[ddingbat]

Yes, I know the theory is to submit such things by other routes, but given the ongoing rumblings about the N97 this is at least a way of letting a wide range of people add their support, or otherwise.

After 3 months of doing my best to use the phone, some outstanding customer support from Nokia (meeting me personally in Helsinki to fix a problem) I'm still persevering, but on the brink of giving up and going to Blackberry. To fufill anything like its promise the N97 needs AT LEAST the following..........

• a much better calendar application (repeats monthly by date or day; time zone setting for both start and end of appointments
• built in option to turn keyboard lights on and off that does NOT depend on the detection of ambient light - not so youthful eyes need the help! Why should I have to buy this????
• much more reliable and timely software update that is network independent - they are just "fat pipe" providers, get them out of the loop.
• clearer and better management of network selection
• to keep the setting of the memory you choose to use for messages, rather than losing it and defaulting back to C all the time!!!
• much cleverer setting and management of outbound mail server because I don't want to be stuck using the phone network provider's all the time and so running up data usage.
• Installation of OVI store on E drive, not clagging up C all the time.
• Ability to uninstall unwanted preloaded apps.
• Music application - agghhhhhhh!  This is SO inferior to the iPod/iPhone app on both the phone and PC that it is infuriating. The PC tool has messed up parts of my music library, refuses to recognise album art that Apple handles with ease, is SLOW on the phone, frequently provokes memory full  (and I only have 11gb of music on the phone so far, and more to come!). oh, it plays just fine which i suppose I am grateful for, but on that subject..........
• .... better constructed headset.... the design is such that the plug going into the control part of the setup rapidly reaches a state where the contacts are unreliable and you get music only in one each. Construction too cheap!
• Repeated download from Ovi of software I have to reinstall because the lousy phone has crashed should be FREE!!!!
• "SEARCH" need to truly search the entire phone and storage cards (my Palm had done that for years!!)
• A navigation tool that does not lurch around the map like a drunk, even when GPS reception is good. It is frequently hundreds of meters out and therefore unworkable for street level navigation. It even gets confused when you are winging along a motorway, frequently assuming I have taken and exit I have not. Meanwhile my trusty TomTom OneXL right next to it performs steadily and accurately!!!
• etc etc - please feel free to add your own!

I would describe Nokia as the "IBM of the mobile phone world"  - a successful innovator with an admirable legacy who has lost their way and needs to get focussed. IBM managed that and transformed itself into a very different beast. Nokia has done that once when it moved into mobile phones. It now has exactly the "legacy" issues IBM had some years back and really needs to fix them fast. The BIG challenge is that the more you alienate customers the harder than transformation becomes. Personally, I doubt the attempt to get into providing online services will work. They are too tied to Nokia phones - that might seem a clever lock in, but will fail, consumers are wise to that one now and it will only work for "high fashion" devices, of which there is one - iPhone, with a realtively small share.

The N97 could  have been a great phone, but it is arguable that it is now too late, even if there were now a series of swift software updates fixing the above and other issues.

Oh, and "kinetic scrolling"???? Nice, fun, but essentially a cosmetic matter.

[Patrik_S]

Can't do anything else but agree, the N97 is a mobilephones ferrari with a Lada engine.

The worst investment I have done in many years ..

[rasmus]

Good Comments - however they will fall onto deaf ears.

This new Google Nexus One phone is looking pretty good - and much cheaper than the nokia i must add.

I love the form factor on my n97 hate everything else - be sweet to have the n97 case running the nexus one hardware and software. 

[xrayjez]

All good points- I love the physical keyboard and I regularly use the phone's key features, but none of them is quite as slick as I'd like. It's ok, but for the money I paid I can't say I'll go Nokia again and may well look to google next time they revise their phone. Oh and it only even became "ok" for me in firmware V20.

[froschy]

---

I love the form factor on my n97 hate everything else - be sweet to have the n97 case running the nexus one hardware and software. 

---

Agreed, I also think the homescreen with widgets is a good idea but unfortunately has been poorly implemented. The rest of the phone is just very poor to ordinary and then as another poster stated this is only after the v20 firmware, prior to that it was just a pre-production model that they flogged off to the unsuspecting masses.

I haven't bee particularly impressed with the customer service either. In the words of Nokia "Problem what problem, there's nothing wrong with the N97".

I'm hoping that the Nexus One will be released with ATT 3G operating frequencies and I'll also keep an eye on the next revision of the iPhone. Whatever I decide I will wait at least a couple of months after release to see what the early adopters say before I make my next phone purchase. This is a lesson that I have learnt from the N97, a very expensive lesson.

Kudos for both of you. 

[heroshi3]

1. Most important item for me is solve the White screen of death issue when you turn off the phone then turn it back on

(or when the battery runs out). They need a safemode startup solution that doesn't require resetting the phone and losing the setup.

people don't format their computers whenever they have amisbehaving program. Logs would be nice to know what's happening

2. Application manager crashes if you have 100+ apps installed, so you can't adjust suite settings
3. destinations utility is poorly coded. Even when I set wifi to higher priority than ISPs paid solution phone often uses ISPs conneciton rather than the free wii even when it is available.

