Nokia announces N97 flagship phone
We mentioned it a few days ago and rumors were true, something big has come from the Finnish mobile manufacturer. Nokia has just announced in Barcelona, Spain during Nokia World ‘08 that it will be launching the N97. This feature-packed phone is guaranteed to please Nokia fans and general phone geeks alike. Apparently, product managers are calling this the “Facebook Phone,” and while it is a little silly, the name doesn’t just come from nowhere. The device is geared toward social networking and multimedia but it doesn’t seem like the business user has been left out, either. Here are some specs to get your appetite going:
- 3.5″, 640 x 360 resistive touch screen (No! Why not capacitive?! Fail.)
- QWERTY keyboard
- Tri-band HSDPA 3G
- 802.11 b/g WiFi
- A-GPS and Stand-alone GPS for directions and geo-tagging
- 32GB Built-In Memory
- microSD expansion support for ADDITIONAL 16GB
- 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics
- Flash Lite 3.0 support and Flash Video in web browser
- Music player up to 36 hours playback time
- Share and Ovi services support
Holy cow, this phone is loaded! Is there anything else you can ask for? 30 frames-per-second video and tons of on-board storage! It has 3G, WiFi, a touch screen and a full QWERTY keyboard and a fully customizable home screen. We’re not going to call this an iPhone killer just yet, but Apple has some serious competition. The biggest feature for a lot of you will be Flash support and Flash video – bonus! This is going to be a killer phone for sure. The N97 will be released in the first half of 2009 and will go for €550, or approximately $695 – maybe. Hit the jump for more images and a video.
@BGR
I totally agree with the BGR.. Nokia OS = FAIL! and i’ve had an N95 & N82 but lets face it as nice as the phone is the OS makes it painfull
yea! another Nokia that they will market to the rest of the world and leave it at like $900 is anyone in the US wants it.
and yeah, there OS is doodoo.
This is the best phone, specs wise, in the market by far. The problem I have is these comparisons that are always made to the iPhone. Whether it is all touchscreen or has a qwtery keyboard, everyone compares the newest phone out to the iPhone. That along, makes the iPhone the most hyped mobile device in history. You can’t expect something better than the N97 but yet people will compare it to the iPhone when there is no comparison to be made. The iPhone has the best UI out there but specs wise there are phones out now that are way better. The N97 steps up the bar that the iPhone has to be in its next itineration but yet people are still stuck on the iPhone’s ease of use. What good is that if it still has a lackluster featureset and is still stuck on a bad network. You have to be realistic here people. Yea you can easily use the features it provides you with but that really is not much. Being able to have an extensive featureset while giving up a little bit of the UI experience is worth it in my opinion because you can do so much more. And that does not even include being able to hack/tweak the device because of the Symbian OS that it is on, as opposed to the iPhone’s macOS, which is completely locked. And for those of you that were wondering, the Symbian OS on this is Verion 5, per PhoneArena.
the specs on the phone do look amazing…
If this thing has the call quality of my Nokia 6200, a functional/speedy GUI, email like my blackberry and can surf like my computer I will buy. Call quality/range and durability with the iPhone and the latest Blackberry’s (Curve +) hasn’t been great. Also tired of “babying” electronic devices. If it is designed to fit in a pocket it shouldn’t need a special cover or require frequent cleaning. OS speed is also important!!! If I need to make/receive a call while surfing/emailing this should be a quick and simple process! Still seems like I need two devices to accomplish this. Hopefully the n97 will resolve this.
What more could you want from a phone, it has everything. From the videos it looks like they pulled off the resistive touch screen very well. I’ll be picking one up as soon as possible.
Totally agree! Someone needs to make a smart phone which can make, receive and manage calls!
whatevr happen to the video of the S60 Touch phone from Nokia a few years back. thats the phone they should’ve shown
Losing market share in smartphones? afraid of new competition from Apple, RIM & GOOG/HTC?
What should Nokia do?
Well, I guess Nokia can only do the Nokia thing: throw more specs at us. Which admittedly is better than doing nothing, but does not tackle the true issue at play: in content and in applications, Apple won this year, and Nokia LOST big time. In fact Nokia started losing it before Apple thought of the iPhone – it is in Nokia’s DNA. Nokia is a hardware and a process company – period. Never got software, never will (and probably never got clever marketing either).
