Nokia N97 - My Phone, My Desktop

Customization is the order of the day..be it your coffee, your suit, your automobile… its  high time we had customizable desktops. The N97 with its large 3.5 inch screen and Symbian S60 gives users the freedom to customize their desktop the way they want. So if you are hooked on to facebook or just want the latest stock tips, just put the respective widget on your phone desktop and everything is now just a finger tap away.  You can also switch your desktop with your profile. So now when you move out of office, just switch your profile and you have your latest music and orkut application on instead of your email and meeting reminders. Pretty cool, eh?

Earlier Nokia N-Series phones also did provide the feature of customizing and switching desktop shortcuts, but with N97 you can now place widgets onto your desktop so that you don’t need to go anywhere to see your favourite application. Imagine the fun of a cricket scorecard updating right on your desktop while you are in a boring meeting. Well, we didn’t find this widget suggested in the contest so we posted it ourselves. Look for our Cricket Widget in the Nokia Widget gallery.

To get users to design and suggest widget, the N-Series website is holding an innovation contest as indicated in one of our previous posts. Here is the list of top 5 suggested widgets that we found would be a great addition to your Nokia N97

MyFavorite – A simple yet  very popular widget these days jazzes up the favorites section on the desktop and also gives an option of Google search.

MiniFacebook – Be always online and always connected to your friends on Facebook.

Mp3 Player / Radio Widget – This one is for the music lovers. Have your music and FM play in a small and sleek looking player on the desktop. 

GeoSpot – Find out the nearest restaurant, fuel station or ATM using the GeoSpot application.

Quick Note – Just thought of something cool or you just remembered someone’s birthday. Scribble it down before you forget.

Some of the other cool widgets like Favorite Contacts, Manager of files, Today's Comics, Chat Notifier, N-gage Widget, Web browser, quick open: office, Nokia StockX Widget are also worth a view. So go ahead and play around with your own cool Phone Desktop. Make your desktop reflect your persona 

Whats your "So-Lo"?

Ask the N97! The A-GPS and Electronic compass on board tell the Nokia N97 where it is and it uses this data to dynamically update social networks with real time information. So your Orkut/Facebook status could have the location of the coffee bar you are sitting at and you could share pics and videos relating to the same with your friends. Chatting and staying online all the time would be like second nature to its owners.

The concept of "So-Lo" or Social Location is another first from Nokia and can only come from a company with years of insight into how people use their mobile phones and expect from them.

Another major insight...? Well the Nokia N97 automatically geo-tags the pictures you take in the EXIF data. So you can almost always know the exact spot where you took a particular photo :-| |

The Official Nokia N97 launch presentation

An amazing video where top management from Nokia tell us what they think about the N97 and what they want to show off about it!

Nokia to launch App store?

There is a lot of buzz that Nokia might just launch its very own app store at the Mobile World Congress to be held in Barcelona from 16 to 19 February. The man behind the buzz is Eldar Murtazin, a Russian editor of the Mobile-Review. If Nokia does launch the app store rumored to be up and running behind the scenes, its defintely going to have all its bases covered in terms of taking on competitors like the Apple iPhone, Sony Ericsson Xperia, Blackberry Storm, Toshiba TG 01, T-Mobile G1, Samsung Omnia or the LG Cookie phone! The N97 is going to shred the competition if app developers start building actively for the Nokia platform.

My question to Nokia is, what happens to this and why cant we have the app store directly integrated into Ovi? Take on any comparison of the Nokia N97 done with any other phone and the only thing that the reviewer would conclude by is saying that Nokia still lacks a functional app store. I wonder what theyre going to say now? Keep your your fingers crossed until MWC 2009 :/

Battle of the Smart Phones - Nokia N97 V/s Apple IPhone

We love to hear what our avid readers and subscribers have to say and this article is entirely dedicated to them! Many of you asked for a detailed comparisons...this one goes out to you! We have picked up THE major competitor of the Nokia N97...you guessed it right, the Apple IPhone 3G. Now you will say what about the Sony Ericsson Xperia, Blackberry Storm and Samsung Omnia etc? Well, lets look at the real competition. The competition which is making friends turn into foes, the animosity between the Nokia users and iPhone users! Both these phones are top-of-the-line products from their respective companies and are in a similar price range. In this comparison what we have tried to do is to interpret the specs from a user's angle and look at the practical aspects of using some of these features. Our team has narrowed down the comparison to top 10 features which we feel make the most difference to users. Sure smart phones are primarily used to make phone calls, but they are more than just that. We envision this comparison to become a real life competition of sorts. Some thing like a new Olympic Decathlon! (Imagine if Olympics really has something like that...Phone users competing against each other for supremacy..there'll be bloodshed!).Here's starting off this debate with an in-depth analysis on using these 10 features given by the team from the point of view of comfort, convenience and usability.

Let the Battle begin!

