I was invited to the launch of the Nokia N97 at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. But unfortunately due to my internship/work, I am unable to take leave for the occasion. It is really wasted. Hopefully there will be a next time perhaps when N98 or N99 is launched. It should be within our local telecoms within the next 2 weeks. The RRP for Nokia N97 is SGD$1,028 (without Comes with Music) or SGD$1,228 (with Comes with Music) in Singapore. The price should be about SGD$800+ (without Come With Music) for a 2 years contract.

Nokia N97 makes THE internet YOUR internet
Nokia new Nseries flagship puts your personal internet experience into your pocket

SINGAPORE, 5 June 2009 – The highly-anticipated Nokia N97 finally arrived in Malaysia and Singapore to much fanfare at a unique Web-themed launch party held at the Mandarin Oriental Kuala Lumpur. Guests were treated to an immersive Internet experience that combined all the Nokia N97 has to offer – social networking, localised Web widgets and application, multimedia capabilities and a personal touch that exemplifies the S60 5th edition touch experience.

As the new N-series flagship device, the Nokia N97 brings the features and power of a mobile computer to a compact, pocketable package.

“The Nokia N97 is an important step towards our vision of delivering a highly personalized Internet experience,” said Chris Carr, Vice President of Sales, South East Asia Pacific, Nokia. “Fuelled by a multitude of media and applications through the Ovi Store, the Nokia N97 transforms the Internet into an experience that’s completely tailored to the tastes and interests of its user.”

Ovi Store on board
The Nokia N97 is the first device to ship with Ovi Store, a one-stop shop for a full catalog of applications, games, videos, podcasts, productivity tools, web and location-based services, and much more. Ovi Store has paid and free content from a range of global and local content providers and developers, including Facebook, Hi5, Paramount Pictures and Qik, as well as Twitter applications.

“Social networking is also key to what the Nokia N97 is bringing to the table which is why we created a customised Facebook experience for the Nokia N97. By connecting users to their friends on platforms like Facebook and Friendster, we’re doing what we do best – connecting people,” said Vlasta Berka, General Manager, Nokia Singapore / Malaysia & Brunei.

Enjoy your upgrades
The beauty of this Nokia device is that taking it out of the box is just the beginning. As with a desktop PC, people can constantly improve and refresh their Nokia N97 with new features, functions and fixes so they can do even more with the device. An exciting roadmap of new features and functions is planned to roll out in the second half of 2009.

Entertainment ensured
The Nokia N97 also has direct access to the huge catalog of music in the Nokia Music Store (available in Singapore). With multiple high-speed connectivity options and 32GB of storage (up to 48GB using a microSD card) it is possible to directly download and store tens of thousands of songs on the handset.

High-quality images and video clips at 30 frames per second (fps) can be captured using the 5 megapixel camera with integrated Carl Zeiss optics. Images can also be geo-tagged to specific locations and shared instantly with friends or uploaded online via Ovi Share, Twitter, Flickr or Facebook.

In Malaysia and Singapore, the Nokia N97 will come with three months’ navigation license.

In Singapore, consumers will also have the opportunity to purchase a version of the Nokia N97 which will have Comes With Music service, giving them one year of unlimited music downloads.

The recommended retail price for the Nokia N97 is RM2,480 in Malaysia and SGD1,028 (without Comes with Music) or SGD1,228 (with Comes with Music) in Singapore.

Official Website: Nokia Singapore N97

Went for the Nokia N97 Blogger Preview at Nokia Singapore office located at Alexandra Technopark. The Nokia N97 will be the next Nokia flagship device. It felt solid when I got my hands on it. There will be 2 colors for it. The black as well as the pearl white. There are a lot of interesting applications/widgets that you can place on the home screen such as Facebook, Stocks, Weather, etc. Gone are those days of those boring Active Standby screen which exists all the way till the N96. You can have up to 5 widgets on the home screen which you can arrange in any order you like. A neat feature which not many people may know is there if you swipe to the left or right of the home screen, all your widgets will be hidden to protect your privacy. Swipe again to get them back.

The sensitivity of the screen is just average due to the technology used. If I am not wrong, the N97 is using a resistive screen to cater for a wider audience with many different methods of input instead of a capacitive screen and hence scrolling or “flickering” is not as smooth as iPhone. That is the only complain I have. In terms of responsiveness, I felt that it is more responsive than the iPhone. Typing on the mini QWERTY keyboard is quite smooth for me as the keys are not clustered together.

Of course the iPhone has a much thinner body but the length of both phones is above the same. The width of the N97 is much smaller than the iPhone.

There will be a few applications that is catered specially for the Singapore Market and it will be included in the default package at launch time. Applications include Straits Time, Golden Village (GV), SG Buses and a taxi application.

The N97 will be launching in June, should be before the mid of June 2009. The retail price is not yet know, but I estimate it to be about SGD$1200 or less without subsidy. In the mean time you can check out http://www.nokia.com.sg/n97, this will be the official Nokia N97 website in Singapore.

Gallery

Video
I kinda suck when it comes to video recording, sorry about that, there are 3 videos that I took on the Nokia N97.

I was invited to Showcase Nokia 2009 where Nokia launches the Nokia E55, Nokia E75, Nokia N86 8MP, Nokia 6710 Navigator and the Nokia 6720 Classic at ZIRCA, Clark Quay, Singapore.

