Wise Rhetoric

So far I like it, it’s very stable for the most part but ocasionally it has issues with connecting to the net, this might be due to the phone or due to the fact that the at&t network in my small town has been neglected last 6 years and barely works. it tends to drop calls easily but overall is pretty good. also it doesn’t get nearly as good of signal as a blackberry in low signal areas. it does require quite a bit of fiddling to get some of the settings the way you like but overall it’s very easy to use, I love the 32 gigs of internal memory, provides lots of space for apps and music, the video quality on the phone is also very good but the format support is limited. the camera is exceptional, it takes extremely clear crisp images and the video quality when using in video mode isn’t bad either. the second camera for video chat is of poor quality, it’s not good for making pictures but it is perfect for what it’s ment for, video calling.

some questions I had about the phone when I ordered it I would like to provide answers for in case others have same question.

first off, the phone has several types of memory avalible, your ram, which is required to run programs, it’s got quite a bit for a phone but I think it could use more. second is the phone memory, I’m not sure how much is avalible total, never bothered to check, but I believe it’s around 40-60 megabytes. this is the primary location you’ll install most of your applications. the third area of memory is the 32 gigs of storage space, you can store anything in it and even install more programs here, please note not all applications will run properly from this memory, but most do. be careful about installing apps that are always running into this memory, cause when you plug the phone into your computer in mass storage mode, this memory is not accessable to your phone and apps running from it will run into problems. the same is true for the last area of memory, micro sd cards. insert any size you want up to 16 gigs and you have just that much more storage added to your phone. works just like the 32 gig memory, you can put apps or whatever on it, same thing about apps that run all the time in background applies to cards too. also some older apps will only recognize the first memory card device, the 32 gig memory looks like a card to most apps. meaning many older apps will see it, but will not see the sd card. this is a limitation of the older apps, not the phone.

the gps reciever in the phone isn’t very good, it takes a long time to get a lock and looses signal pretty easy, but it does work and works well enough to get the job done.

I can’t tell you how good 3g is on it, I do not live in area with 3g coverage, but edge is decent, that is, when I’m away from home, edge network here creeps at about 2kbs, it used to be much much faster but at&t neglected the network and it’s gotten very slow and unreliable in past few years.

problems I’ve found with the device is sometimes the os will get unstable, it’s rare, but when it happens you’ll just have to reset the phone in most cases, there is two methods to reset, one is to dial a code, the other is to hold a combo of keys while turning it on. I know both work as I’ve tried both, however I can’t remember them of hand, google can help. the back doesn’t seem well made to me, but it’s held on rather well so maybe it’s a little stronger than it appears. there is one app, accuweather that comes on the phone, I’ve had issues with this app from the start, it rarely works, recomendations on fixes or a better app is welcome. often times the phone will have issues connecting to the net, for no reason whatsoever the web browser will keep giving connection errors, most people have recomended powering the phone on and off to get it to reconnect. I found a quicker way that usually works. exit your browser and go to home screen, hold the end call button till it asks if you want to end data connections, answer yes, relaunch browser. works nearly everytime but sometimes you still have to resort to restarting the phone.

overall my thoughts on the device are it’s worth the money. most of the problems it has are fixed with the current firmware update, there are still a few lingering problems I hope the 2.0 update coming out will fix. but for someone who wants a decent media phone with lots of space, it’s definately worth the money.

I have had this phone since July 3, 2009. Since purchase I have had to deal with one issue after another, all related to the software and application interface. The hardware (physical) phone itself was great.

Negatives:
Too numerous to list all of them here, but essentially the software and applications are not intuitive and have MAJOR issues. I am fairly tech savvy and I cannot even imagine how someone who is less knowledgeable in this area would be able to deal with this phone. Very high maintenance.
–It took me, and several tech geek friends, A LOT of time to figure out how to set up 2 email accounts.
–The wireless access would not “remember” my wireless WEP key and typing that long# in repeatedly is not fun! It started ’saving’ it on its own one day. (see reboot story below – now it doesn’t save any more)
–Facebook app and “Favorites” app won’t load onto the home screen (just says “Loading” but never does). I tried to reinstall the Facebook app, but had to go to a 3rd party site to find it. Nokia’s Ovi store no longer has a FB app available. Once an app is gone from your phone – good luck trying to reinstall it. Impossible. If you can even find the app anywhere.
–Apps randomly work, then don’t work. Very mysterious.