4. Text to speech (even **bleep** older phone models have it)

5. taller screen dimensions in landscape

6. Keep working on taking ovi suite out of the beta phase ( 2.0.2.42 is realistically the first version that is higher than alpha quality)
7. Do better load testing if they're going to continue marketting this as a mobile computer rather than a smart brick

8. Learn the 30 year old concept of caching mass memory when the phone runs out of memory
9.Why do i have to clean the camea lense everytime I take a photo. i didn't have to do this on n95.

The lense cover is poorly designed.
10. Option to connect to usb without charging so battery won't be ruined

11. Internet Radio (older **bleep** models had it)

12. Builtin barcode reader (older **bleep** models had it)
13. faster CPU

14. better support people who finished high school and don't suggest resetting the phone for nearly any question you ask them

15. Nokia actually listening to customer feedback and not taking several months to release critical fixes

- About a music player, I recommend LCG Jukebox. Nokias app is useless

- for a browser I recommend opera mobile. Nokias app doesn't have an option to store evrything on mass memory and clogs up the phone

(you guessed it, useless)

- For a software store I recommend handango, ovi despite worldwide complaints still doesn't let you download the installation

files (again useless)
- Built-in File manger seems to hide most of the files. i recommend xplore

- Task manager is far too simplistic (I recommend Best taskman)

[sergioag]

Actually I find the N97 an overall nice phone. However, I also make the following suggestions:

• I know the pressure to release a new product is strong, but please test your products before shipping them! I can't think of a way that the N97 would have passed a good testing process. The effect of a bad (or defective) product to Nokia's reputation I think is greater than delaying a product launch.
• Smartphones are called such because the user can install additional applications and, in this case, run many at the time. So, why designing a phone that has barely enough RAM for the operating system? Designing a smartphone, in my opinion, requires to be a bit forward-thinking, specially when it's hardware-related.
• I think everyone agrees that the N97 has various defects (as is obvious in this forums). However, I've never seen a message from Nokia acknowledging any of them.
• Remember that the customer is always right. So, if your customer tell you about a product defect, you are supposed to work to make the customer feel happy.

This points are some thoughts I've been having lately.

Best regards,

Sergio Aguayo 

Message Edited by sergioag on 08-Jan-2010 01:51 AM

[blackslash]

to be honest i didnt have any problems at all with my N97. But for the money ive paid I could have bought a device with Very much advanced hardware. N97 Is far way behind when compared with devices in its price range. The N97 will be my last phone if nokia does not catch up with the current hardware standards.

[ddingbat]

Heroshi3 - completely support your additional comments!! In particular the one about the "destination" management utility -it is dreadful, hard to understand and even harder to get to do useful things. A cynic would suggest it has been written to make it easy for the network providers to take data revenues from you!

Thanks for the LCG Jukebox hint, it looks good - but WHY should we have to pay additional money for something this device was meant to do (well) from the start??

Handango is excellent - used it for years with my trusty Treo 650, which, apart from lacking 3G and Wifi is far superior to the N97 for functionality and range of additional applications.

Opera mini 10 is GREAT, but N97 lacks the Windows-like capability to set default browser so that email and SMS links automatically use it.

I should note that for all this complaining - which is fully justified - take a look in the forums for other smart phones and you will find the grass is not all that greener on the other side!! Just read a review in IHT of the new Google phone and it is very much a "work in progress"!!

Smartphones are in their infancy - the people who try to use their full range of facilities are on the bleeding edge and mostly have the scars to prove it. Blackberry benefits from existing largely in a tightly controlled corporate world where there is tech support and, often, tight control on what is allowed - this probably masks a rats nest of nasties that would emerge otherwise.

Agree that Nokia could do themselves a lot of good by publicly acknowledging the problems and what they are doing about them.

Oh, and a positive comment to finish - although much delayed, when it finally arrived the car holder for the N97 is excellent, with some nice little details such as provision for making sure the USB power input is not putting pressure on the connector in the phone.

[froschy]

@ backslash - So are you saying that you have no problems with your N97 just the hardware specs?

If you haven't had to have your camera lens replaced, touch screen repaired, or GPS antennae properly isolated surely you have experienced lag when moving through the menu screens or opening apps, the web browser shutting down when the web page is too large, random shutdowns, the widgets not refreshing or freezing, having to hard reset your phone, etc...

Please understand that I'm not having a go at you but rather trying to highlight the fact that the N97 provides a terrible user experience (not UI, although that's not great either) and this is due to not just the low spec hardware but also buggy software, design flaws, manufacturing faults, and the obvious lack of quality testing (maybe they did test but didn't care in the rush to get the device out).

My suggestion to Nokia would be to test the user experience of devices from other manufacturer and then assess whether the N97 was worth the US $700 upon release to customers. I think if they were really honest with themselves the answer would be no and then maybe they could realise the damage to their brand from not only the release of this device but also the way they have handled the faults.

[hbund189]

it'S call quality control and responsibility.....

[froschy]

good point but unfortunately Nokia aren't even at the point where they have realised that there is a problem.

only when they get to this point can they start to control quality and take responsibility

[number_one]

I would be happy if my n97 just booted properly all time, without having to be hard reset at least once every week.

And the sound was louder because i can barely hear it in my Sennheiser PXC-450

Message Edited by number_one on 08-Jan-2010 07:23 PM

[Ottoman]

nokia  must find a solution to randomly restarting problem and also "memory full " , "security module error " are the most annoying ones!

we already pay lots of money for that gadget, and still have to pay for adobe suit!!!

i hope nokia pays attention