Nokia N97 Messaging and Keyboard

As the top of the line phone in Nokia's Nseries arsenal, and the first with a full QWERTY keyboard, it is surprising that Nokia doesn't ship the Nokia N97 with more messaging options onboard. There is support for a very basic SMS and MMS client. There is no threaded text messaging to help keep track of conversations; this is a simpler wireframe app with no frills. There are no instant messaging clients on board. Usually we suggest downloading a third-party app for IM on Symbian phones, but the Ovi Store, so new to the platform, doesn't contain a single instant messaging application that will work with the touchscreen Nokia N97. There is a Facebook app that works with widget on the phone's homescreen. We wish there were more of these social networking apps for messaging, especially dedicated Twitter and MySpace Widgets for our homescreen, as well.

The best messaging feature on the Nokia N97, for us, was the Mail for Exchange app, but even this doesn't come close to the Exchange experience on a Windows Mobile phone. We couldn't dig into our subfolders, view HTML e-mail or quickly manage and delete useless messages.

The keyboard on the Nokia N97 is nice and wide, and was plenty easy for typing. We think Nokia could do better, but between this and the similarly side-sliding Nokia E75, we prefer the keys on the Nokia N97. Even with the 4-way button, the keyboard is still plenty large, and each letter gets its own soft and rubbery key. The space bar is strangely pushed off to one side, but we got used to this layout surprisingly quickly. If anything, we'd wish for more keys, with some shortcuts and perhaps a dedicated number row. But the hardware keyboard was the best part about the messaging experience on the Nokia N97.

There are software keyboards available onscreen if you don't want to open the phone, but we'd suggest avoiding them at all costs. The worst of these was a split grid of keys, arranged alphabetically, not in QWERTY fashion, that divided the letters among 2 pages. It was easily the least useful onscreen keyboard we have ever used on any phone.