Not true. The n97 keyboard has one major flaw in the buttons have next to no travel in them at all. Tactile wise they might as well have put a touch screen keyboard in its place.

Quite often I mis-key things one because im not quite sure if ive pushed it firstly because their is no real click and the buttons are very low and light and secondly because the phone often lags and doesn't keep up with you when you flick it open and start typing) if you managed to get a nice wpm speed on the device its either missing characters or your end up hitting about two keys at once.

The N900 keyboard while without its faults gives a nice solid press that actually feels like a button and is the whole point in having a real qwerty keyboard.

The n900 is let down by its complete lack of software by major parties (google, spotify, tomtom and even Nokia). Open source is great however clones and workarounds are only so good as the real thing.

Nokia REALLY dropped the ball with the N97. It is in my opinion it will remain a shameful failure. When they announced it they basically lied in their promo video and it was the phone that everyone went WOW too. When they showed their production model everyone went and brought an iPhone.... go figure.

It showed such promise and an extra 128mb of ram, better partioning of the internal memories and 3D acceleration chip (if only used by the UI) would have meant they could have gone miles with it (scratched camera lens and gps interference problems aside).

Apple are getting worried and Nokia could really churn out a head turner if they do something magic with the N900 or bring out a Symbian phone based on the spec of the N900.

1. mine have plenty of tactile feedback they are raised up more than n900 keys which is quite flat

2. dont know what a lagging OS as to do with the KB, n900 kb seems to be built for midgets and not men with big fingers as opposed to the plenty of space there is on the n97, how can you complain at hitting two letters on n97 when its spaced better than n900 where i sometimes hit 3

i had n97 fully loaded with sat nav and apps/games. the only thing i miss is sat nav apps and use of digital compas for "maps" and d-pad apart from that i do not miss anything else.

n900 is a much better device and i prefer KB on n900 and the side but n97 slide was good.


n97 felt a bit slow in areas and view desktop sites was a pain. you get out of memory warnings. sites and even forums take ages to load beore you scroll and click links thats if you did not get out of ememory error.

n97 is good for your "phone" and sat nav needs with hardware KB but other that its under powered with lack of ram so internet experience is poor unless u like mobile sites.

i think my n95-8GB was better then n97 minus touch and bigger screen.

my n900 is great love using it everyday. i can view a site without thinking "can i" view without problems. uncomparable media player and extra codec support.

i have more to say but im still in bed on n900 lol

I have both phones in my hand now. The N97 keys are not raised up more than the N900 but the keyboard is more recessed so it gives a bit more travel (its a bit like using the old laptop keyboards they just felt weird unless you only used that) Overall I would say they are set about the same level from the phone. Possibly the curve makes it feel like this

Overall im not sure why I prefer the N900 keyboard (you are right their shouldn't be any difference tactually speaking). The N900 buttons are curved so when their travel ends they impact more at a point on your thumb rather than the whole area so it feels more pronounced. They are also more stiffer. Quite often I would have to stop with the N97 and check that the last key press actually went though (for some reason I don't touch type with phones) Maybe its the click sound from the OS as but tactally speaking the whole keyboard experiance on the N900 is better than my N97.

I don't dislike the layout on the N97 or the spacing. For some reason I always ended up hitting H as well as Y or R as well as T. Again this is probably because the buttons are extremely loose and easy to press so I think the fault is the keyboard is a bit too easy. I like a nice tactile response which is why I don't get on with touch-screen keyboards.

I will agree the N900 keyboard is not perfect. My main reasoning for not getting the mini however was the keyboard feel was more of less the same and I just hated my n97 one. Ideally a nice 4 row layout and yes a bit more space would be nice but nether device is perfect.

As for the ui speed the N97 when I first got it (first week of release) was practically unusable it has improved a hell of a lot but its nowhere near as quick as the N900 from opening a message hitting reply and starting to type.

I miss Google Maps and Spotify on my N900! The major annoyances of the N900 are

A) Lack of official MMS support from Nokia.
B) Lack of any DECENT GPS Programs
C) Lack of Google Progs (something which could possibly be resolved with MIDP2 but ive not had the time to play)

Anything else is non-essential.

I think that was their plan but I had one and if not for the arrival of the N900 I don't think I would have bought another Nokia for a long time. I was talking to a guy in a phone shop on Sunday (while taking back my wife's Nokia X6) and he said they've never had another phone like it for the amount of returns.

The N97, X6 or N900?

Java, portrait mode, free navigation, Ovi, more apps... Many of this are not going to come for Maemo 5.

I used the N97 for about 4 months before selling it off. It was a nice phone all around and had plenty of apps for what I needed. However, it was sluggish if you had the screen full of widgets and I was not a fan of having only one "screen" to use as opposed to the N900 (and Android) having several. Furthermore, the N97 was buggy and would crash more than I'd like. Each firmware update helped but it was never bug free for me.

I've had the N900 for about a month now and it's nice and snappy. If the N900 had greater app selection it would be perfect for me. One thing the N97 did have over the N900 is that the email application was very fluid. The N900 takes forever to update the emails. I have to wait literally 1-2 minutes for it to finish updating for even 3 emails.

N97 sells a lot, they are making buyers feel better with this price tag as N900 so they can sell N98

got it, thx