Mobile review

Available in Black or White, the N97 is more a mobile computer than a mobile phone. Packed with every imaginable feature, Nokia's designers have succeeded in creating a device that is supremely powerful yet easy to use, with a user-friendly touchscreen and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. With music, video, photos, email, web and downloadable apps all easily accessible from the customisable home page, the N97 delivers everything that we could ask for on the move.

The N97 is much more than an enhanced N96 - it has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and a touchscreen display. Other features include a 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, GPS, WiFi and 32GB memory. Nokia claim that it is the "most powerful, multi-sensory mobile computer in existence". Throw away your laptops, guys, the N97 is here!

There are so many touchscreen phones on the market these days, it's tempting to think that they are all the same. But the Nokia N97 does offer more than most. Nokia seem to be positioning the N97 less like a mobile phone and more like a handheld computer. Although at Mobile Phones UK, we tend to be sceptical about a lot of stuff, we're actually genuinely impressed by the N97 design concept. The N97 has both a touchscreen and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The keyboard makes typing fast and easy, and we definitely prefer this to a virtual keyboard (although it isn't the best keyboard ever - it's too wide for comfort, and the space key is in the wrong place.) Whether it's texting, e-mailing or writing notes, the QWERTY keyboard makes things possible that we simply wouldn't have bothered to attempt on an old-style mobile. But it's the touchscreen that will demand most of your attention. The screen measures 3.5 inches across, which makes it the same as the Apple iPhone 3G S, but it has a higher resolution than the iPhone, at a massive 640 x 360 pixels. With this resolution, there are almost as many pixels on this pocket-sized device as there were on early personal computers. And that makes it possible to start thinking about the N97 as if it were a handheld PC, which is exactly what the engineers at Nokia have done. The touchscreen is of resistive type, similar to the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, not quite up to iPhone standards, but pretty slick nonetheless. It's not quite as responsive as the best of the best, and the menus are sometimes slow to respond - typical of previous Nseries phones. The biggest problem is that the user interface feels like it's Symbian with touchscreen functionality bolted on - which is exactly what it is - rather than a native touchscreen OS such as Android, Windows Mobile or Apple's OS X.

The home screen of the phone is information-packed and fully customisable. You can simultaneously view the date & time, your inbox, the weather forecast, RSS feeds, Facebook and quick links to your favourite web pages. This is similar to Samsung's widget interface appearing on phones like the Samsung Jet and the i8910 HD. Touch a web icon and web pages open up in their full glory, with easy touch controls to scroll and zoom. There's full support for Flash videos as well. It's the mobile internet as it should be, and once you've experienced it you won't want to go back to how things used to be. The internet is fast too, either using the 3G HSDPA connection, and even faster is the WiFi connection, where it's available.

The N97 has a built-in GPS receiver, and you can use this to find your location, to geo-tag photos and to navigate. Nokia Maps is supplied, plus multimedia city guides and there's a built-in compass feature too. A 3-month trial licence for pedestrian and voice-guided drive navigation software is included.

The N97 has plenty of custom apps available too. Built on the mature Symbian operating system, there are plenty of apps that will be suitable for the N97, and you can download applications, games, videos and content through Nokia's Ovi store.

Nokia haven't taken this opportunity to upgrade their camera though. It's the same old 5 megapixel camera that appeared in the Nokia N96. But that's not a complaint - the camera is a good one, with Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus and a dual LED flash.

The N97 really is a feature-packed phone. It's much more like a laptop in terms of its capabilities. We're not going to list everything that it does, because the list would be too long! See the detailed spec below for further info. Suffice to say that it can handle pretty much any kind of media and communications that you can think of. With its close integration with the internet, it feels very much like the 21st century has arrived. We just want to mention the enormous 32GB of onboard memory, plus the ability to increase this with a 16GB memory card.

Nokia's battery life figures are very impressive when you consider what this device is capable of. With 6 hours of talktime on a 3G network and up to 430 minutes of standby, this is as much as we could have hoped for. We don't yet have any real world data on this, but hopefully our user reviews below will help to clarify this.

Finally, we have to comment on the size of the device. Yes, it's big, but what did you expect? It's heavy too, but there's a lot of stuff inside! This is a phone that does its best to pack in every feature that users might want, and we think that it's succeeded. Is it the best phone ever? It's probably Nokia's best phone, but at its heart the Symbian operating system feels just a little dated compared to the slickness and speed of the iPhone, or the power of Windows Mobile phones such as the HTC Touch HD or Samsung Omnia.