Yesterday I had to do a hard reset back to the factory settings (which means I had to back up and then delete all of my data, photos, text messages, music, and loose all of my settings, including difficult-to-set-up email connection settings, etc), to try and get the non-working/disappeared apps to work. There wasn’t much else I could do the software was so messed up. It was the last resort to get the phone to function properly. However, resetting it essentially “killed” the phone interface entirely. It is so bad that I just sent my phone to Nokia’s repair site in Alabama (their “customer care” phone and email are essentially non-existant: phone tree loop and a “generic” email response is what they consider “care.”) Now, I am waiting to see if/when they fix the phone. Here is how the phone was “working” after the hard reset (that was supposed to bring it back to the original factory settings):

–The key pad won’t function (on screen) so I can’t even try another hard reset.
–The phone doesn’t work (can’t access it).
–The camera won’t function.
–Most of the apps are missing. Including facebook and ‘favorites’.
–Most of the apps that are still on the phone won’t function.
–The phone shuts off when connected to the computer to update software.
–The phone randomly shuts on and off when you try to access an app.
–The ‘memory full’ message keeps appearing when there is nothing on the phone and there are no apps open.
Among other issues…

My main concerns about having to mail my new, $700 phone to a far away repair place are:
(1) now I am stuck with NO PHONE for “7-10+ days” and I am trying to run a small business (ironically enough it is for usability testing of products such as this – and boy does Nokia need to test their N97 interface – have they actually read the Nokia Users Discussion board?), and;
(2) the “Repair form” instructions for returning the phone state that they will “call me with an estimate of the cost(shouldn’t it be free?!)” or that they will “return the phone if it is not repairable.” That’s just great. Can you tell that I am really annoyed? The phone cost $700!!!

Positives:
Nice hardware. The keyboard is easy to use and read. I liked the matte feel of the keys. The screen is large and crisp in terms of readbility, and I love the fact that you can use your finger or a stylus (or finger nail – which you can’t do on the iPhone) to activate the touch screen. I love the weight and solid feel of the phone. The silver buttons and edging is also a nice touch. The camera, when it worked, took nice photos that rivaled my digital cameras’ pics.

The white phone is pretty cool looking – too bad it doesn’t work!

I’ve got a BlackBerry Bold, as well as an iPhone 3G. I’m not writing this review exclusively for comparing the N97 side-by-side, but given the price of this phone, the bar is set reasonably high. Obviously, nothing’s really “as good as” a BlackBerry when it comes to e-mail (and you’re using a BES), and nothing available right now is “as good as” an iPhone when it comes to web browsing or application availability. So for reference, those weren’t taken in to consideration.

The N97 arrives in a very nice package, with a pre-charged battery and thoughtfully written manual. The included software doesn’t run on OS X, so I spent very limited time working with it.

Within a couple of minutes of receiving the box, I threw my SIM card in and the phone was happily asking for some settings. What impressed me immediately, is that the N97 seemed to know exactly how to configure itself for data and MMS services. This is the first unbranded phone I’ve used that didn’t need me to enter the settings for my carrier (AT&T).

The N97 almost instantly showed a strong 3.5G signal, and started filling the home screen with information. I placed a couple of test calls, and was extremely impressed with the sound quality. Without question, this is one of the best sounding wireless phones I’ve ever used.

And then, the wheels started to come off…

First task: sync my work mail, contacts, and calendars via ActiveSync.
This started out reasonably easy, until I realized about halfway through the wizard that I had entered a setting incorrectly. Unfortunately, once you have something in the wizard, it’s there. There’s no “Back” button. So, the Mail For Exchange program started complaining immediately.

“No problem” I thought, I’ll just change the settings. This turned out to be far more convoluted than it should be. “Options” doesn’t give you a path to the settings. You have to go to hit the silver button, then go to Applications, then go to the “MfE” folder (which is incredibly cryptic, if you don’t know what you’re looking for) to change the settings.

