nonsense because as far as I'm concerned iPhone was dead already when it was first released. "Just works" philosophy is great, it's just that iPhone does not provide.

 

[kendogolf]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5G77 Safari/525.20)

If the OS is decent and its 3G compatible, I wouldn't mind one.

I'm wondering what a tactile touchpad would feel like...

EDIT; the interface looks fairly terrible. If I was gonna spend the money, I'd get myself an iPhone.

It's not a apple killer. It's going to be hard for a compeater to beat the overall experience that Apple brings to the table.