*OFFICIAL THREAD: Nokia N97

UXI:

I've known people to delve into semantic when they don't really have a point. Well maybe I could have said: "if i bought this phone for $700 then I have to eschew my e-mail notifications and appointments and the music player line that is there on S60v3 and my shortcuts." It was said as a reason explaining why I won't be buying this phone. Not that I am worried about the FBI knocking on the door or whatever you understood.

Again 5 widgets - the sum total of 3 years of touch screen design from Nokia.

I hope you like your N97 and that it works well for you and your needs. It won't be satisfying me and I write the reasons why. Those reasons may not apply to you and you are welcome to buy what you want in hopes that you will like the device.

You haven't used a S60 in your life and thus are obviously unaware of the fact that you can run easily 10 applications simultaneously on S60v3 thanks primarily to demand paging. I owned an N95-1 with 64Mb RAM and no demand paging. I owned it when the demand paging FW came out and I know that it works exceptionally well. Even with 64MB RAM I could have Maps, music player and the camera open. Each of those by itself should consume the memory of 5 notifications. When I got the N95-3 I had 128MB RAM and I believe it was sold without demand paging only to get a demand paging FW later. On that device the 128MB RAM was sufficient to run the browser, camera, music player and maps simultaneously with or without demand paging. Then I had the N95-4 which came out with both 128MB RAM and demand paging and in all the experimenting I have done with that phone including I have never gotten an out of memory error. The browser could have several windows up at once each loading independently. However the browser on occasion would close on certain websites regardless of what else was running on the phone. It was site dependent and not device memory dependent.

I thought you were a Nokia fanboy because who else would make an argument like a $700 phone becoming now $800 with 256MB RAM? I mean RAM might have been that expensive 5 years ago perhaps. In any case I also find it funny that you accept this device's $700 proce tag as gospel as the Nokia faithful tend to do. The hardware inside is basically the same as in the Nokia N79 which is now a $300 phone. Sure it has a big touch screen like its $250 brother the 5800 only bigger this time. But it seems like the marriage of a $250 and $300 phone with some extra trinkets that could make it worth $400 vis a vis other Nokia S60 devices running similar hardware.

But I suppose a big screen Nokia is priceless amongst the Nokia faithful so I guess $700, 800, or 900 would not have made a difference despite the interface or 5 widget limitation. I guess those are icing on the cake for a Nokia fan. Give me the N95 again with a big screen for $900 inflation adjusted dollars.

I suppose that's a fair argument to make. Just not mine and I don't expect anyone to buy my argument. I just put out why I won't be buying it. I didn't tell you not to. I'm sure it will be an upgrade over the 3390.
 
Thanks. Mine is June 29th, but I ordered when it said "In stock June 25th". I was hoping they would ship a little earlier, but I guess it won't.


Only 5 more posts and I'm out of here :D
 
Btw, do you guys think there will eventually be a 64GB version out in the future? (Imagine slapping a whopping 64gb memory card in that too? *******, 128GB in your pocket, lol, and you got yourself an external hard drive) [Why is HowardForums censored... that's retarded, I doubt little kids are reading about high end phone blogs, and if they do, then they should know what the f-word means]
 
I wouldn't put it past them. Yesterday I saw an unboxing video of a bluetooth headset. When did unboxing videos become something that people thought other people wanted to watch? When I buy the phone I can watch myself unbox it, then y'know, use it myself.
 
I always expect lots of talk and am generally cynical about promises of future flowering. We'll see if Nokia's holds to expectations or surprises.

As far as the release, lightning does hit now and then. I have high hopes on N97, but if it sucks, I'll drop it like a bad habit. Realistically, it will be somewhere in between.
 
Hey we have 200 pages of almost zero information on a device that wasn't released and doesn't even have a proper review yet. Any subject is game, man. If it bothers you so much, stop reading.
 
You found the X1 really big? I liked it size as I was more familiar with the TyTN and the TyTN II. Even the Touch Pro isn't as comfortable to use because it's so thick (I was shocked when I first handled it because it feels like 2 Touch Diamonds glued together). N97 will be bigger I assume and derive from pics and vids but that doesn't bother me much
 
It loaded up fine for me, kinetic scrolling was choppy but that was the only problem.

Which popups are you talking about with the widgets? The ones that come up when you change them or are you getting them every time you power up the phone?
 
They all get slower with use. Don't you notice how speedy your phone is when you go through a reset back to factory conditions? The more programs, the fuller the ROM gets and the slower the access. Hell, even my E70 was usable after a factory reset but once a few apps were loaded it was frustrating. N95 is the same way. E71 so far has been the best of the bunch in terms of maintaining speed but there's still a difference.

How will the N97 do? Hard to say. On one hand the 434MHz Freescale is an even faster version of the 369MHz chip running my E71 and that's one of the speediest phones I've used from Nokia. On the other hand the 369MHz is the exact same CPU that the 5800 uses and I have no experience with that to determine how many resources S60v5 is going to utilize and then throw the widgets on top of that.

