The Nokia N97 has all the bells and whistles that you’d expect from a modern smartphone, or what Nokia likes to call a “mobile computer,” such as internet accessibility, GPS, a music and video player, a digital camera, a QWERTY keyboard, and memory expansion. While these features alone won’t usurp the thrones that the iPhone 3G, T-Mobile G1, or the BlackBerry Storm sit on, the Nokia N97 has a chance for success when you consider the depth of these features and the extent of the others—and if it ever gets released in the U.S.
The aforementioned GPS is A-GPS, which has two purposes on the Nokia N9: it will help emergency call dispatchers locate you should you find yourself in trouble and it updates Nokia’s “social location,” letting your approved friends know where you are so that you’re not only always reachable, but always findable. The operating system on the N97 is Symbian-based and the onboard memory is an impressive 32GB, which can be increased by 16GB via a microSD card—yes, that’s 48GB of total memory. With this kind of memory you’ll be able to store plenty of the photos you take with the very-capable 5-megapixel camera, which comes with the highly respected Carl Zeiss optics.
As a smartphone that’s truly meant for the Internet savvy and social network user, the Nokia N97 offers both a QWERY slider and touch-screen capabilities (making it all too easy to blog, chat, post, send texts, and e-mail), 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio on a tilting 3.5-inch screen, MMS messaging, RSS feeds, and customizable home-screen widgets that grant easy access to your favorite social network sites. Music fans will be thrilled to know that the N97 will eventually come with full access to the Nokia Music Store in addition to Nokia Maps and the N-Gage gaming platform.
The Nokia N97 has a lot of potential once it sees light in the first six months of 2009, but since there’s no word on a U.S. release date, we shouldn’t expect too much, too soon. And while the N97 has integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, it’s still only HSDPA-capable. At an estimated price point of 550 Euros ($714), you’d be well advised in holding out for a service-plan deal rather than looking for an unlocked option. Then again, with the capabilities represented in the Nokia N97, we could hardly blame you for wanting to get your grubby little hands on one like it was Marisa Miller.
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