Nokia leans on new N97 as best hope for an iPhone rival
At a special event in Spain, Nokia has revealed the N97, which is just the second touchscreen phone in company history — and potentially the company's one real chance at reversing market share losses to Apple's iPhone.
Unlike its more basic sibling, the new model is aimed at pleasing heavy-duty Internet users and not just music enthusiasts. Its trademark feature is a new, sliding keyboard that tilts out from the side of the phone for typing. It also adds a larger 3.5-inch, 640x360 touchscreen, a sharper 5-megapixel camera with a better flash, and — in a likely first — 32GB of built-in flash memory. A card slot gives room for yet another 16GB of space.
With 3G, a digital compass, GPS, and Wi-Fi also coming along for the ride, the phone is being marketed first and foremost as a social networking device which is constantly aware of where it is and what's happening with its owner's friends. The home screen appropriately has a new interface with widgets that supply an at-a-glance view of contacts from Facebook and other services.
It also includes a full HTML web browser with Adobe Flash, cut-and-paste text, video recording, and options for a removable battery and storage that are either already in place or missing from certain rivals, Nokia says. Apple's patents nonetheless prevent it from using multi-touch.
But while the N97's features and overall focus are different than those on the iPhone, the chrome-trimmed, uncluttered design and certain interface elements for Nokia's new offering also share more than a few passing resemblances to its American-born rival — including, as blogger Robert Scoble notes, a similar photo browser.
"You can see Jonathan Ive's challenge taken up all over the device," he says.
The debut ultimately reveals the N97 as Nokia's real answer to the iPhone and comes just as the Finnish company finds itself in the unfamiliar position of having to stem a rapid loss in market share, much of which can be attributed to Apple. Compared to the year before, Nokia has lost 20 percent of the smartphone market this summer and can pin the blame largely on iPhone 3G's appearance this July.
Before it published its quarterly results earlier in the fall, Nokia itself had warned that unnamed competition, now widely known to be Apple, was undermining its market share by using heavy carrier subsidies to beat Nokia's pricing.
However much closer the N97 may bring Nokia to having its own ultimate touchscreen phone on a hardware level, the details of the launch have already been deemed problematic. The unlocked, unsubsidized phone will cost 550 Euros, or nearly $700; this is as much or less as the iPhone costs in countries that allow contract-free sales but about 75 percent more expensive than the 5800 XpressMusic.
And though attendees of the iPhone's Macworld 2007 debut were frustrated when the first Apple cellphone wasn't slated to ship for another five months after it first became public, the N97 isn't scheduled to ship until sometime in the first half of 2009 — and then while largely excluding the US. As is customary with most Nokia phone introductions, the N97 lacks support for AT&T's 3G network.
129 Comments
At a special event in Spain, Nokia has revealed the N97, which is just the second touchscreen phone in company history
Well it is, if you don't count the other touch screen devices Nokia has released in the past (like the 7700, 7710, plus the tablets they make(
Although my initial reaction was to say 'meh', halfway through the article I read the device is being touted as a "social networking device". This worries me, and should worry apple, Apple does not seem to understand social networking and the significance it will play in the future. I see no clear strategy, and I consider it one of Apples few weaknesses.
Another weakness is porn, porn has been a driving force in many technologies and (as far as i know) is not readily available on Apples squeaky clean iphone/itunes.
A platform that provides more freedom in the adult department, could amass the masturbating masses.
I assume the home screen is user-customizable, but taking one look at the publicity shot of the screen, you have to wonder about their PR people...what an ugly mess! I suppose it may play with the MySpace-ers...
And just how thick is this thing, after all?
For me, it always feels like nokia is just reinventing the same phone over and over again. (The spec sheets always look nice however)
I do not see any huge threats to the iPhone coming from a single phone but rather from a mobile operating system such as android.
I don't know if you guys saw the Nokia promotion video yet, but my first thought is WHAT A FRAUD. The interface on the phone in the video is obviously pre-rendered. whether or not Apple and other companies do the same thing I don't know, but it certainly is the most blatant example.. Seriously the interface speed and fluidity is NOWHERE NEAR what is shown on the video. Even the iPhone, which has the fastest interface animation/transition can't do what they show.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O2Li74EYew
Now I'm not a Nokia-hater. This hardware looks good if a little bit thick, and definitely has some standout hardware features like 32GB flash, 5MP camera with autofocus/flash, high resolution screen (although it is NOT a capacitive touchscreen, instead being a resistive model... similar to all the crappy touchscreen WinMo phones that work with a stylus and a finger. These are nowhere near as responsive as a capacitive model like the iPhone's display). I do wish Apple would take a cue from Nokia regarding the camera though, which is still a sore spot on the iPhone.
However, like all the other wannabe "iPhone killers" that have failed so miserably, they focus on the hardware and neglect the interface. Instead of building a new touch interface from the ground up, they simply bolt-on a touch layer to the existing ancient S60 code base, which is entirely conspicuous in the akward, cluttered, and unintuitive interface. I wish they would just throw S60 out of the window and simply add phone functionality to their Linux-based "Tablet OS 2008" that runs on their iPod-touch like "internet tablets".
The only interesting thing with this phone will be if they upgraded the processor and GPU to Texas Instruments OMAP3 line, which uses the new ARM Cortex-A8 core and PowerVR SGX graphics. Though if the platform is not sufficiently optimized it won't matter how much power you throw at it. Perhaps that is why this phone will not be released until H1 2009. I'd expect an iPhone v3.0 to be ready by then..