N97 Encounter

I got hold of the N97 when my Dad pulled it out of his pocket. I thought it was his old N93 but noticed that it was quite different. It had a 3.2 inch bright LCD display and a quite elegantly spaced keyboard. It still has it's temporary plastic sticker on the flat LCD. I am not quite familiar with the Symbian OS so I was a little bit of slow on navigating my way on the menus. The good thing about Nokia Phones is that they are not hard to navigate. I had a Nokia before when the colored lcd displays are non existent yet. Well as for the user experience I'm quite impressed on how fast it responds to every command. When using the touch screen it vibrates slightly every time it receives a screen tap which slightly annoys me but is a good indicator that your command was acknowledged. The main screen consisted of widgets like Calendar, Facebook Application, Yahoo Messenger and the clock. There is a silver button on the lower right of the screen which will take you to the menu. There are lots of programs in this view including the contacts, calendar, applications, Ovi store, Maps, GPS, and the settings menu. Good thing that I'm under a hotspot that time so I connected to it immediately. I went directly to the wireless LAN menu and searched for a hotspot so I can surf the internet and check my email. The surfing experience was quite well considering the larger screen. Although, its still much comfortable viewing webpages on a full size monitor. The touch interface was often used during surfing since the four way navigation right beside the keyboard was much more accessible. I did not had a hard time on the cursor movement and was able to select on the links easily.

The keyboard was well spaced and not hard to use. Although your hand needs a little offsetting to the right due to the navigation control is located at the left side of the keybard so a little adjustment will is needed. I'm not used to slider phones so the mechanical structure of the device gives me some doubts on it's robustness. But the position of the screen to the keyboard is well inclined for your viewing pleasure.  As far as I had used it I don't find anything that belongs to the downside.  It didn't stayed long with me so I have'nt had the chance to test how long it lasts but according to some reviews it doesn't even last a day.  I'd still say that to try is to believe.
But despite of all the good things that I have said this baby still costs a lot (SRP:P34,000) and it's not within my budget range so I'd still sick with my HTC touch viva which has been a good companion to me ever since I bought it.  But if you have a lot to spare then maybe this device will keep you occupied.