Showcase Nokia 2009 Pass

Nokia E75

Nokia E75 Press Images

The E75 is the exact clone of E51 just that it includes a slide out full QWERTY keypad. Thickness wise, it is not much thicker and it sports a 3.2MP camera. It is mean to be a scaled down version of E71. But personally, I will choose E71 over this anytime!

• Nokia E75 Official Site
• Nokia E75 Datasheet
• Nokia E75 Specification
• Nokia E55 & E75 Press Release

Nokia E55

Nokia E75 Press Images

I think the E55 looks much nicer than the E51, it is meant to replace the aging but popular E51. The keypad needs a lot getting used to, due to the fact it is a half QWERTY. In other words, each number of the keypad will only correspond to only 2 letters instead of the usual 3 on the normal keypad. The feel of it is solid but give me a very plastic feeling instead of the E51 which gives me a metal feeling. Thickness wise, it is still as thin as the E51 and sports a 3.2MP camera instead of the 2.0MP camera in E51. I seriously love the design, it reminds me of the smaller version of E71.

• Nokia E55 Official Site
• Nokia E55 Datasheet
• Nokia E55 Specification
• Nokia E55 & E75 Press Release

Nokia N86 8MP

Nokia N86 8MP Press Images

I think the Nokia N86 8MP was not announced in the Nokia event at Mobile World Congress (MWC) yesterday But it was announced in Singapore yesterday at Showcase Nokia 2009. The embargo is till 4pm today, but apparently nobody conveyed to me about this during the event. The only time I get to know that there is an embargo is from a text message from Text 100 saying that the press release within the thumbdrive given to us stated that the embargo date/time is in the long file name of N86. Upon double checking it, there is indeed the embargo and hence I removed the N86 portion of the blog post. The filename column of my Windows Explorer is not even wide enough to see the full filename and that is why I never notice it. But if I didn’t check the press release thumb drive (normally I don’t), I will still publish the blog post, photos and video that I took of the N86.

The N86 is Nokia first’s 8MP camera (Sony Ericsson has release 12MP one). Actually MP doesn’t matter because you are not going to print that large photos anyway and they do take up a lot of space. Personally I think 3.2MP is the idea one. It is the quality of the lenses and the flashlight that matters. The N86 has something called the “automatic aperture control” which controls the size of the aperture automatically depending on the surrounding lighting. It has a dual LED flash to support poor lighting during video recording. Personally I prefer the Xeon flash from N82 over dual LED anytime as I don’t know how many people actually use dual LED for video recording. I think people tend to take more photos than videos on a phone.

Design wise, it is similar to Nokia N97 design style but I think that N97 design is much better. Personally, I think that the N86 is set to replace N82 + N85!

Both the Nokia N86 8MP and N97 will be out before June 2009 accordingly to the spokes person. Finally the N97 prototypes are in Singapore, few days ago when I was at the Nokia Office, the N97 protos were not there yet.

• Nokia N86 8MP Official Site
• Video Of Nokia N86 8MP
• Nokia N86 8MP Datasheet
• Nokia N86 8MP Specification
• Nokia N86 8MP Press Release

Showcase Nokia 2009 Gallery

Nokia announces Nokia N79 today, it will be available in the 1st quarter next year. It will be the first Nseries touch device and the 2nd Nokia touch device after Nokia XpressMusic 5800.

Press Pictures

Nokia N97

Nokia N97

Nokia N97

Technical Profile

• System: WCDMA 900/1900/2100 (HSDPA),EGSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
• User Interface: S60 5th Edition
• Dimensions: 117.2 x 55.3 x 15.9 mm*mm (L x W x H) *18.25 mm at camera area
• Weight: Approx. 150 g
• Display: 3.5 inch TFT with up to 16 million colors, nHD16:9 widescreen (640×360 pixels)
• Battery: Nokia Battery BP-4L, 1500 mAh
• Media
  • Memory: Up to 48GB (32 GB on-board memory, plus 16GB expansion via microSD memory card slot)
  • Video playback: MPEG-4 / SP and MPEG-4 AVC/H.264,up to 30 fps, up to VGA resolution RealVideo up to QCIF @ 30 fps Windows Media (WMV9) up to CIF @ 30 fps
  • Flash Lite 3.0 / Flash Video in internet browser
• Music playback: MP3, AAC, eAAC, eAAC+, WMA
• Main Camera
  • Lens: Carl ZeissTessar
  • Image capture: Up to 5 megapixels (2584 x 1938) JPEG/EXIF (16.7 million/24-bit color)
  • Video capture: MPEG-4 VGA (640 x 480) at up to 30 fps
  • Aperture: F2.8
  • Focal length:5.4 mm
  • Flash: Dual LED camera flash and video light

Press Release

Desktop. Laptop. Pocket: The era of the personal Internet dawns with the Nokia N97
December 02, 2008

Tilting touch display, QWERTY keyboard and personalized home screen – a true mobile computer

Barcelona, Spain – Nokia today unveiled the Nokia N97, the world’s most advanced mobile computer, which will transform the way people connect to the Internet and to each other. Designed for the needs of Internet-savvy consumers, the Nokia N97 combines a large 3.5″ touch display with a full QWERTY keyboard, providing an ‘always open’ window to favorite social networking sites and Internet destinations. Nokia’s flagship Nseries device introduces leading technology – including multiple sensors, memory, processing power and connection speeds – for people to create a personal Internet and share their ’social location.’

Press Release: Desktop. Laptop. Pocket: The era of the personal Internet dawns with the Nokia N97
Specifications: Nokia N97 Datasheet
Detailed Specifications: Nokia N97 Device Details