NOKIA N97 mini

It’s hard to like the S60v5 again after using a Maemo device like the Nokia N900. I’ve been trying to use the Nokia N97 mini to write a thorough review, but I always ended up putting it down quickly. Want to know what I think in one sentence? The Nokia N97 mini looks damn good and packs a lot of features, but I would recommend other devices before this one.


Hardware
The Nokia N97 mini was well-designed. It’s shiny with nice combinations of curves and lines. It feels good in the hands, too.

Size. It’s a little smaller than the Nokia N97 making it more pocketable. Here’s a size comparison between the two N97’s. I didn’t have problems putting it in my jean pocket.



Build Quality. Nokia added stainless steel to the back of the phone with the battery cover and the camera bezel. It adds a premium look and feel to the hardware. The hinge for the slider is very smooth, yet provides nice reassuring clicks when the device is closed or open. The N97 mini is a solid device. I found no wobbling, creaking, or loose parts to complain about.

Internals. Inside the Nokia N97 is a single-core ARM 11 microprocessor clocked at 434MHz with 128MB RAM. That’s similar to the original Nokia N97. It isn’t a powerhorse if you compare it to other recent devices. For example, the Nokia N900 runs at 600MHz with 256MB RAM. A big concern for power users is the RAM. I found that running multiple applications like Gravity for tweets, web browser, Mobbler for streaming music, and Nokia Messaging for emails take up a lot of the RAM. This could be good or bad depending on how you look at it, but the phone silently closes one of those apps without warning to free up memory. This wouldn’t be a problem if Nokia gave the N97 256MB RAM instead.

Display. The Nokia N97 mini has a 3.2 inch touchscreen display with 640×360 resolution and 16:9 aspect ratio. The pixel density of 229 PPI makes it relatively sharp. Let’s compare it with other touchscreen devices.