RAM is concerning with early reports of ~50MB free. Is part of this due to the new Nokia Messaging app that comes standard on N97? Doesn't leave a lot of breathing room. My E71 on a fresh boot has ~64MB free running Nokia Messaging and Roadsync. The N97 only has some widgets and maybe NM running. If NM isn't running in that reported config then we're looking at even less RAM available and if the Mail for Exchange portion of NM isn't fixed soon since it seems to be broken in the E75, the users may have to fall back to Roadsync and there's even more RAM eaten up.

From the rumor mill, it currently looks like if we want OMAP3430 from Nokia we need to look to one of the next Maemo devices. But then it's yet to be confirmed that this device will actually be a phone. There's a significant change to Maemo coming but will it be enough to use as a phone OS? Yet to be seen. I can't imagine Maemo 4 being used on a phone.
 
Will the Nokia N97 work with AT&T? Also, is the N97 a 3G phone. I cannot find anywhere on the specifications that this particular phone is a 3G phone. It only says that the N97 has WLAN whatever that is.
I currently own a Samsung Eternity and I'm thinking about upgrading to the N97. Will my 3G SIM card that's currently in my Samsung Eternity work in the Nokia N97 and will I have full internet access on the N97 if I use my AT&T 3G SIM card in it?
 
If you have an "archive inbox" as I do, on an iPhone 3.0, you can sync that inbox and search it also.

If the archive is not an Exchange mailbox then I guess you need a platform that can handle a few months of mail on the device without bogging down. This is where CPU power, RAM and hardware come into play. People will talk about the snappy interface on the E71 but little do they realize or choose to admit that when you put more than a few hundred messages on the phone, then it really does slow down badly. Even entering contacts lags by a full 3-4 seconds. I wonder what the phone is doing but surely it is using CPU to generate that view of your contacts or inbox.

Sure they could optimize the software also to achieve better performance, but if you remember the time from N95 S60v3 FP1 UI to E71 S60v3 FP1 UI was more than a year. There were significant differences in the speed and response of those two phones. As much as I appreciate the improvements in the E71 UI, it still frankly isn't at the level that it is a seamless user experience for me.

When I have a person in front of me who needs an appointment for something, the most embarrassing thing is pulling up their name via contact search and the phone basically giving me blank for 5-7 seconds before their information comes up. On top of that if I were to mention another gripe I would say that other platforms are now intelligent enough to list the person's company name in the appointment calendar entry. So I don't have to look that up as well. Also isn't it about time that I could look at someone's contact's entry and have a shortcut to "make appointment"? Or how about when I am putting in an appointment that I don't have to spell out some of these long and tough names anymore? I have other appointments for the same person so why can't it suggest the name and be over with it?

There is no true integration of contacts and calendar in S60, it's all disjointed. I'm not griping for no reason. I like the E-series from a S60 perspective, but it is certainly behind the curve in such basic productivity features. To suggest names requires a certain level of database indexing and/or CPU power I'm sure. There are far more important ways to gauge CPU adequacy than "the UI is snappy" or "well it plays my videos".

Turning down modern CPU power is a case of "the grapes being sour" and I see a lot of that here in the S60 forum because well, people want to justify the choices of Nokia. If you were buying a PC and for the same money you were offered 2.4GHz CPU and a 3.2Ghz CPU of the same type would you turn down the 3.2GHz even though you know a 1.6Ghz Atom can basically handle your needs?

Certain things run faster, the CPU can be turned down for better battery life and scaled up for performance when needed. Certain new features can be considered with acceptable performance so it all does matter. How about 256MB RAM so my inbox and contacts and SMS can be stored in RAM always? Or at least the index to those items?

For an example, the iPhone is more laggy in general UI interaction than the E66. However it is very consistent about that in every situation. It never for one particular request takes twice as long as usual. It is slower overall but consistent. That actually helps in a user trusting the device and developing the correct expectations from the user and the device meeting those expectations.

I will be very happy if and when those basic things are met. What I'm asking for is not unreasonable. They are basic things that could be met to keep with the future of mobile information technology. From a business device, I personally don't want or need HD recording or any of those high end multimedia features.

One other thing, even though the message view now (after so many years) gives you the time stamp, it still doesn't give you that within the actual message itself. I mean how much do we need to ask? Shouldn't the world's most popular smartphone platform just give you such a basic feature?

Also current date and time should be on every menu and in every application that is not full screened. It should always be there no matter what you are doing with the phone. Again very basic request. It's something I shouldn't even be asking for, it's that fundamental. I'm not asking for fancy transitions or UI wizardry but a basic information area to provide date/time, unread messages/notifications. A unified notifications area open to all 3rd party applications also needs to be visible no matter what you are doing with the phone unless you are in full screen mode in the application.
 
You laugh, but that's your money when you have a choice in the matter. You have nailed the point on the head. They're certainly thinking about their profits much more than the impact of their products.
 
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