Nokia N97 Mini

The supplied headphones come with noise-isolating grommets with full in-line play controls attached. They’re a little on the bright side, though there’s a fair bit of scope to correct this with the graphic equaliser. Failing that, the 3.5mm headphone jack and stereo Bluetooth option make upgrades easy. Also present is Nokia’s rather excellent FM radio with auto tuning and 20 presets.

Feature rich, but still rather unintuitive

Onboard memory has been slashed from 32GB to 8GB, which will still be more than enough for most. If you need more, you can add up to 16GB with a micro SD card. Battery life has dropped a little on the N97 mini. We barely got a day of solid use out of it, which could certainly be an issue for heavy users.

Verdict

With its decent camera, okay browser, better than average music player Wi-Fi, HSDPA 3G and A-GPS The Nokia N97 Mini seems pretty, much as its predecessor did. Yet it’s still a frustrating experience to use, largely due to that irritatingly unresponsive screen – and the unintuitive, clunky and ugly UI doesn’t help either. If you persevere and get used to its quirks though, it has a lot to offer. The trouble is, there are plenty of other phones from HTC, Apple, Palm and Blackberry that offer all those features too, and make them easier to use. ®

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