Features of the Nokia N97 include:

* S60 5th edition Symbian interface
* 5 megapixel camera (2592 x 1944 pixels) with Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, dual LED flash, 4x digital zoom and geo-tagging
* Video camera: MPEG4/3GP VGA video capture at 640 x 480 pixels and 30 frames/second, 4x digital zoom and video light
* Front camera for video calling: 176 x 144 pixels
* Display: Resistive touchscreen, 16 million colours, 640 x 360 pixels (3.5 inches) with orientation sensor, proximity sensor and light sensor
* Live TV (DVB-H based mobile TV with internal antenna)
* Digital music player (supports MP3/AAC/eAAC/eAAC+/WMA formats) with playlists and equalizer
* Stereo FM radio RDS with Visual Radio support
* FM transmitter
* Built-in GPS navigation with Nokia Maps application and digital compass
* Speaker independent name dialing
* Voice commands
* Voice recorder
* Integrated hands-free speaker
* Speed dialing
* Messaging: SMS, MMS, Email (SMTP, IMAP4, POP3, Mail for Exchange)
* Viewing of email attachments � .doc, .xls, .ppt, .pdf
* Java games (Guitar Rock Tour included)
* Advanced contacts database with support for multiple phone and e-mail details per entry
* Memory: 32 GB plus microSD memory card slot (up to 16GB)
* Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR, USB 2.0, TV-Out, (WLAN 802.11 b/g), 3.5 mm stereo headphone plug
* Internet: Full web browser with Flash video support, RSS reader, WAP, GPRS class A, WCDMA/HSDPA (3.6Mb/s download), WLAN (up to 11Mbps/54Mbps)
* Quadband plus 3G
* Size: 117 x 55 x 18 mm
* Weight: 150g
* Talktime: 360 minutes (3G) - 570 minutes (2G)
* Battery standby: 430 hours


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The HTC Touch 3G is a compact touchscreen smartphone equipped with a 3.2 megapixel camera, MP3 player, FM radio, GPS, HSDPA, WiFi and Bluetooth. It's a very lightweight smartphone, but we feel that the display is too small and the battery life is poor.

The HTC Touch 3G is the most compact version of HTC's touchscreen smartphone range. It's very compact indeed and weighs just 96g, making it one of the lightest smartphones currently available. But it's small size means that it has a small display, and this is bound to be bad news for a touchscreen phone.

The Touch 3G isn't light on features. It includes most of the features of its big brother, the HTC Touch HD. The list includes the Windows Mobile operating system, GPS, MP3 player plus radio, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps and plenty of memory. The compromises that have been made to fit everything into the small form factor are threefold: the display, the camera and the battery.

The display is disappointingly small. At just 2.8 inches across and with a lowly resolution of 320 x 240 pixels and 65k colours, it just isn't quite big enough for either the touchscreen UI or the web browser.

The camera is a let down too, being 3.2 megapixels and fixed focus. It's really just a toy camera.

The battery life isn't the worst we've seen - not by a long way! But it certainly isn't the best, and it isn't really enough to power the features of this phone. If you use the WiFi, the Bluetooth and the GPS, you'll drain the battery rather quickly.

Don't get us wrong - the Touch 3G isn't all bad. The TouchFLO 3D user interface is a great UI, but you'll need to be careful and patient to use it on this screen size. We also like the Windows Mobile OS. Web browsing is fast, using either the HSDPA 7.2 Mbps connection or the WiFi, but again, it's compromised by the screen size and resolution. It's the same story with the GPS and Google Maps.

The audio capabilities of the Touch 3G are good however. It's equipped with a music player capable of playing all the main digital formats - MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+ and WMA - and is easy to synch with Windows Media Player on a PC. The phone comes with plenty of built-in memory and can take microSD cards too.

Features of the HTC Touch 3G include:

* 3.2 megapixel camera
* Video recording
* Display: TFT, 65k colours, 320 x 240 pixels (2.8 inches)
* GPS receiver
* Music player (MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA formats)
* Stereo FM radio
* Messaging: SMS, EMS, MMS, Email
* Ringtones: 40 voice polyphonic ringtones / MP3 ringtones
* Wallpaper
* Java
* Internet: GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA (7.2 Mbps)
* Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.0 with Enhanced Data Rate, mini-USB 2.0, Wi-Fi
* Memory: 192 MB RAM plus microSD memory card
* Vibration alert
* Quadband GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) plus HSDPA/WCDMA (900/2100 MHz)
* Size: 102 x 54 x 14.5 mm
* Weight: 96g
* Talktime: 360 - 400 minutes
* Battery standby: 365 - 450 hours


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The T-Mobile G1 is the first "Googlephone" running the Android operating system. The G1 has a large touch-sensitive display and a slide out QWERTY keyboard. It's best features are its mobile internet applications such as Gmail and Google Maps, as well as built-in GPS and WiFi support. Weaknesses include the dire camera, lack of memory, difficulty interfacing with a PC or Mac and general "beta" feel to the whole thing. We'd recommend waiting for the next Android phone, or choosing the iPhone 3G instead.

