Hi Everyone I'm back.
It is true the N97 is the most disastrous phone nokia has ever produced and has cost them not only market share but the following of many loyal customers who would only consider which Nokia to buy not which phone. Like myself.
I endured this phone for 5 months until I took legal action against the company for supplying goods not fit for the purpose and they cancelled the contract.
So why did this phone fail so badly? I think I expected it to work like my N95 with a touch screen and if it had done that I would have been happy however what happened is almost nothing worked at all. voice dialing , gps, speakerphone, usability, keyboard all useless and it was not an intuitive phone so lots of times I had no idea what to do next.
Then there is that stupid flip idea, how many times I tried to open it the wrong way or it would practically explode when you opened it and try holding it to you ear when its opened - impossible.
I went back to my N95 which is still usable for most of the functions I need and the reason I am still using the N95 is because there is no phone at the present moment that is entirely satisfactory - for me.
I say for me because the N97 and other phones maybe fine for some people who dont need the functions I do, namely the things I have itemised above. I spend a lot of time in my car so I need voice dialing I need speakerphone and I need GPS and I need a phone that is easy to handle and is intuitive to use.
Finally there is the software issue. I hate to say this but apple are so far above the rest of the gaggle they are in another universe when it comes to software.
When my wife wanted a new phone I had no hesitation in getting her an apple, She could not care less if it does not open 6 programs at once if it has a flash on the camera or no expansion slot or any other of the drawbacks the apple has. All she knows if she wants to call someone it works and works perfectly camera the same, everything the same the features on it while limited work and work perfectly.
And then the 100,000 apps of which 99,995 are useless but the 5 she has downloaded are magnificent but still border on the almost useless.
But the truth is thats what most people want a phone that works with 100,000 apps they will never use , its not good enough to release a device now and have to wait 6 months for software to be released so the device actually works NO ONE especially ME is every going to accept that situation again.
Now I go to the store and I want to see the device working, I have a check list of all the items that I want to be sure work before I even consider buying a device, then I want to be left alone for an hour while i fiddle with the thing and make sure I like the way it feels and operates.
I thought I had it with the HTC HD2 but no voice dial or voice anything for that matter another magnificent failure so now I am waiting for the sony X10 on andriod that should be interesting.
Meanwhile I have brought an old N810 running on Meamo which is what powers the N900 and its wonderful, if you have a working knowledge of linux, if not, get a working knowledge of linux cause thats the way phones are going to go as android is linux and I think symbian is as well certainly apple is unix based.
If you run Ubuntu on your PC which is probally the easiest *nix distribution to start with you will find meamo is just like that in structure as both are based on debian which is another *nix distro and you have complete control of the software even multitouch which is implemented at the kernel level but not switched on.
I hope Nokia can climb out of this mess they have created for themselves as they still have the best quality hardware and are willing to give creativity a go like the N97. They should not be criticised to badly if it does not work because at the moment there is no phone out there which has it all they are all just varying degrees of failure.
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