Nokia N97 White: Second and Last Chance.

As for my previous post on forsaking the Nokia brand, I had relented and decided to give the N97 another chance to redeem itself. I wanted to give it a fair opportunity since Quickoffice had finally released a word document editor that was compatible with the Symbian 5th edition OS, and I really wanted to be positive at that moment. Upon ordering a white N97 model from Amazon, I was hopeful that I would be able to see past the poor feedback of its qwerty and the meager potential of its interface and low RAM. Unboxing the second N97 was somewhat exciting, for it felt like a reunion with a long-lost high school friend or relative.

The first day was simply amazing with the installation of familiar apps such as Missing Sync for Symbian, Gravity, Nokia Sport Tracker, and the all-new Quickoffice document editor, and I was honestly ecstatic for that NSeries device! It felt AMAZING to use the 5 megapixel camera, customize homescreen widgets, store multimedia on the 32GB storage space, listen to AAC music files unsupported on Windows Mobile, have support for AT&T 3G, and see YouTube videos on a browser with flash support! I figured that all of my positive energy could be nothing but good for my new N97, and that all previous reservations for its shortcomings would be overcome through patience and understanding. It was supposed to be a brand new day on the horizon for Symbian OS and I, and I was ready to go along for the ride no matter what! I even returned to the N97 thread on Howardforums.com and announced that I had been wrong in not giving the device or its OS any proper credit and wanted to make a comeback. I was ready for a brand new outlook with the latest Nokia flagship model, and I was not going to let anything hinder that whatsoever.

I WAS SO WRONG TO HAVE WASTED MY TIME WITH THAT SO-CALLED FLAGSHIP N97!! It was eventually put through a hard reset and placed back into the shipping box for a prompt return!

As hard as I tried to accept the qwerty slider along with installed firmware and software updates, I simply could not do it. The few bad habits that haunted my previous black N97 came back to haunt the white version: poor tactile feedback on the qwerty, low RAM preventing any sort of efficient multi-tasking, and the worst of all...a clunky and outdated interface NOT optimized for acceptable touch navigation or usability. The best thing about the N97 reunion could have been the newly released Quickoffice document editor, but that suffered from two things: a chunky graphical interface that took up too much screen space with sidebar commands and qwerty keys that did anything but grant a worthwhile typing experience.

I still cannot understand how Nokia can look at its customers and fanboys and insist on delivering a lackluster touch UI that seems to be a product of pure and utter laziness on part of the developers. With all of Nokia's experience in leading the industry via worldwide device sales and forming many partnerships with other businesses, one would think that Symbian 5th edition would be more than just Symbian 3rd edition with a clunky touch overlay. Let's forget about the touch interfaces of Apple, Palm, Windows Mobile, HTC, and Android for a moment and look at only Nokia. According to the high standard that had been set from previous devices in the ESeries and NSeries product lines, I feel that the N97 software is a complete failure in every possible sense of the word.

Nokia has fallen into the same trap that captured Palm during its reliance on the Garnet OS that had graced so many Treos and Centros. Palm had learned its lesson while being put through the ring of fire by financial turmoil, and there was no other choice than to revisit the drawing board to create something new to avoid a meltdown. It succeeded with the release of the WebOS running on the Palm Pre device. While I may not be totally impressed with the Pre for my own usage, I can at least respect what Palm has done to rekindle genuine interest in its OS. I can still remember being a Nokia E71 owner and watching the Palm WebOS demonstration in awe. I was speechless at how polished WebOS looked to my eyes and how effortless and smooth it performed with every touch command. For a brief moment, I was willing to give up my E71 and give the Pre a try! That is the kind of consumer reaction that a smartphone manufacturer needs to strive for!!

It seems that Nokia is simply content with resting on its popular repuation and not completely applying all of its effort to promoting software product innovation. What better way to usher in a new age of Nokia devices than to completely rebuild a touch UI from the ground up? In regards to daily use in a hectic schedule, Symbian 5th edition is an absolute disgrace for the amount of retail cost being asked for it. I don't understand Nokia. Does it feel superior enough at its high end of the smartphone manufacturer food chain to where it can drag its feet and not attempt to be revolutionary with new products or even grant substantial updates to current products?

Using it thorughout the day is never quick, effortless and fluid; it is instead laggy, cumbersome and unreliable. Navigating menus should not feel like work, it should feel like a worthwhile experience. Having to tolerate an unresponsive slider to answer a call, sporadic freezing, jerky kinetic scrolling in viewing pictures, and error messages of insufficient memory when trying to access an SMS message or surf the web is inexcusable. Much of the problem may stem from the pitiful amount of RAM that is included in the N97 (it may be fitting to say the considerable amount that is NOT included). As horrendous as the RAM situation is with the N97, I was even more shocked when certain apps were automatically set to be stored on the phone memory! I give kudos to the N97 owners who had the patience to customize and tweak their device, for I honestly had lost mine. It is one thing to customize content on a smartphone with sufficient RAM and features, but this toy-like N97 hit the ground panting at the start of the race.

What's ironic is that I have taken to the TouchFLO interface of the HTC Touch Pro 2 due to its flawless integration with Windows Mobile 6.1, and I am enjoying every minute of it! It feels like a serious, professional working phone that has ample responsiveness in its touch interface.

While the hardware of the N97 may have been great, it was ultimately let down by abysmal software...it's as simple as that.


Upon reading a N97 review from Gizmodo's Matt Buchanan on July 6, 2009, I came across a most fitting summarization on the operating system of the N97:
"I don't even know where to start the hate parade I want to unleash on S60 5th edition. Nokia's managed to make RIM's BlackBerry Storm OS retrofit look like a work of art. And when legacy (sorry, mature) software runs into a crappy half-assed UI, it's a steaming pile of suck on a slab of garbage toast. All I could think about was how badly I wanted to shove Android onto it. Since I have nothing nice to say, let's keep this part short."


As for my faith in Nokia as a company, it has been restored to a point. I still have hope that something in the future will arrive that can finally grant Nokia the accolades it truly deserves in industry. Until then it shall continue to sputter along with the same boring devices running old software and so-called new devices running old software. Good luck to Nokia and the customers that continue to use its products.

TRENT
Sent from my HTC Touch Pro 2
TRENT SENSE blogger/netcast host
trentsense.com
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