Nokia N97 Mini launched with Facebook integration
Nokia N97 Mini, the younger brother to Nokia N97, has landed. Nokia announced the launch of the Nokia 97 Mini mobile phone at the Nokia World event yesterday. The younger brother, though, offers some features which the big bro doesn’t have yet.
Nokia N97 Mini photo
UPDATE: Nokia has launched the N97 Mini in the Indian market at a price of Rs 30,939. The phone will start shipping in the last week of November 2009.
The Nokia N97 Mini is a smartphone, with a touchscreen interface as well as a slide-out keyboard. The N97 Mini touchscreen is 3.2 inches in size, slightly smaller than the N97’s 3.5 inches. The Mini is smaller in size too, though only marginally. The Nokia N97 measures 4.61 inches X2.17 inches X 0.62 inches, while the N97 Mini is 4.45X2.07X 0.56 inches. The Nokia N97 Mini has less weight too, at 4.87 ounces, as against the Nokia N97’s ounces. Though the touchscreens differ in size, they both have the same number of pixels and colors – 16 million colors and 640 X 360 pixels.
Pic: Nokia N97 Mini
The major difference in the N97 Mini is in the onboard memory, which comes at 8GBs in the Nokia N97 Mini and battery life. The N97 has 32 GB built-in memory, which is a large difference. So, while the N97 was more of a full-fledged mobile music and video entertainment system where you could stow away thousands and thousands of files, the Nokia N97 Mini is decidedly smaller. However, it still competes well with the storage on many iPods and Sony Walkmans. The memory, let me add, can be expanded by an additional 16 GB with a memory card. Also, while the N97 battery life 6 hours long in talk time, according to Nokia, the N97 Mini will have a shorter battery talk time of 4 hours.
Nokia says the N97 Mini has up to 12 days standby time and up to 28 hours music playback (in offline mode).
In both the N97 and the N97 Mini, the operating system is Symbian S60, though the interface is improved in the N97 Mini. Nokia is pushing the “social” concept in mobile gadgets, with tight integration with Facebook. Facebook is estimated to have 250 million users across the world, and a lot of them are mobile. Nokia hopes to cash in on the Facebook mania, with tight integration between the Nokia N97 Mini and the Facebook interface. Let’s see how it works.
Nokia calls this “Lifecasting with Ovi.” We believe the name is confusing, and could have been Facebooking with Nokia, perhaps. Essentially, you can update your Facebook status and location from the Nokia N97 Mini homescreen itself. In Facebook apps currently available for other smartphones like BlackBerrys and iPhones, you need to start the application to check and change Facebook updates, while in the Nokia N97 Mini, you can do it from the homescreen itself. Another feature about this “Lifecasting” is the ability to automatically update your location, with the onboard GPS. So if you need to find a friend in town, and if you are both armed with the Nokia N97 Mini with Lifecasting turned on, just by looking at the homescreen, you can find how near or far he or she is. No need to SMS, no need to call.
The idea of Lifecasting through Facebook and GPS seems innovative, but we doubt whether Nokia will be able to make a big hit with this. The reason is that the success of such technologies is largely dependent on the consumer behaviour, which take time to change. And by then, usually a newer technology takes over.
“People want to bring their physical and online worlds together via the Internet,” said Jonas Geust, VP of Nokia’s N Series, in a statement. “The Nokia N97 mini is designed for this new social Internet and to help navigate people and places. With lifecasting, the Nokia N97 and Ovi usher in the next chapter of personal and location-aware Internet.”
The Nokia N97 Mini will start shipping in October, and will be available on sale in Europe and North America. Nokia said that the Nokia N97 Mini price will be 450 euros in Europe. This will be minus the taxes, and the carrier subsidies. Individual mobile network operators are free to bulk-purchase and sell the Nokia N97 Mini phones to users, bundling the phone with a usage plan at a cheaper purchase price.
Another Nokia feature called Comes With Music is preloaded on the Nokia N97 Mini. If you buy any Nokia phone with the Comes With Music feature, you get to download as many songs as you want for a limited period of time, usually one year. The catch is that the price of the Comes With Music feature is part of the price of the Nokia N97 Mini. So whether you want the music or not, you pay the price of Comes With Music. Was this an intelligent or dumb move? We’re not sure. It made sense to load the Comes With Music feature on the N97, as well as other smartphones with cavernous memory, but the Nokia N97 Mini does not have such gigantic memory to boast of. So, the buyer of the 8 GB N97 Mini smartphone may not be as keen on music as someone who buys the N97. So, its highly likely that the phone will appear overprices to him, since he/she will be paying the additional price of the Comes With Music feature, though it it may not be of great use to him.
However, the Nokia N97 Mini still has good multimedia capabilities. The Carl Zeiss Tessar camera, supported by a dual-LED flash, has a 5-megapixel lens, with autofocus and zoom, and can shoot still photos and videos.
The Nokia N97 Mini has all the wireless connectivity of the N97 too. It comes armed with Bluetooth, 3G, GPS and WiFi. It works in the GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz voice bands and the 850/1900/2100 MHz (AT&T, Europe) 3.6 HSDPA bands for data.
Nokia has also preloaded the Nokia N97 Mini with Ovi Maps and the Ovi Store. Ovi Store hawks games, applications and media for the Nokia user, while the Nokia Music Store sells music. The Ovi Store was launched by Nokia earlier this year, as a counter to the Apple iPhone’s App Store. It was quickly followed by BlacBerry with BlackBerry App World and the upcoming Samsung App Store. You can use Ovi Maps or download the Google Maps widget if you prefer. The Nokia N97 uses assisted GPS, which helps in faster location finding and navigation. Apart from global pedestrian navigation, users can access content from Lonely Planet, Michelin and Wcities.
“Nokia aims at reaching the many, not the few, with our rich portfolio of services. We are doing this through an increasing number of open partnerships with world leaders in many fields,” chief executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said.
How good is the Nokia N97 Mini for the Indian market? Nokia has not said when the phone will be launched in Asia. The price can change a lot depending on whether the handset is manufactured at Nokia’s facility in India or abroad. If it has to be imported and sold, the customs duties will be added to the base price, which is 450 euros. ($630) The price, in such a case, will be more than the Rs 32,000 it might otherwise cost. And in India, there is no questions carriers selling phones with subsidies; so the price can only go up after taxes and duties. And if you happen to be in Maharashtra where the taxes on mobile phones are the highest in India, get ready for the sticker shock if youre thinking of buying a Nokia N97 Mini smartphone.
Forget the price, what about the features? Sorry to disappoint you. Comes With Music may not have the Hindi Bollywood music or regional movie songs to your liking. GPS is still an emerging technology in India, and you may have to depend on Nokia’s Ovi Maps and Google Maps for navigation. Lifecasting sounds like an Utopian idea in India, where network coverage is bad in rural areas and GPS signals bad in the concrete jungle.