Nokia N97 Mini previewed: not so mini, not so great

As sure as the sun, Mobile-review's Eldar Murtazin managed to nab a very early look at the still yet-to-be-announced Nokia N97 Mini, and as if we needed another reminder, the FCC filing wasn't kidding with that 1:1 scale. Turns out it only takes "around a centimeter" difference to earn the "mini" nomenclature in Finland, and in addition to that peculiarity, the company's apparently managed to make the keyboard actually worse than its predecessor -- no small feat, if you ask us. Of course, we haven't had a chance to try it ourselves yet, but the prognosis so far isn't so good. Perhaps more interesting is good ole' Eldar's teasing about a number of other touchscreen Nokia devices, some without keyboards, that'd target the same segment as the N97 Mini, including one he'll be revealing and previewing tomorrow -- and no matter what it is, we can all but guarantee with supreme confidence that it'll have a more compelling raison d'être than this thing.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 24th 2009 11:00PM]

I have had an N97 (maxi?) for about a month (beside an HTC Hero I got in exchange of an iPhone 3GS I managed to quickly get rid of; and my old & beloved HTC TouchHD), and I can witness that the k-board, once you get used to it (and it only takes a few hours) it's not bad at all.
I must admidt that , as I have said in some other post, for the first couple of weeks I have had it I was bitterly disappointed by it, but in a very short time Nokia pulled out over the air updates , fixes and 2 new ROMs ,at the rythm of about one or two A DAY for the past 2 weeks or so, thus manageing to salvage the leaking finnish flagship. Moreover the many 100s of free themes with icons sets & wallpapers, etc. available on the webz , and other stuff from the OVI place and /or from the dozens of other dedicated Symbian web pages, managed to rejouvenate to an umbeliveable extent S60' s dated looks, and the couple of other gripes people (and me) were complaining about , proved to be fixable by whomever was willing to spend a couple of hours moving apps and programs from a memory to anotherone and downloading (for free) those that were missing.
Now I love my N97 at least , or probably more, than my newer Hero, which itself was a huge improvement from the old Iphone 3GS which substituted (although probably I do not yet love it as much as my old trusty TouchHD).
This is why I think that this mini N97 now makes no sense at all unless it's gonna cost about half the price of the full sized one: the N97 now is fully ready for prime time, who's gonna want that midget?

As disappointed as I was when I first tried out my N97 , now I'm so happy of it that I can't wait to ditch it in favor of the N900 Rover, maybe together with one of those new Nokia Booklet netbooks too (if it proves to be more atractive than the Samsung N310 once both will be loaded with win7).
Yep, Nokia was very near to follow Sony Ericcson on its sad march to the sunset boulevard, but it has been able to trace its way back very , very fast; and in style too.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 24th 2009 11:20PM]

looks kinda like the touch pro 2