First of all a BIG THANK should go to Nokia for responding the consumer feedbacks and requests made over the past few years,so today my dream device was shown in real life.I think I guessed it almost correctly in my previous post,I never had a single clue on it but I just had the feeling of something similar coming.
I (every S60 3rd Edition lover would do so) always wanted to see a baby born to an N-series Father and an E-Series Mother,and today that special baby was born with some additional characteristics to become a superstar.This Device is the Ultimate Hybrid of Nxx/Exx/N810 and the 5800 XpressMusic,the overall successor of ages of maturity and it really deserves the Name “ULTIMATE NOKIA FLAGSHIP DEVICE”.
Why the N97 is so Special?
1.Form Factor
The need for a handy laptop replacer is long been unanswered problem for many consumers,It’s true there came so many substitutions,even Nokia tried it out with the E90 and the N810.But the growing consumer market was boundlessly gadgetized,so that the consumer needs spread in a vast range of collective requisites that many devices failed to offer in a bunch,the same fate applied to the E90 and the N810 when it comes to Nokia.E90 was bulkier and lacked much of Multimedia features like the low-end camera,but it lived up to the hype for the Business users,though it failed in Multimedia hunger Youth and the general consumer market.N810 was great but the problem was,it is simply not a phone.These things might have hit the Nokia feedback and complaint desks thousands of times and after a long await questions were answered.But apart from the negative points these revolutionary form factors might have served the design teams very well in figuring out the right design.
The need for Tilted Screen Orientation was brought up on E90,N810 and also in the N96 as well,but the E90 design would have proven to be a power eater as it needed two High resolution displays,which is indeed not a best way for energy efficiency.N810′s stand would have been a better option,so does the N96′s kick stand but still the stand pops out from the main body adding some degree of unsaturated design literacy.
The Tilted Sliding Mechanism used in the N97 is best of its kind I’ve seen on Nokias,and obviously on other brands,the Xperia X1 had something similar but the physics involved in it is diferent,it uses the angle of shapes to uplift the tilt.But in the N97 the stand used to lift the front screen panel is,hidden in between the two main bodies of the phone,so the stand is perfectly embedded into the device it self.The stand looks like a spring-assisted one,as it is shown in the video but its full mechanism is yet not known,nevetheless of the moving system it seems be a great way to slide a device,giving a transformer output as the result.
The tilt screen orientation is adding more usability to the device by acting as a,
1.Laptop while on your lap or hands,an easy posture to hold the QWERTY slide-out keypad.
2.An easy way to read documents and watch movies.
3.More effectively noticeable when it comes to screened messages when you are not using the device,it is easy to view a screen illumination in this way than it is lying flat on a desk.
4.Most of all it brought QWERTY on to N-series for the first time.
5.Less chances to suffer from slider wobble problems due to the new sliding mechanism used.
2.Powered by S60 5th edition Touch OS
Again another fresh start for the N-series device interface and input roadmap,is for the first time the N-series is setting foot on to the S60 5th edition touch OS.This upgrade of OS is a significant landmark on the N-series legend.Simply saying, now the N-series has just become brilliant from being best.More input,navigational,screening and applicational capabilities are added while the rest is extended.New OS will be much more intuitive than the previous non-touch operating systems,also prove to be more user friendly thanks to the large and illustrative navigational and touch input system.N97′s Touch screen will prove to be much effective than the one present on the 5800 XpressMusic as the phone is said to be totally operatable only with your fingers,But despite of the rumors saying that a stylus will be shipped along with the device to some selected countries,the product Manager Tomaharu Yazawa confirmed that each and every retail Package will carry a stylus regardless of the country it will be shipped.Also the touch OS seems more responsive than it was on the 5800 XM,may be this will be improved with the addition of Tactile feedbak during it’s preparation to the market launch in the 1st Quater of 2009.
Also now the application development for s60 will be redirected to a new path mainly concerning the new OS,and I’m sure there will be more interactive options possible for the application developers.I was told by Epocware that they are in a hurry to release the Touch versions of their existing applications and I’m sure them and others will have totally new application experiences lined up for the new age of S60.
