I officially own an N97! and iPhone OS 3.0 is passe...

Yay! It's official... I finally own an N97! Digital Compass, GPS, 3.5G, 32GB on-board memory, expandable memory slot, QWERTY keyboard, USB charging, touchscreen, stereo speakers, 3.5mm audio jack, video out, bluetooth, 3G video call... there's a truck load of features packed onto this little device...

Question is why 'officially'?

So here's the story, I've had a Nokia N97 for the past 1-2 weeks thanks to a friend of mine who has access to the phones and VERY kind heartedly 'lend' me the product... it's nice to have friends like that... :)

Today, I officially own one and I must say, it's a GREAT feeling... gone is the nagging feeling that the phone actually belonged to someone...

iPhone OS 3.0 a passe?

For the past few months, we've heard of nothing but iPhones... iPhone 3GS, iPhone software version 3.0 - it's endless... the hype is over. Let's for once replace that with a little Nokia hype :P

A lil' history

I've had the N97 for sometime now. For a first consumer release revision of the software, it's really not too bad. Admittedly, there are bugs... quite a number of them too... and the experience at one point came to a complete halt... when the phone kept restarting for no apparent reason and taking pictures would hang the phone... The only way to resolve it was to completely hard reset the phone by punching in the magic numbers :

*#7370#

A lil' patience

The N97 is a super awesome phone that's let down by early firmware revision bugs... but no fret, according to Nokia themselves, July 1st 2009 (that's in just a few hours), a brand new firmware revision will be released and feature loads of bug fixes, new product features including some below...

• The locking of the device doesn't really sync with the backlight display - FIXED
• Kinetic scrolling for Phonebook now available (very iPhone like)
• More use of gestures to control applications
• Speed whereby GPS coordinates are acquired is greatly improved - under 8 seconds
• Nokia Maps has a lil' facelift
• Smoother transition between WiFi, 3G, EDGE connections - FIXED
• Text messaging automatically detects 'empty' messages prior to sending
• H264 video decoding now supported
• Multitouch support! Like the pinch, expand effect using the iPhone when playing with photos? It's now possible on the N97!
• and lots lots more...

So was it worth the wait? Heck YEAH! I'll keep you posted once I've upgraded the phone to the latest firmware...

N97, welcome to my gadget collection...!