I was in Europe for 3 weeks with friends and my brother. In 3 weeks I was in 8 countries - Austria, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Italy, France, Spain, and Romania, in that order. While in Slovakia, I decided that, while I don't really have extra money to waste since the trip was expensive enough, I should get an N97. And I did.
The N97's widgets were exactly what I was looking for, along with Microsoft Exchange support. And it supports Exchange (1) right out of the box, and (2) without needing to pay extra, as in the G1.
The FM Transmitter is nice, but just a novelty, since its not powerful enough to be really useful. The radio has about a 50/50 mix of music and static. They keyboard is nice, but the phone being from Slovakia, has the Y and Z keys replaced (the keyboard is QWERTZ).
The phone is nice even with its occasional bug, like slow UI at times, and the keylock sometimes stays on, requiring the battery to be removed for a moment. However, the most advertised & discussed feature of the N97, Skype support, was absent from this phone. I repeat, my N97 DID NOT COME WITH SKYPE. I am borderline pissed off and upset/offended by this. Skype support right out of the box was a selling point for me, and I don't have it. Sure, I can use Fring, or Skype Lite, but those are (1) extra add-ons, and (2) not what was promised.
Other than that, I was happy that I could use NSS and swap the product code. The phone came as identified as:
0576367: RM-505_EMEA_SLOVAKIA_QW Black
and it is now:
0576402: RM-505_EMEA_ROMANIA_QW Black
After a firmware update, I can now put the N97 in Romanian, which appeals to me since I am trying to learn the language. If I had bought the phone in the states, I could not have done this. So, if you want a Nokia in a language other than English, Spanish, or French, get a Nokia in Europe, find (Google search) product codes for your desired region, and change them with NSS. Of course, this will void your warranty, so make sure the phone works, and that you love it, before you do this. For the Mac users out there, get VirtualBox, as NSS requires Windows (I used VM Ware Fusion).
More on the phone. S60 apps are easy to find on Google, and the Ovi store has some interesting apps, but currently the selection needs work. Interestingly, some older S60 apps will work on the N97's Symbian S60 5th Edition, even though the installer will say that the application is incompatible. Sometimes when the installer says the application is incompatible, it really is. So try it anyway, your app in question may work. Fring, Slick, Google apps, work. Along with Nokia's Barcode scanner, which is not included with the phone, but is available. The phone says the barcode scanner is not compatible, but for me it works just fine.
The phone supports geotagging images and video. This only works once in a while. The image details always have a blank field for location, but iPhoto can see some geotags on my photos (about 10% of them). Even though the phone shows connections to a few satellites, it doesn't always work. And it uses GPS, not the network, to determine location. Network location would be faster and sufficient, but oh well.
I wish I had instead waited. Supposedly, the Nokia N900 tablet is supposed to launch by the end of this year, or early next year. It has good specs and looks promising. And finally, it would be the first Nokia device to support T-Mobile USA's 1700 MHz 3G! That is the only part where I could say the Android phones beat the N97- T-Mo 3G support. The N97 should work fine with the other 3G carriers. I used 3G and 3.5G in Europe in Austria, Italy, and Spain.
All in all, the phone is very nice. With its huge capacity (up to 48 GB) I am finding that it is replacing my iPod. Does that make it an iPod/iPhone killer? Almost, at least on the iPhone part. I bought a pair of Motorola bluetooth headphones, and they work wonderfully with the N97. I didn't see any nice DJ-style bluetooth headphones, what's up with that, Nokia?