This landslide in the mobile industry leadership in terms of mindshare will not be reversed by the ex-leader throwing hardware features at a software issue in one product release, be it as overspec-ed as the N97 – it does NOT matter anymore.
Dunno about you, but using the AppStore is heaven compared to absolute damnation of trying to actually FIND anything usable but a Google app (such as Gmail or Google Maps, incidentally miles better than Nokia Maps) on an Nseries phone.
My guess is Nokia will slowly become the IKEA of cheap mobile phones for emerging markets, where the market leader will remain unbeatable in the sub-10 dollar price bracket, thanks to its economies of scale, powerful sourcing, smoothest production process known to man, and immensely cost-effective design. Probably for the very same reasons, they will never make it in software, and their smartphone foray is doomed.
Nokia dominated smartphones when it was all about tech and hardware. They dominated the market when smartphones were dumb and hadware specs were enough to push the product at a premium. This era is over, period.
Good luck and good bye Nokia N97 – shame you’ll be outspec-ed by half a dozen Korean & Taiwanese models by the time you hit the shops – not to mention a next-gen iPhone and several new blackberries. Oh dear.
Nokia-
OS=no
Phone=yes
Still can’t beat the iPhone for overall appeal, sorry Nokia fanboys. Yes, Steve Jobs is an idiot, who cares, he doesn’t make the phones anyway…
A physical number pad
Is there onboard Rhapsody support like on Nokia’s N800 Internet tablets??????????? Hello celestial jukebox!!
If the N97 has onboard Rhapsody support I’m buying it, even if it’s $700.
If the price is right and the phone gives you streaming access to millions of songs, the iPhone can’t compete (although people will still buy it anyway). That said, I’m not a huge fan of the keyboard, but I’ll just have to get used to it.
This will hopefully be my Tilt replacement.
buying it!!!
dude above said he was “tragically unimpressed” LOL. Guy…this is one sexy ass functional ass phone. 32 GIGS??!! Plus room for 16 more?!
Only $695(hopefully)? I will have one.
one letdown though no xenon flash to go with that lens?(at least I didn’t notice)
Like BG said, the OS is probably going to make this thing a pain to use. Yes, spec sheets are impressive and quite frankly, I find myself lusting after this phone now. Even then, I just don’t see this replacing my current Blackberry as my main phone. If I still used the iPhone 3G as my main device, I can’t dig resistive touch screens over capacitive like the iPhone or G1. And is it just me, or does the keyboard look flush or even recessed? Without having had hands on, I can’t imagine typing on this would be a pleasure.
I was accepting something really exciting after seeing the count down bar. But its not really unique thing just a upgrade to n96…. Nokia come on…… with something unique to beat iPhone…. why people are always…trying to compete iphone…why not to come up with something unique..like apple came with iPhone
The Mac OP System to me is the best operating system bar none. Also what all the other phones are no where near, is the App store that Apple has for the IPhone. My last count I knew of was 10,000 Apps and growing daily.
I would not call my IPhone apps trinkets and they have been coming out with IPhone killers for 6 months and I haven’t seen on yet. Keep trying.
i’m willing to bet that if at&t or t-mobile picked this phone up and didn’t bog it down with crapware, kept the sales package fairly intact, priced it at around 200, and had a decent marketing campaign, it’d sell like hot cakes. After all, it’s shiny for the most part and has a touch screen, and that seems to be the recipe for success in the US market.
Well, anyone with an idiot’s IQ and a decent mobile browser can google “S60 3rd Edition apps” or “Symbian apps” and get more sites and lists than you can count. And only a fool that couldn’t find apps for Symbian (Ever heard of Symbian-Freak’s Freeward Downloads section for starters?) would consider most of those joke Apple apps better than the Symbian OS tools.
Also, most Symbian users use the free JBak Taskman as the main UI for task launching and management. Only neophytes use the system menu. Now compare S60 with JBak Taskman with the iPhone UI.
BURN!!! LOL!
@ christexaport I agree
Well that is good said but the IPhone has set the standard and everyone else is following and it is the number 1 PDA/phone. Talk is cheap FACTS SPEAK LOUD AND CLEAR.
Still sucks iPhone 3G Rocks end of story
Wow, that apple kool-aid is very strong, with a comeback like, ’still sucks IP3G rocks end of story’. Even with all that info that the iphone can’t compete with, it now boils down to ‘my toy is better than your computer!’ Boo-hoo!