Once I had them changed, the N97 happy started grabbing everything I wanted from my Exchange server. I went back in to Options and saw some well thought out options, like setting “prime time” for a constant sync, and a schedule for when you don’t need instant access. There were also options for setting Out of Office notifications, and the overall experience was quite good.

Second task: set up my personal e-mail account.
Having used the wizard already, this was straightforward. The program asked if I wanted to connect to get my mail, and I confirmed that I did. Mail showed up, and all was good. Until I tried to leave the program. That’s when I learned that the N97 is apparently incapable of maintaining two mail connections.

Annoyed, but willing to accept this limitation, I tried to put the account on my home screen, along with my Exchange account. Apparently, the N97 can’t do this, either. You can have one mail box on the screen, regardless of the number of mail accounts you may be using.

Third task: connect with my Bluetooth speakerphone.
My car has a Bluetooth speakerphone. Since I can remember Bluetooth being a feature on wireless phones, Nokia seems to have dominated this space by including just about every Bluetooth profile under the sun. Pairing the N97 wasn’t a problem. After it was set up, I made a couple of calls (which again, had awesome clarity) and thought everything was fine. Until…

When I returned to my car later in the day, I noticed that calls weren’t being directed to the speakerphone. As it turns out, the N97 won’t re-pair with anything on its own. So while I could use the speakerphone with my Bold and iPhone without doing anything at all, the N97 requires you to hit the silver button, then go to Setup, then Connectivity, then Bluetooth, then Paired Devices, then pick the speakerphone, then hit “pair” every time.

Speaking of which…

Fourth Task: answer the stupid phone.
I’m not 100% sure this is even possible with the N97. When the phone rings, you have a large bar with an arrow that points to nothing, and is labeled “Answer”. If you tap it, nothing happens. If you hit the green button, nothing. If you unlock the phone and try either, nothing.

Feeling like a complete moron, I had to look it up. It turns out, the bars are sliders, similar to the Unlock slider on an iPhone. Yet, this is really the ONLY thing in the OS that acts like an iPhone.

Fifth Task: get Facebook working.
This wasn’t difficult at all. Enter your name and password, and go. The application looks similar to the BlackBerry version, which I happened to like more than the iPhone version.

It does just about everything you’d expect it to, until it crashes. Yes, that’s right. Until it crashes. Constantly. Sometimes it does a full “I’m kicking you back to the home screen” crash, and other times, you get a red box telling you that your phone needs to be restarted. Sometimes the red box goes away on its own. There’s really no rhyme or reason to it.

Sixth Task: read my e-mail.
Well… on the first try, I had a message that said my phone was out of memory. You see, despite having 32GB of storage for music and movies, the amount of memory your phone can actually use for programs is quite limited. The out of memory message suggested closing other applications, which I did, and which resolved nothing. Rebooting the phone worked.

That’s when I discovered that the N97 is actually quite awful at rendering mail that isn’t plain text.

That’s also where I started to give up on the N97. In between all of this, I also discovered that:
*Your choices for incoming message alerts are either at the same volume as your ringer, or disabled.
*Some things need to be double-tapped, others single-tapped, with little indication as to which is which.
*The Ovi Store is basically a kludgy mess.
*The keyboard will constantly register any key that you so much as brush your finger next to when typing.
*There is virtually no connection between what the battery display chooses to tell you, and how much battery life you actually have.
*The N97 is basically a hopeless mess of a phone.

Admittedly, there are some bright spots:
*The back camera takes surprisingly good pictures.
*The included weather application is actually pretty cool, since it uses GPS and updates often.
*The overall build quality of the phone is quite good.

And sure, there are a boatload of hacks and tweaks you can make to the phone to get it to do things closer to what you want. But in my estimation, the amount of research and effort to do so is unreasonable, given this phone’s cost.

I’ve also heard that a new software update is imminent (as of this review, the most recent version available for this phone is 12.0.24), so that may solve some problems. But with the N900 not costing substantially more and a release date “any day now”, the N97 is for Symbian fans only.