Hey guys,

I just bought  a white N97. I bought it to replace my Iphone 2G. Here's my experience  so far.

(1) The white one is harder to find than the black one
(2) Retail is about RM 2480 in KL area.
(3) Midvalley sold out the white one, Lowyat got fewer white ones than black. Some shops got diffrent prices for the colours with the white one being pricier.
(4) Get the original. I.e check the AVAXX and Nokia sticker. Best bet is to buy at the Nokia store. At that price of 2000 plus you SHOULD buy the original.

(5) Immediately upgrade the software the moment you buy it.  The software you got the moment you buy it is rubbish and full of bugs.
N97 MINI PHONE REVIEW

(6) The on board RAM is rubbish, 128 RAM and the moment i wanted to use it it has only about 20 MB left. and i havent even installed anything yet.

(7) The software onboard is a wee bit sluggish.

(8) Personally i think the Iphone interface is better. Its much nicer.

(9) The moment you use the email interface make sure you set in the email settings in the mass memory.

(10) The email exchange is slower than the Iphone email exchange, in the Iphone the moment the email comes in the iphone will immedieately notices it. The N97 has a lag of at least 15 mins. But then again it maybe has to do with my settings.

(11) The Iphone Email Exchange see your sent email even from emails you sent from your office computer. The N97 can only see emails you send from the phone

(12) The Facebook application on the Iphone can post pictures on the wall posts. Havent found such option on the N97.

(13) the cameras in the N97 is sharp. 5Megapixels i tell you.hehehe. Although so far indoor pictures tend to be grainy a bit. Also there's no way to turn off the annoying clicking sound.

(14) I tried to upgrade the QuickOffice but it couldnt. A check with the resellers and they said that currently there is no option to upgrade QuickOffice yet for the N97. Please correct me if im getting the wrong information.

(15) Sometimes the it crashes when browsing . This is rare though.

(16) I love the fact that the N97 can be used as a modem for my laptop with its one touch access program. Now i can connect my laptop to the internet anywhere i go and dont have to rely on starbucks and free wifi only hotel lobby.

(17) Oh how can i forget, IF you buy it and have all the widgets turn on. ie. Emails. Weather. Star reader. The battery will day VERY VERY quickly. Like HALF A DAY OR LESS. This can be tremendously improved by removing THE STAR READER. Bad programming if you ask me. Not the fault of N 97.

(18) I havent found  the way to reset/reformat the N97. Help anyone ?

(19) The Ovi Store currently is bollocks. There's less there than Penang Football Association coffers. But then again, maybe because it is still new and apps are still being developed.

(20) QWERTY KEYBOARD !!!. Ok this i have some serious issues with.  To write a capital letter you have to press a shift up button first and then the corresponding word. Not user friendly. Here's the main gripe. to insert a number using the qwerty keypad  you have to press a button first and after that you press the corresponding number button.  DEY !!! what happen to press and hold technique for the numbers !!!!... COME ON NOKIA !!! THIS IS YOUR FLAGSHIP PHONE !!! THIS AINT NOKIA 3210 !!!.

(21) Last ( for now)  When you buy the phone, look at  the bottom of the phone screen. You will notice that the bottom there the colours are a bit off. It looks like theres some dark smudges at the bottom. This is more apparent with the white one. Theres none of that in the Iphone. Apparently the black spots there is caused by some LED lights not diffusing the colours evenly. I've scoured both Midvalley and Lowyat. All phones black and white seem to have the same problem. The only compensation is to find a phone which seem to have less dark spots and hope it stays that way .

(22) Having said all that, im pretty satisfied with the phone, i like it more than the Iphone ( any of it, 2G,3G,3GS). That says a lot about the Iphone. Even with all the warts the N97 have, the Iphone IMHO is a worse option. I had my taste of the Iphone. I dont think I will go down that path again by buying another Iphone.

(23) Any feedback, comment, question, sharing pls email me at roni.azlanATgmail.com

Hi gzero.

1. Oh its 70MB and not 128 ?. Ok. My bad then, but still, why does apps and email are by default saved in the c: phone memory folder. If its for RAM purposes then it should be left alone and be made much bigger. 20 plus Ram is not much to play around with.

