Nokia N97 is a flagship phone that Nokia used to prepare to fight the iPhone. But in the end, he couldn't do it.
Since its introduction in 2007, the iPhone has become increasingly popular and Nokia, which is still the king of the world's mobile phones, is starting to feel threatened. So, they released a cool flagship phone called Nokia N97 and it came out in June 2009.
With flagship status, the N97 is equipped with advanced technology for its time and elegant design, so it's no wonder the price is exorbitant. The official price at that time reached 499 Euros or in the range of Rp. 8 million. "This is the top Nokia phone to fight the iPhone," wrote GSM Arena.
It is a slider style with a complete physical keyboard and a 3.5-inch touch screen with a resolution of 640 x 360 pixels. It was great in its time, but the screen is still resistive so it is not sensitive to the touch of a finger.
Nokia N97 is equipped with a 434 MHz ARM11 processor, 128 MB SDRAM and 32 GB of internal memory.
The battery has a capacity of 1,500 mAh. As for the main camera with a resolution of 5 megapixels, it was extraordinary in its time.
In addition to tackling the iPhone, the Nokia N97 is also intended to fight touch screen phones from other vendors that are increasingly mushrooming.
Completeness of packaging Nokia N97 when it was sold at the time.
This handset uses the Symbian 9.4 operating system, Nokia's mainstay even though at that time Android phones were in demand. The initial market response was quite good. In the first 3 months of sales, 2 million units of the Nokia N97 were sold in the market.
Unfortunately, although it is selling well, many people say that the Nokia N97 is a flagship cellphone that failed miserably.
The phone has been heavily criticized for its relatively small amount of RAM and disk space. With only 50 MB left after booting up, the phone is prone to slowing down and sometimes closing programs to save memory. Wearing it can be frustrating at times.
“The N97 was successful in terms of how much we shipped and the money it made. But it's also a big disappointment in terms of usage quality and we didn't anticipate it," said Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia's Executive Vice President at the time.
Nokia even apologized. "It turns out that this can also happen in big companies like Nokia, that despite having quality control mechanisms, something bad gets away," added the Nokia boss.
The lesson from the failure of the Nokia N97 is the improvement of the next edition of Symbian.
The Nokia N97 was also seen as failing to kill the iPhone, instead leading to consumer disappointment. In fact, some consider the failure of this cellphone to play a role in the downfall of Nokia a few years later.
“The N97 is a device that should rule the world, it has it all. But instead he became a device that made Nokia apologize publicly, “wrote All About Symbian at that time.