As far as I know, the N96 and the N97 are completely unrelated.

The N95/N96 is a longwise slider for number pad and music controls, no touch screen, no tilt screen, dpad and option buttons on the face.

The N97 is a side-slider for qwerty keyboard, tilt screen, and touch screen, no dpad nor option buttons on the face (just the call/hangup "button"s, and what I think is a menu button).

The only relationship between them is consecutive model numbers, as far as I can tell.