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?

The Best goes Better: 5800 Xpress Music and N97..

A lot of you have been asking how Nokia N97 is different, or should I say better than 5800 XpressMusic. Though I believe both the phones are designed for different market segments and are not comparable, yet here is a review of their differences.

For a comparison in specifications and features from one of my most trusted sites called gsmarena.com, click here!

Nokia N97 advantages over Nokia 5800

• Display- N97 has a wider 3.5″ touchscreen display, 5800 has 3.2″. Resolution is same in both devices (640 X 360).
• Memory- N97 comes up with 48GB memory capacity (32GB internal & 16GB memory card supported). Nokia 5800 has 81MB internal memory and upto 16GB of card storage.
• Camera- 5 Megapixel Camera in N97, Nokia 5800 has a 3.2 MP.
• Gaming- N-Gage gaming capabilities included in Nokia N97. No support yet for the same in Nokia 5800.
• Keyboard- A full QWERTY sliding keyboard is also included in N97.
• Widgets- Live personalized home screen with widgets for web services and social sites in N97.

Just for the sake of it, the following are the advantages of Nokia 5800 over Nokia N97 though none of them is a functional advantage-

• Comes with Music- Nokia 5800 has a bundled service called ‘Comes With Music’ which allows unlimited music downloads from milions of tracks for one full year- Absolutely Free! Nokia N97 will not have that (Lets hope it does)
  
• Weight- Nokia 5800 weighs just 109g while N97 is much heavier at 150g.
• Size- Nokia 5800 has compact size of 111 X 51.7 X 15.5 mm while N97 has a dimension of 117.2 x 55.3 x 15.9~18.3mm (Which can also be looked at as an advantage, even I like my phone and screen bigger)
  
• Colors- Nokia 5800 comes with more trendy and appealing colors like Red, Blue and Black while N97 has usual White & Black, not to miss Silver
  
• Availability- Nokia 5800 is launched in some countries already and all set to launch in other parts of the world in Q1 of 2009. Nokia N97 has an expected wait period of over 6 months (Duh!)
  
• Price- Nokia 5800 is half the price of N97. Nokia 5800 costs just 279 Euros while N97 has a price tag of 550 Euros before taxes and subsidies.
  

Both handsets seem to be aimed for seperate market ranges. The N97 incorporates several elements from the Nokia 5800 and goes a few steps further feature-wise but the 5800 Xpress Music wins at price and other factors.

Nokia 5800, a pure fun device with ultimate music, multimedia and entertainment capabilities delivers the touch phone to mid-range markets. The Nokia N97, on the other hand is a high-range device, fully capable to replace a laptop and may appeal more to the business and high-end class.

Ovi: The Future is Now..!

Ovi is the name for Nokia's "umbrella concept" Internet services. Centered on ovi.com, it will market as "personal dashboard" where users can share photos with friends, buy music and access third-party services like Yahoo's Flickr photo site. It has some significance in that Nokia is moving deeper into the world of Internet services. Check this really amazing video about Ovi and the power that comes with it.

Maps on Ovi: More than Just a Mapping Tool
Maps on Ovi is the first free service that allows people to pre-plan their journey at home on their PC and synchronize with their mobile, giving access to pre-planned routes and favorite destinations while on the move. Over the coming months, Nokia Maps will become a destination for people to save and organize places, pre-plan trips and post-edit them. People can share their location and all their personally and socially meaningful content with friends, inviting them to join in activities. And heres another amusing video about Nokia's vision of 'Maps on Ovi' which almost made me jump of my bed, am sure it will intrigue you as well.

Mail on Ovi and Nokia Messaging: Mobile Email for the Masses
Some 75% of the world's population has not yet used email. Many of these people will have their first email experience will be on a mobile phone, not on a PC. Mail on Ovi, together with Nokia Messaging which mobilizes consumer email and instant messaging on Nokia devices, brings mobile email to everyone and not just for a privileged few. With Mail on Ovi, users will be able to create and access email online portal as well as on their mobile device. Nokia Messaging, on the other hand, will give consumers access to their existing email and instant messaging accounts from Yahoo! Mail® and Yahoo! Messenger®, Windows Live Hotmail, Gmail and Google Talk, and AOL Mail

Features Galore: The beauty in White!

