There are a lot of good mobile phones available now, so the competition for your mobile $$ (or £s or whatever) is strong. So why are do many people web comentators still have the N97 high up their list of must have mobiles.

The concensus is that although the N97 will not be adding anything really new to the Nokia or N Series range, what it does is pull together a lot of the great Nokia features currently available on other Nokia phones and drops those that are not that hot (DVB-H TV being an obvous example).

So what are the good features:

• Touch screen (hopefully refined from the 5800 experience)
• Full QWERTY keyboard, starting to combine the E series functionality into N Series phones
• GPS
• Music Player
• BIG memory capacity
• FM transmitter (why was this not on the N96?)
• 5 Mega Pixel Camera -tried and tested, good in reasonable light although could be improved with a better flash for night time
• N-Gage (no other operator can offer this, so if you want N-Gage games, it has to be Nokia)

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The Nokia Blog have a nice review of a prototype N97 with this video showing what they describe as a slider function that is smooth and responsive.

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Nokia have recently announced that they would be including the popular Voip package, Skype on newer range N series phones, including the N97.

This would seem to have upset a number of crriers, particularly in the UK. Engadget report that O2 and Orange are threatening not to stock the N97 unless Nokia strip out the Skype platform.

Given that you can download Skype for Mobile phones for free, this would seem to be a storm in a teacup, although we can see that from the operators point of view, many users would not make an effotr to find the software if it is not already installed.

Nokia Sportstracker for the N97

The latest release of the sportstrcker application from Nokia should be compatible with the N97. Although the N97 is not released yet, applications are already popping up that should be compatible with the N97, a very different story to that of the N96 where disapointed owners are still waiting for a decent spread of applications from Nokia.

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According to Play.com the N97 will be available on 31 March 2009.

Could this be the good folks at Play.com fishing for pre orders? Of course it could, as they got the release date of the N96 totally wrong, but it could also be an indication that Nokia have given major retailers an indication of when the N97 may be released.

In any event for those waiting eagerly for the Nokia N97, the end of March may not seem like as long a wait as they had feared.

As you might expect, Nokia are hard at work promoting the upcoming N97, and at their blog they have posted the above video of the N97 in action.

Enjoy this preview of the N97, there will be lots more to come before it hits the shops.

Tilting touch display, QWERTY keyboard and personalized home screen – a true mobile computer

Nokia today unveiled the Nokia N97, the world’s most advanced mobile computer, which will transform the way people connect to the Internet and to each other. Designed for the needs of Internet-savvy consumers, the Nokia N97 combines a large 3.5″ touch display with a full QWERTY keyboard, providing an ‘always open’ window to favorite social networking sites and Internet destinations. Nokia’s flagship Nseries device introduces leading technology – including multiple sensors, memory, processing power and connection speeds – for people to create a personal Internet and share their ’social location.’

“From the desktop to the laptop and now to your pocket, the Nokia N97 is the most powerful, multi-sensory mobile computer in existence,” said Jonas Geust, Vice President, heading Nokia Nseries. “Together with the Ovi services announced today, the Nokia N97 mobile computer adjusts to the world around us, helping stay connected to the people and things that matter most. With the Nokia N97, Nseries leads the charge in helping to transform the Internet into your Internet”.

Sensing your ‘So-Lo’

The Nokia N97 introduces the concept of ’social location’. With integrated A-GPS sensors and an electronic compass, the Nokia N97 mobile computer intuitively understands where it is. The Nokia N97 makes it easy to update social networks automatically with real-time information, giving approved friends the ability to update their ’status’ and share their ’social location’ as well as related pictures or videos.

Widescreen – Internet and entertainment

The home screen of the Nokia N97 mobile computer features the people, content and media that matter the most. Friends, social networks and news are available by simply touching the home screen. The 16:9 widescreen display can be fully personalized with frequently updated widgets of favorite web services and social networking sites. The Nokia N97 is also perfectly suited for browsing the web, streaming Flash videos or playing games. Both the physical QWERTY and virtual touch input ensure efficiency in blogging, chatting, posting, sending texts or emailing.

The Nokia N97 supports up to 48 GB of storage, including 32 GB of on-board memory, expandable with a 16 GB microSD card for music, media and more. This is complemented by excellent music capabilities, full support for the Nokia Music Store and continuous playback time of up to 1.5 days. The Nokia N97 also has a 5-Megapixel camera with high-quality Carl Zeiss optics, 16:9 and DVD quality video capture, and support for services like Share on Ovi for immediate sharing over HSDPA and WLAN.