Nokia N97 Mini Review

We’ve had the smartphone, and now manufacturers have decided that what we need is smaller smartphones. Cue the Nokia N97 Mini, which might be the N97’s little brother in size, slipping very easily into the pocket (much like the old small clamshell phones), but is certainly not lean on features.

It’s the size that’s most obvious, and it’s definitely slimmed-down, but still perfectly comfortable in the hand. One thing that could have been an issue, given the size, is typing on the pull-out keyboard, but some very intelligent design work means it’s surprisingly ease and satisfying to use.

The camera, too, is very impressive, boasting an impressive five megapixels, and also, naturally, offering video – which looks superb on the phone’s very wide screen.

Where it falls down is on the buttons, which is quite unusual for Nokia. Of particular note is the stiff camera button – becoming used to it takes far longer than it should. It’s good to see that the company has included a 3.5mm headphone jack to allow good quality listening, even though the music player itself is a step down from other Nokia offerings.

Half of the joy with smartphones, of course, is the applications available that help make them more than just fancy phones, and here the failings of Nokia become quite glaring, as a number of mobile phone reviews have noted. There simply isn’t much in Nokia’s Ovi App Store, certainly when compared to Apple, and although it can be appealing to have an optional Facebook widget on the home screen, it’s certainly not going to make up for the lack of apps, especially as some of those available don’t work too well.