Feature	Nokia N97	Apple IPhone 3G
Touch Screen	A large 3.5 inch resistive touch screen display of this phone is first one from Nokia that works without a stylus. The power of this screen shall be visible only after launch	A 3.5 inch capacitive touch screen gives IPhone the key edge over its competition. The multi-touch display makes moving around menus quite easy
Messaging	A 30 degree slide out full QWERTY keyboard should make it the fastest SMS device among all smart phones	No QWERTY is surely a disadvantage. Also, some of the basic symbols are not available in the direct keyboard
Imaging and Video	A 5 Mega Pixel Carl Zeiss camera is sure to put old digicams to shame. Twin LED flash adds that extra punch. DVD video recording make this the perfect all in one device	A 2 Mega Pixel camera is good to take pictures in daylight. Compact camera but it’s without any flash light. No Video recording support is surely a major drawback
Music	An audio out port and a high quality built-in speaker is the right ingredient in this phone for the music lover. Album art support and preloaded music albums give it the edge	The IPod legacy continues and all the interactivity and convenience of the IPod are part of the IPhone. The speaker phone is not that powerful and you need to relay on your headphone which are also quite great.
Storage	Inbuilt 32GB memory and support for an additional 16GB make this the largest phone storage on the planet	32 GB IPhone has just been announced but the ones available on the Apple store are only 8GB and 16GB versions.
Internet, Maps and GPS	Nokia’s Symbian platform comes with an in built browser that supports almost all sites. Assisted GPS in the N97 and pre loaded Nokia maps provide it the extra edge	The OS platform supports a mobile Safari version that has a much better browsing experience. Integration of the GPS with Google Maps also gives route info in certain countries
Applications	Nokia doesn’t have an application store for the N-Series yet. As most applications are free or third party, there is a lot of scope for improvement here.	The Apple store is one of the biggest selling points for IPhone. With almost 10k applications to choose from this is one place where IPhone has a clear edge
Gaming	The N-Gage gaming platform has been evolving with the N-Series hardware upgrades. Now touch screen games with accelerometer support such as Asphalt Racing are expected soon	Apple has a number of games running in the IPhone but no tie up with any major gaming labels
Connectivity	The phone has 3G support, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity. Support for the OVI platform adds a zing to the connectivity support of the N97	With 3G and Wi-Fi, the phone fulfils the requirements of a smart phone. However absence of any online or Bluetooth sync capabilities is a hindrance in some cases
Vital Stats	150 gms in weight and 6.5 hours of talktime on GSM,this baby can surly survive for long	133 gms in weight and a talktime of over 7 hrs on a GSM network make the IPhone a part of your survival kit
Software	The latest Symbian S60 version 5 operating system has widget support and is faster and better than ever before	No one can write software like Apple does. A mini version of the Mac make the software fast and responsive
Overall Verdict	Nokia N97 is power packed, innovative and a dream device for some one on the move with this music,movies and games. An application store would compliment the abilities of this phone to large extend	Apple IPhone has tested the market for a while but has still devoid its users with the features of video recording and Bluetooth. However, the fun of applications does come out with the IPhone

Sample 5 MP Camera pic

There was a request in the comments section for a pic taken from a 5MP camera. This one is from an N95 which also has a Carl Zeiss 5MP camera. You can check camera details easily by looking at the picture's EXIF data. Im sure nokia will better even this in times to come...

Credits are due to TON70 for the amazing picture

Carl Zeiss and Nokia - the magic of photography

Any trip to the sandy beaches of Goa or the high reaching mountains of Kullu or the gushing white waters of Rishikesh is immortalized for life by the pictures and videos of the location. But what do you do when you forgot to take a camera on the trip.
With a 3.2 Mega Pixel camera as in the Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic or the new 5 Mega Pixel camera in the upcoming Nokia N97, carrying a camera for amateur photographers like me will soon be a thing of the past. A Carl Zeiss lens ensures that you get the same clarity of pictures that you would come in from a standard 3.2/5 Mega Pixel camera. To make life easier, Nokia has integrated a number of image management, editing and printing features in the phone itself, so that your phone becomes the one stop shop for managing all your favourite pictures. You can upload your latest albums on OVI, fire prints directly using Bluetooth, edit photos to increase sharpness and vary colour contrast. A dedicated photo key ensures that your camera mode loads quickly for that instant timeless shot.
A problem experienced by most camera phone users in the earlier versions was the absence of a flash light to take pictures in the dark or low light. With the new N-Series phones such as N96 and N97, a twin LED flash gives you almost the same effect of a real flash light.

Another great part is the excellent video recording quality that comes along with this camera. The 5 Mega Pixel Carl Zeiss lens records DVD quality videos in 16:9 aspect ratio. You don’t even need to download the videos to your laptop. Just plug in the AV cable to the TV out port in the phone and watch all the photos and videos directly on TV. A large 32GB memory card now ensures that you never have to delete another picture throughout a trip. So next time around, forget your camera in the top drawer, cause it seems like you don’t need it anymore.

Smile . Say Cheese !

N97 - Game On

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy !!

But you are not jack ? Right. What’s the fun in buying the coolest gadget on the planet without any games to play around. A high resolution 640x480 resolution, 128 MB RAM and MEPG 4 support ensure that the Nokia N97 gives you the most awesome mobile gaming experience. Be it the strategies of Tetris 3D or the fun of twists and turns of racing in Asphalt 4: Elite Racing, the N-Gage platform available on all N-Series phones is sure to blow your mind away with new 3D graphic acceleration, multi-player mode and even online arenas to compete with other players. The new games like Resident Evil and World Series poker challenge are already a rage among mobile gaming enthusiast. The Nokia N97 comes with the largest touch screen till date in the N-Series. Some of the other new features like A-GPS, QWERTY keyboard and MPEG-4 support open a new world of opportunity for N-Series game designers and players as well. Nokia games, Vice President Jaakko Kaidesoja believes the future of gaming is towards touch screen games and we couldn’t agree more. It’s probably time to toss out your Nintendo DS or Sony PSP. Finally, you have one device that does it all and does it all with speed and style.

So let the games begin!!

Check out preview of some of the upcoming games on the N-Gage platform.




Check out what Jaako Kaidesoja, VP from Nokia games has to say about the Nokia N97 and the N-Gage platform here: