Hardware and software
N97 has a 434 MHz CPU inside. This is not as powerful as the 600 MHz processor in 5630, but it’s faster than N95’s chip. It is accompanied by 128 megabytes of RAM, which is enough most of the times, but there are some applications that slow down the system, even more since the operating system needs quite a lot of RAM and it leaves only about 45-48 MB free. It’s quite hard to fill this up even a trio of a web browser, music player and navigation software won’t use up all of it, although in this case we get a somewhat sluggish performance. I don’t know if it’s true but we’re told that the new software will improve this as well.
The hardware has the Symbian operating system running on it, its version number is 9.4, while the user interface is of the fifth generation, the touchscreen edition. This is the one running on 5800 and Samsung i8910 too. The display is a resistive one, which means that we can control it with a stylus as well, but basically the system is made to be easy to use with fingers, the menu items are large enough. There is no multitouch, as Symbian doesn’t yet support it, but the scrolling routine has improved a lot.
In fact it has improved too much. We get a slider on the side of the screen at every list that doesn’t fit on one screen. This is very sensitive, for example the contact list can scroll incredibly fast, and although we can pull it with our finger as well, it’s not the best way. This doesn’t have such a huge negative effect on N97 anyway, as by using the QWERTY keyboard (and the navigation button) we can move around the OS quite easily, although it’s much harder when the phone is closed. Those who got used to 5800 won’t really have problems with N97, but anyway: usability is far from iPhone or LG Arena.
The handset warns us of missed calls and unread messages by flashing the white backlight around the slant menu key. This always pulsates slowly – if we choose to – showing that the handset is working and this is all okay if we’re in a dark environment, but we won’t notice this discrete flashing in daylight.
Unfortunately we have to say that the Finnish guys have again launched a phone full of annoying software bugs. Seriously, it’s like having a beta prototype. And of course they have been doing this for years (and not just them) just to have the product launched as soon as possible and then the patches are poured out afterwards (the first one is already available, this is the V11 software), but this time they might have gone a bit too fat, as even the screen lock is bugging the user… this is no small bug, but one that will be noticed by any average user sixty-two times a day.
Currently N97 is full of such bugs. The question is why were they sitting on their asses for half a year? Why didn’t they launch the first handset at the time of the announcement? They could have told that okay guys and girls, the Facebook link on the main screen doesn’t work as it should (as it really doesn’t work), but we’ll fix it, stay cool. It’s another thing that by the time they patch every bug, the phone will be available at half the price and there goes the huge profit. The reason we’ve been waiting with the review for so long is that although we had the phone since a while ago, I wanted to check the new software if it fixes things. I didn’t get the firmware in time, but based on the information on other forums I’m sure that many users will be happy about the patches it brings.
A cikk még nem ért véget, kérlek, lapozz!
