Another N97 video, just like it says on the tin.

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)

(more…)

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.

(more…)

In the lead up to the actual launch of the N97 you can expect a lot of hype and speculation over 2 questions:
1. When will the N97 be released?
and
2. How much will it cost?

Well online retailer Expansys have thrown their hat into the ring, as you can see, and the news is not good, or at least as good as may have been hoped.

The release date has gone from Q1 to the end of Q2 – 23 June, and the price is a top end £689.99, or over $1000.

Of course Expansys may be wrong on both counts, and only time will tell.

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.