Its been over 24 hours since I unboxed the Nokia N97 and in this post I bring you my first impressions based on one day with the N97 and also my experience from the N97 Blogger meetup which happened in New Delhi a few days ago.

I was lucky enough to play with both the white and the black (its actually a very dark grey) version and the build quality on both was phenomenal. The slide was so tight that if I hadn’t studied the N97 online for so long , I won’t have known the direction that I needed to slide the N97 in order to reveal the keypad.

The biggest decision for people to make once they decide to get the N97 is white colour to pick. When I laid my eyes on the Black, I immediately knew that there was no way I would skip this for the white. The white isn’t half bad, infact it even enjoys the advantage of being comparatively finger print free as regard to the black sibling. However, to my eye the white had a more plastic feel to it and looked far less regal. But then again, this is down to personal preference and you will find people that will swear for the white. As you saw yesterday, I ended up with the black and after 24 hours I am even more sure of my decision.

KEYBOARD

The keyboard is a hugely contentious issue for the N97, despite it being the first Nseries QWERTY device. Pictures make it look nice and large, however in real life it is not that big. This is probably because the N97 itself looks larger in pictures. So to give you a better idea I took a picture of the keyboard with a standard one rupee coin.

The first time I wrote a sentence on it, it took ages. The next sentence was faster and so on. Its basically a question of the mind adapting to the layout. When I played with the N97 again today, I coped much better with the keyboard and infact found the spacebar to be nicely placed, in the same position where my thumb would usually rest since this is a thumboard and not a keyboard where you would be able to use fingers. With a little practice and predictive text, the experience has become much better for me, better than what I had on the E90.

The tactile feedback on the keyboard is okay and the D-pad on the left also does a reasonable job. Nothing special but at the same time nothing I would cry about. What I would cry about is the fact that there is no dedicated comma key and that a long press of the top row of the keyboard (which also houses the numbers) doesn’t place a numeral on the screen. Thankfully, this can be fixed via a firmware update and I’m counting on Nokia to pull through with the upcoming v11 firmware.

DESIGN

Nokia has actually nailed it with the design of the N97. Its packs a lot in a size that is not much bigger than the E71 in length and almost the same size as the 5800 in thickness. The tilt of the screen makes for very comfortable access to the screen while typing on the keyboard should you need to select something.

I also really liked the rubberised back on the N97 which in my book gives it a rich feel. Popping out the back over in order to access the microSD slot and the SIM slot is a bit of a task, but this is something you shouldn’t be needing to do considering it packs 32GB of inbuilt storage.

INTERESTING OBSERVATIONS

• The N97 being sold in India comes with utilities like Smart Guard, Wavesecure, Keypad Lock (for the swipe to unlock screen)  along with a collection of India centric widgets.

• While sending across a video I shot with the N97 to my Macbook, the N97 crossed 200 KB/s, at the time I took the screenshot I was getting 184 KB/s. The best I have seen other Bluetooth 2.0 Nseries/Eseries devices do is about a 100 KB/s. Surprising considering the fact that the N97 uses the same Bluetooth specifications as the older devices.

• The slide is such a pleasure to play with that you will find yourself constantly opening and closing the keypad. Very addictive. The good part is that the slide so far is as stable as ever.

The current retail firmware on the N97 is v10, but v11 is available available on Nokia’s Remote Device Access service and hopefully that means we should see it become available for the devices in the wild soon enough. On the whole, I definitely like the N97 and if Nokia can fix a few software based bugs soon, it will become my weapon of choice!

Stay tuned for more N97 action!