3.The 5MP Carl Zeiss
Nokia have understood the importance of fitting a High-end cam into their flagship device while many other touch device competitors forgot to do so.Also this is a perfectly timed decision taken to keep the existing Nokia multimedia fans sticked to the N-series in the future too.The Camera specifications revealed were as follows,
CameraLens:Carl ZeissTessar™
Image capture:Up to 5 megapixels (2584 x 1938) JPEG/EXIF (16.7 million/24-bit color)
Video capture:MPEG-4 VGA (640 x 480) at up to 30 fps
Aperture:F2.8
Focal length:5.4 mm
Flash:Dual LED camera flash and video lightOperating
I’m sure it will be a great plesure to do the Photo/Videography on a 3.5 inch widescreen camera view,I just can’t wait to have that experience.Also the camera controls will be more manuarable with the touch controls than using the navigational D-pad to scroll along the menus.A nice feature that would have been included to the camera is unfortunately missing on this super device.That is the “Manual Touch Focusing” of objects by using the touchscreen facility,I asked about this from Tomaharu the Product Manger,but he replied it will not be available on this device,instead the camera would produce more realistic and Lively images with the help of Carl Zeiss lens and picture color renditions.
Also when I asked about why the Xenon flash is missing on this device his answer was,”we hade dual LED flash that is good for video, and can be used in photos”
Anyway to me this is the only factor that disappoint me,but hope they have made improvements on to reduce the effect of it.
3.HD comes to N-series
One of the biggest letdowns I face when I shifted on to N95 8GB from my N80 was the low resolution,I was addicted to the High Quality display of N80 and when it comes to N95 8Gig it was a total disappointment,it’s true that the N95 8Gig’s screen is a monsterous 2.7 inch one,but the low resolution makes things ugly,really ugly when they are compared to with my N80.
But in the N97 the large 3.5 inch widescreen is supported by a resolution of 640×360 pixels,what they call as a nHD screen,capable of displaying 16 million colours and 16:9 movies in the high quality TFT screen.OkK mobile movie lovers,its time to setup your budgets for mid 2009.
4.The Onscreen Widgets
At a glance what you will notice on the N97′s huge screen is something new to S60,the feeling is more like when you’ve shifted from XP to Vista,you will see Onscreen widgets.Now unlike the old (almost same on each and every s60 3rd Edition device)home(Standby) screen,the new screen is customizable on the N97,you can decide what to see and what to avoid,the new OS will allow the user to customise the home screen widgets as you wish with easy interactive touch movements.I’ll bring more on this in my next post.
5.A-GPS and Electronic Compass
The new Nokia Maps 3.0 with OVI integration will guide you anywhare you want on the large touch screen and with the help of the electronic compass sharing and location,and direction awareness will make more sense.THe new concept So-Lo(Social Location) will bring a new phase of Location Based Social Media Networking.
Apart from the above main factors there is lot more left to add up to the excitement,At a glimpse you’ll fall in love with this new design the reason is that you’ll find a blend of design language on this sleek design,if you observe closely you’ll notice bits and bits of N79,N85,5800XM and N810 in this powerhouse outfit.And another thing I noticed is there is only one physical button on the top slide panel that is the new Menu key,at first I thought it was the traditional Multimedia Key but then got it clarified in the Q&A session.
Moving to the latter part the QWERTY keyboard is nicely arrange with out clustering the b\keys together but perfectly spaced and aligned,Also I found out the the Navigational D-pad is not a Naviwheel,so again a bit of drawback from Nokia.Because it would have been an added advantage during the physical Keyboard navigation,but the touch screen will easily make it comfortable.
Then the Memory is again a record breaker for Nokia,N97 will have 32GB inbuilt memory and also support Micro SDHC cards.So there is plenty of space to extend your experience.Also the accelerometer is more effectively used for screen orientation detection than in any other device as you will see the smooth transition effects on the video below.
So there is no ending describing this beauty in near future,but I’ll try to bring more and more on this in the following articles.
For more info visit Nokia World Event or Dialaphone