The T-Mobile G1 is the first handset to use Google's Android operating system. To us, it feels pretty much like a beta release, rather like the original iPhone - good in some ways, but not really cutting it as a phone.

Available in a choice of white or black, the device looks a bit like the iPhone's ugly sister, but you can slide the screen to one side to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard beneath. The screen itself is touch-sensitive, giving you a choice of input methods. The accelerometer automatically rotates the screen between landscape and portrait modes, depending on how you hold the phone. It's not a small phone: too big to use single handedly, and really heavy too. Weighing 158g, it's the heaviest smartphone currently on the market - the same as Sony Ericsson's Xperia, but not half as good looking.



OK, so this is the long awaited "Googlephone", and it's all about Google. This is a 3G phone that's clearly designed for accessing the mobile internet, with a large screen, web browser, Google applications and email. But plenty of smartphones can do that. What's special about the G1? Well, of course it's great for browsing the web, with its big screen (3.2 inches is massive, let's face it), ultra-fast 7.2 Mbps HSDPA connection, WiFi and easy text input. It's completely Google flavoured. It's integrated with Gmail, Google maps, Google search, YouTube and Facebook. But this is a double-edged sword. Suppose you want to do something that's not approved by the Google thought police? Like synchronise with Outlook. Nope, no can do. Won't even speak to a PC. or a Mac. Don't even think about replacing your BlackBerry with a G1!

You can download new apps from Android Market - some free, some you have to pay for. There are going to be loads more developed in the future, so no doubt lots of interesting stuff will be available here. Android is a multitasking operating system, so you can run apps in parallel, like view Google Maps whilst talking on the phone. Be careful though, as the more apps you run, the slower the phone will be and the more likely it is to crash. We don't yet have a view on how robust Android is. It's not the kind of thing you can tell from a short test session. We'll have to wait and see what our users think after they've been using their Android machines for some time.

It's clearly intended as a mobile internet device rather than a multimedia wizard. Cos multimedia wizard it isn't! The camera is about as good as the original iPhone's camera, i.e. at the bottom of the class. Although it's rated at 3.2 megapixels, it has no flash, no zoom, no video capability. There is an MP3 player, but no FM radio. One good thing it does have though is built-in GPS. This is a nice implementation that integrates well with Google Maps and even has a digital compass.

The G1 comes with a 2GB microSD card, which is inadequate really. Thankfully you can upgrade this to 8GB, but we feel that an 8GB card should have been supplied in the first place. We're pleased that it's got quadband support though, as well as 3G.

Even so, we're disappointed by the number of things that have been left out. No predictive text, no voice dialling, no video calling, no MMS video capability, no ability to use the phone as a modem. Pause for breath ... no ability to sync with a PC or Mac, no FM radio, no document viewer, no video recorder!

Battery life deserves a paragraph of its own. Its awful! If you use this phone as intended (i.e. all the time) you'll need to recharge it every few hours. And with a device as big and heavy as this, there's really no excuse for this.

Features of the T-Mobile G1 include:

* Google Android operating system
* 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus
* Display: TFT, 65k colours, 480 x 320 pixels, 3.2 inches
* MP3 player (MP3, AAC, AMR, WMA, MIDI, WAV, OGG Vorbis, M4A formats)
* MP3 ringtones
* Handsfree speaker
* Messaging: SMS, MMS, Instant Messaging, Gmail
* GPS with Google Maps and digital compass
* Caller ID
* Vibration alert
* Memory: 2GB microSD card (expandable to 8GB)
* Connectivity: Bluetooth, USB, WiFi
* Internet: GPRS, EDGE, 3G HSDPA (7.2 Mbps)
* Quadband plus 3G HSDPA
* Size: 118 x 56 x 17 mm
* Weight: 158g
* Talktime: Up to 5 hours
* Battery standby: Up to 130 hours



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