Nothing unofficial about it!!

Now when we know all the features, It would be fun comparing what the speculations were about the N97 and what it is. It is clearly noticable that the final release model far exceeds the expectations :)

Nokia N97 in development?

Somewhere in 2006
A new, ultra-high-end model is set to occupy the summit of Nokia's cellphone lineup, according to Hungarian news site Terminal. The N97 is said to outclass its predecessors in the N-series by including a 20GB hard disk in its cellphone-sized frame, providing ample room for documents, music, and videos. Nokia will also perpetuate its emphasis on imaging by incorporating a 5-megapixel camera with 2.4X optical zoom for recording and a smaller, front-facing camera for video messages. A tall, 3-inch LCD at the heart of the N97 is likely to be the largest in its class. Dedicated media buttons and an FM radio complete the smartphone's known features. A release date and other launch information is unavailable; the phone is projected to reflect its high-end features in its price when it ships in the near future.

Final Press Release

Desktop. Laptop. Pocket: The era of the personal Internet dawns with the N97
December 02, 2008

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

Barcelona, Spain - 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.'

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.

Experts Speak...!!

This one was posted by one of our regular visitors in one of the comments, and giving all due credit to Nikhil, here goes what the Experts have to say about this nemesis of the perfect phone: the N97!

Information Week
"It's the most exciting product to come from Nokia in some time. Product managers were calling it the 'Facebook Phone' because it's aimed at mobile social networkers and multimedia mavens. If you want a device that does nearly everything, this is it."

Cnet
"We really like its design -- the screen is large and sharp, and it rotates depending on which way you hold it up. But the N79's keypad left us a little less impressed as it's too flat for our liking and squashed together, making texting fiddly at times."


PC World
"Storage-wise, the N97 does very well. The phone comes with 32GB of on-board memory - that is twice the amount of memory the most expensive iPhone brings. As an extra, the capacity can be extended with microSD cards of up to 16GB, ranking up to a potential 48GB of storage on the N97."

ZDNet
"Nokia's N97 has some sweet specs – it supports up to 48GB of storage, has a 5-megapixel camera, music support and DVD quality video capture. The rub: The N97 isn't what you'd call affordable. It has an estimated retail price of EURO550 before taxes and subsidies...The N97 may be the coolest gadget on the planet, but there's no way I'm paying that much for it. Overall, the N97 may be the future netbook or laptop/smartphone hybrid, but it sure isn't priced like one."


InfoSync
"The Nokia N97 seems to have a lot of promise, but that's all it is right now. Nokia seems focused on the phone's location-based services, which is a wise move, but seems to be ignoring the larger picture. Nokia Maps does offer some welcome functionality improvements, but nothing we haven't seen before in other mobile navigation software".

The Register
"What I found most impressive is that users simply looking for a no-nonsense, practical tool will find the N97 is worth a second look...There's a drawback -- [the widgets are] cluttered and each widget doesn't really present very much useful information. It's the CNN approach to information overload - just overload the user with even more."

What say?

What on earth is 'Haptic Feedback'?

When referring to mobile phones and similar devices, ‘haptic feedback’ generally means the use of vibrations from the device's vibration alarm to denote that a touchscreen button has been pressed. In this particular example, the phone would vibrate slightly in response to the user's activation of an on-screen control, making up for the lack of a normal tactile response that the user would experience when pressing a physical button.

The road to true tactile feedback systems in touchscreen smartphones has been littered with half-baked, so-called “haptic” feedback solutions that do little more than vibrate the entire handset with every touchscreen input.

The problem with touchscreen tech is that the glass or plastic display doesn’t convey the same button-press feedback that make physical keys so attractive to many. So, the main aim was to create a feedback system that gives the user key-press feedback by means of vibrations or raised bumps. The ultimate goal is to localize and isolate the feedback sensation to the area under the finger. And Nokia N97 does just that.

In the Nokia N97 Launch Video, one can clearly notice the ripples on the screen giving user a pure touch sensation. And that is what haptic feedback is all about. Technology, as we can see, is moving, or should I say running towards a complete and total HUMAN experience.

And am sure it makes you (and me ofcourse) want to run and own this device. By the time its launched, here's another video to keep you N-gaged!