First impressions of the Nokia N97

I'm currently having a play with the Nokia N97, the Finnish handset maker's big play against the new iPhone and the Palm Pre – both of which are expected to land around the same time as the N97, in the next few weeks.

I haven't spent too much time with the N97, so can only give a very sketchy first impression. And, sadly, it's not a great tale to tell.

First, some of the good news. The widgets on the home screen – the N97's big selling point – work very well. RSS feeds scroll across informatively and the Facebook app updates automatically, and the whole homescreen works as it should.

It just doesn't look very nice. Compared with the sense of order conveyed by the iPhone and Pre, the N97's homescreen looks a bit like a small, blue, magnet-covered fridge door. Perhaps that's a matter of personal taste, but if it's going up against the iPhone in particular, the N97 may be a hard sell when it comes to sheer intuitiveness and, well, cleanness.

The handset is also, in the words of a colleague, "well chunky". It reminds me quite strongly of my old T-Mobile Vario II (now three years past) in its girth. The finish on this particular version is chrome, but it's not the stainless-steel slickness of my Nokia E71, for instance. The build quality is not bad per se, but not iconically great either.

On the plus side, the keyboard slides out smoothly, and the keys are actually quite good. The handset is fairly responsive, but switching from portrait to landscape mode involves flipping out the keyboard (and enduring a noticeable lag). Recent handsets tend to do this much more naturally and intuitively using the accelerometer.

The screen is a bit of an issue. Being resistive was all good and fine three years ago, but capacitive screens are so much smoother to use. You have to push quite hard on this screen, and I kept finding myself hitting things I didn't want to hit.

I suppose another thing that bothers me about the N97 is the fact that Nokia is currently open-sourcing Symbian, which will end up as an entirely new operating system. This will probably see fruit next year, and the N97 feels a bit like a stop-gap between the past and the future.

I wanted to love the N97 – I really did. And it's not a bad phone at all. It's just that, for a £500 handset that's going up against what will probably be a worthy revision of the iPhone (and perhaps a very good Pre – need to check that out) I just feel a bit disappointed.

Anyway, it goes on sale here in the UK on the 19th of this month. And, who knows, perhaps a lengthier play with the N97 would reveal its hidden awesomeness. But for now, with a heavy heart: "Meh."

PS - I should add that I was no fan of the N95 or N96 either, particularly because of the plasticky builds. The N97 feels better than those handsets, but it can't match the elegant solidity of the E71 - the handset that made me like Nokia smartphones again.