2. Nokia Messaging unfortunately doesnt support corporate mails

3. True. It looks cool on the home screen though. Which btw can the homescreen be resized. Lets say i want to make the facebook widget to take the WHOLE space of my phone. Can that be done ? anyone with any ideas ?

4. Oh no hard reset ? thanks for the info , btw what happens if i were to hard reset it ? everyhthing goes back to from day one ? what about my trial version of quickoffice and pdf reader. Would they be restarted as well ? would be nice if it did

5. Since Ovi is crXX right now, is it possible to download from another source ? like Cydia did to Iphone ?

6. How do we get the developer's notice ya ? is there like a specific forum where this nokia developers like to hangout ? these ppl really need to learn how to create a phone. One or two more models like this and Nokia will go down the drain.

Anyways how's your phone holding up so far ? any quirks you wanna share ?

How do I hard format N97? Damn, my phone stuck at the Nokia logo

(6) The on board RAM is rubbish, 128 RAM and the moment i wanted to use it it has only about 20 MB left. and i havent even installed anything yet.

-I think the 20Mb left you are referring to the phone memory storage (the one u can see in file manager) and not RAM. since it has only approximately 70Mb total, and 41Mb is used by system. a typical N97 fresh booted up phone has about 45Mb of RAM. Yes it's still low compared to the older Nseries phone. Hopefully it'll get better with newer firmware. So far havent run into low memory error yet though.
(11) The Iphone Email Exchange see your sent email even from emails you sent from your office computer. The N97 can only see emails you send from the phone

-did you use the built in e-mail apps (the one in your SMS menu), or did you download the Nokia Messaging 10 from the SW Update? The Nokia Messaging is superior and it does display message you sent, either by using phone or computer (in my case, im using Hotmail)

(12) The Facebook application on the Iphone can post pictures on the wall posts. Havent found such option on the N97.

-I dont think it's possible to post picture on wall yet. as of now, the facebook apps is still very very limited and crippled function compared to a full browser version. heck, it's not even possible to add a new friend from the phone. my advice is to login facebook using the browser on the phone if there's function that you couldnt find in the apps. again, this can be improved since this is a software issue. it still looked cool on the homescreen though

(18) I havent found  the way to reset/reformat the N97. Help anyone ?

-No. None yet. Even 5800XM dont get their hard reset function until the later v20.x firmware. For now, there is only soft reset via *7370# which restore everything to factory setting.

(19) The Ovi Store currently is bollocks. There's less there than Penang Football Association coffers. But then again, maybe because it is still new and apps are still being developed.

-Agreed, and agreed
(20) QWERTY KEYBOARD !!!. Ok this i have some serious issues with.  To write a capital letter you have to press a shift up button first and then the corresponding word. Not user friendly. Here's the main gripe. to insert a number using the qwerty keypad  you have to press a button first and after that you press the corresponding number button.  DEY !!! what happen to press and hold technique for the numbers !!!!... COME ON NOKIA !!! THIS IS YOUR FLAGSHIP PHONE !!! THIS AINT NOKIA 3210 !!!.

-it's dumb, i know...you are not the first person to complain about this. hopefully nokia will notice these complaints and fix it in next firmware.

N-GAGE is now available on N97.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=SALRNN6B

(18) I havent found  the way to reset/reformat the N97. Help anyone ?

-No. None yet. Even 5800XM dont get their hard reset function until the later v20.x firmware. For now, there is only soft reset via *7370# which restore everything to factory setting.

is there like a max limit to the amount of songs you can put into the mass memory?
because i tried transferring new songs, but it just doesnt appear on my phone? geez..

try open music library from menu> then refresh library..it will auto refresh the songs in memory

awesome that worked, thanks for the help mate   

You are SCREWED! Hahahahhahaha! Time for you to bring it back to NCC, or use one of the method ( which I can't recall ), there is this kind of post in V1 i think.

Dear gzero.

Thanks for the helpful tips

Dear vikingw2k

I think its a hardware problem. Better claim your warranty 

guys, do u face problem when u change ur sms to be stored at mass memory? i keep receive error msg n the phone change it back to phone memory... the error msg sounds sumthng like the mass memory cant be located...