Nokia N97 Mini

Product: Nokia N97 Mini
Website: www.nokia.com/n97mini
System Specifications: 3.2-inch touch screen, 8GB storage, 5MP camera, S60 5th edition, microSD, 3.5mm jack, 3G, GPRS, GPS, GSM, HSDPA, Bluetooth, Li-Ion battery
Price: £429

THE NOKIA N97 MINI comes on the coattails of the Nokia N97, a handset that was announced at Nokia World in late 2008. The original Nokia N97 mobile phone took over six months to appear in the shops, apparently due to ironing out feature interoperability issues.

The wait for the Nokia N97 Mini shouldn't be as long. The mobile was announced earlier in September at Nokia World - where we managed to have a quick hands on with it - and is due to hit the shelves this holiday buying season.

Nokia's N97 Mini is altogether a rather deceiving product name by the Finnish phone makers as it's not really a miniature version of the Nokia N97 whatsoever. In fact it's more or less a copy of the original Nokia N97 handset, only with a more sensible storage capacity that should really have appeared in the first iteration.

When it was announced at Nokia World last year, the Nokia N97 came with the largest amount of onboard memory in a phone at that point at a whopping 32GB, with a further possible 16GB in the form of a microSD card. The largest internal memory seen in a Nokia handset prior to that time was just 8GB with the N95 and N96, which made the N97's large memory a big leap for the firm.

This 32GB of storage came at a fairly hefty price tag back then at €550, whereas the N97 Mini has been marked down to the relatively less princely sum of €450. The N97 Mini has just 8GB of onboard storage, which is a much more sensible amount we believe. Were it not for miniaturisation engineering issues, we think Nokia should have released the N97 Mini first and followed that with the N97 offering its larger form factor, screen size and memory storage.

Nokia isn't particularly well known for trend setting or any great inclination to knock the establishment. There really hasn't been a history of it leading the charge in any new or ground breaking feature sets, and some might say it lags behind the times in most cases. When the 32GB handset came out, many were taken back by this bold move from Nokia. No other manufacturer had a 32GB offering, although Apple did announce the Iphone 3GS in the same week that the Nokia N97 eventually went on sale in June.

32GB wouldn't be too hard to fill with media content for the tech savvy out there, only their consumer demographic numbers are low. Such a gigantic storage capacity must surely have put off many not-so tech savvy mobile phone buyers, as they just wouldn't know what to do with the vast capacity and therefore wouldn't believe the phone offered value for them. Starting off with the much smaller Nokia N97 Mini's size would have been a much better course of action. Then Nokia could have built up to the next version with 32GB of memory. We believe the smaller 8GB will be a more attractive storage size in a handset for most punters, whereas 32GB might just have sent them off in search of less extravagantly appointed and therefore less expensive alternatives.

Both handsets have the same QVGA resolution of 640x360 on their touch screens, although the N97 Mini supports a 3.2-inch display with the N97 measuring in at 3.5 inches but the difference is hardly noticeable. The Mini's size is just four millimetres shorter than its previous counterpart at 113mm, three millimetres less in width at 52.5mm and under a millimetre in depth with 14.2mm but once again, the difference in hardly noticeable.

Nokia has reworked the physical slide-out keyboard in the N97 Mini to produce a much better variant that's better to use. The screen on the Mini tilts up at a fixed angle, in exactly the same way as it appears on the original N97. This time around the keys have been spaced out more for a much better experience in typing. There's a different, more solid feel to the keystrokes that's somewhat reminiscent of the Nokia Communicators of yesteryear.

Nokia has achieved this better key spacing by doing away with the cursor d-pad controller on the left of the keyboard from the first N97, which was ideally placed for left-handed people and not so much for the rest of us right-handed users out there. From Nokia's research the left was more suitable for housing the cursor control button as it matches up with the location of a game console's controller. It has now replaced the cursor controller pad with arrow keys on the lower right side of the keyboard, just as it appears on most of the computer keyboards, so that's more sensibly placed for all.

Just to add more confusion over the Mini naming, Nokia has equipped the phone with the same 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss lens camera as the fully blown N97 and not a lesser MP offering. One of our beefs with the original N97 flagship model was that it didn't arrive with an 8MP camera, whereas almost every other phone manufacturer had several handsets by that time with 8MP cameras. Nokia has since entered the 8MP market, but only recently, while others have since moved on with 10MP and 12MP offerings. However, we don't expect Nokia to be talking mobile cameras with more megapixels anytime soon.

The software running the N97 Mini handset is very close to what was shipped with the first N97, although it boasts an updated version of the firmware which is also coming to its predecessor in October. It's the Series 60 5th edition Symbian platform, tweaked to be more friendly with a fully customisable home screen. Nokia's Lifecasting feature appears for the first time on the N97 Mini, where a widget on the phone can automatically post its GPS location to a Facebook status update. Besides just adding to the mindless tedium of status updates, it's possibly a good way to find a phone if lost.

Kinetic scrolling is also a feature of the N97 Mini, just as it will be in the N900 and the upcoming firmware update to the N97. With this, scrolling down a long webpage can be performed by running a finger down the screen and then off the end of the handset - the webpage continues to keep scrolling.

Nokia has dropped the FM transmitter and the battery specs from the 1500 mAh in the original N97 down to a 1200 mAh battery in the N97 Mini, a significant fall in power. In our testing the N97 achieved nine and a half hours of call time before giving up the ghost. We're estimating the N97 Mini handset will most likely just pass the seven hour mark - we can only assume this is why Nokia has called this phone the Mini.

In Short
We firmly believe that the Nokia N97 Mini should have preceded the original Nokia N97 with a view to pave the way for the increased storage and heftier price tag rather than the reverse, which in Nokia's infinite wisdom is what took place. The Mini screen and keyboard both feel better to use and are more responsive, in addition to the keys being much better thought out in their design and placement. µ