Software:

• Runs S60 5th Edition. However, the N97 will have the Nseries version of S60, which means there will be a number of extra applications including Internet Radio, FM transmitter, Home media (UPnP) and Photos.
• The home screen can be personalized with Internet-aware widgets (based on WRT technology). Examples included in the press photos include weather forecasts, social networking (Facebook, Friendster, My Space) status summaries, and media collections. There are also indicators for time, profiles, email, application shortcuts and so on.
• Text input is via on screen keyboard (full screen QWERTY, pop-up QWERTY and alphanumeric), as is standard on S60 5th Edition, or handwriting recognition or via the QWERTY keyboard.
• Fully compatible with Ovi services including Maps, Music, Share and Games. Nokia Music store can be accessed from the device or from Nokia Music for the PC. Nokia Maps now supports high resolution satellite imagery, 3D buildings (selected buildings) and richer map meta data. Pedestrian route finding and turn by turn, voice guided car navigation, are available as premium services.
• Introduces the social location (So-Lo) concept; the N97 has software that allows you to automatically update and share your location with friends and popular social networks.

Hardware:

• The N97 (117.2 x 55.3 x 15.9 mm) is larger than the 5800 (111 x 51.7 x 15.5 mm). Compared to the iPhone (112 x 56.9 x 12.5 mm) is a little taller, but slightly narrower. Quite impressive given the inclusion of a QWERTY keyboard.
• 3.5 inch, 360 x 640 (nHD) resolution resistive touch TFT screen with 16 million colours. The device can be driven using finger touch or stylus, or from the QWERTY keyboard.
• Haptic feedback for screen touches. This is provided via general vibra feedback, as on the Nokia 5800.
• 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and dual LED flash. The camera is covered by a sliding lens cover similar to that found on the N85 and N79.
• The camera is also used to record videos at VGA at 30 frames per seconds. The usual Share online application is present for uploading images and video to online services such as Flickr and Share on Ovi (available services likely to be expanded before launch).
• Integrated A-GPS and compass sensor (magnetometer) means that the N97 'intuitively knows where it is' and this is used by Nokia Maps, and for social location; also embeds location information into images and video.
• 3.5 mm audio jack (also used for TV-Out) and built in stereo speakers. Music playback time of one and half days (36 hours). There's also an FM radio and FM transmitter.
• MicroUSB jack (USB 2.0 HiSpeed) and supports charging over USB
• 32GB of internal flash memory; microSD card slot with support for SDHC cards upto 16GB in size (giving total potential memory of 48 GB)
• WiFi, 3.5G, quad-band GSM and Bluetooth connectivity
• There is no stylus built into the phone, but one will be included in the box

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!

What Nokia N-97 has and 'The Phone' does not!

So here is what 'The Phone' has:

• Touch Screen
• Accelerometer Sensor for Auto Rotate
• Bluetooth - Headset support only
• 2 MP Camera
• Built in GPS Receiver
• Audio/Video Player

And what is missing?

• Push mail: Push Mail's 'always on' capability is the most important feature of any business phone!
• Video Recording: No multimedia phone is complete without video recording!
• Sharing files using bluetooth: Works with only a few wireless headset and does not permit sharing files and pictures!
• No external memory: Well, am sure you will say you just not need it, so do with the 'limited' space you have!
• Non removable battery: After a year or two, battery capacity reduces, but a change is just not possible!
• No cut, copy, paste: And how do you think you will edit documents?

And there is more:

• Cannot be used as a wireless modem
• No speed dialing
• No SMS forwarding
• No MMS sending

And what does Nokia N97 have? All this, and when I say all this, I mean EACH and EVERY feature I just mentioned, and much more:

• Does not just have a video recorder, but the camera is 5MP, carl zeiss optics, autofocus with flash, plus a secondary videocall camera
• Does not just have external memory compatibility upto 16 GB, but has 32 GB of internal memory too
• And did I mention a QWERTY keyboard other than just the touchscreen
• SMS forwarding, MMS sending, Speed Dialing, and yes, can be used as a wireless modem
• Nokia is known for its batteries, and yes, unlike 'The Phone', they are removable
• And bluetooth is not just for its own headset, but you can share all you want

Need I say more? Or is there even a need to justify or argue which one's better, and why? I guess smartphone users are smart enough to make their own choice! As you can see, I have made mine...

PS: People who had difficulties in identifying 'The Phone' can go bite raw apples, as for them, the grapes are sour!