Nokia N97 promo vid lies about actual performance

Everyone (and we mean everyone) already knows the Nokia N97 isn’t exactly the best smartphone Nokia has every graced with the Nseries moniker. There are actually people out there that absolutely despise what Nokia’s flagship Nseries device has come to. Granted, the Nokia N97′s spec-sheet is formidable and a force to be reckoned with in the mobile world, but past that, well, things start to get a little ugly. Case in point, take a look at this video comparing Nokia’s N97 promotional video and a real-life N97. The screen transitions and UI animations simply don’t work on the real N97 under real conditions – it’s almost like Nokia completely fabricated their video to make the N97 look like it could compete with iPhone and Android. The N97 could have been great, it could have been a contender…

Alas, the video here shows just how far removed the promo vid is from actual performance. Nokia shows an N97 that’s capable of smoothly transitioning between apps with a blurred visual-swoosh of the display. Actual performance is a little, how shall we say, clunky? Screen rotations look super slick and responsive in the promo. The hard truth is that screen orientation changes are difficult to trigger and, again, clunky. Smooth web page zooming and scrolling? Nope, that was apparently a made up fantasy as well.

We’ll stop there. The video shows exactly what we’re talking about here. What’s important here isn’t that the N97 failed to live up to the promo vid. The N97 is a veritable smartphone beast with features – especially their class-leading Carl Zeiss camera – that can hang with the best of ‘em. What is important here is that Nokia seems to have taken their creative liberties a tad bit too far in their N97 demo.

So, anyone with an N97 willing to testify to their Symbian-powered phone’s shortcomings? Vent in the comments below!

[Via: MobileInc]

About The Author

Will Park

Will hails from The City of Angels - Los Angeles, California. He spends his time playing with his numerous gadgets and looking forward to seeing what future holds for mobile technology. An avid promoter of a fully "digital" life, he promotes the widespread adoption of truly mobile, paper-less living. He dreams of the day when he can go completely digital. No more snail mail, paper receipts, bound books, notepads/spiral notebooks, credit cards, hard currency. He's a digital warrior - fighting for the converged life. He is an idealist and a realist - he has a perfect view of what the world should be but knows that the world is not perfect. Can we ever hope to see Will's dream become reality? We'll see...

Dave

hmm… Fair enough.

Lets hope you put this much debunking effort into other devices and manufacturer that try the same “trick”.

I’ll be watching.
Leo

all the n97 owners should bring a class action lawsuit for the false advertised piece of crap
Coolie

Isn’t the screen resistive? Why is he using his finger on the screen, wondering why it won’t respond?
wuf

Well, that’s what they tried but kind of failed.
Investments in marketing dept vs. R&D not in balance I see.
Nick

Learn how to use a phone, ‘t*rd.

An accelerometer will rotate the screen after a NINETY degree rotation. Not 35, not 57. 90.
Chris P

Will – you argument is slightly marred by the mention of the iphone – apple themselves were force to withdraw the very ad shown in the youtube clip, for false advertising the speed (it had been sped up/frames removed).

Having said that, the N97 was always a dog, Nokia mucked up big time since the N95. Expected the customer to lump it with slow OS/CPU’s. N97 owners should take Nokia to court – teach them a lesson.

..The way Nokia has treated the N900 has been criminal too. They have completely left the OS crippled/riven with bugs/lacking in promised features. Shame on you Nokia, you do it again and again.
snoFlake

Yeah the N97 was a terrible phone at release and for 6 months after it still is pretty poor (well everything`s moved on and so has Nokia and there`s really nothing you can do about rubbish hardware) so I get the vitriol I really do (I`m stuck with one for another 6tmonths plus).

HOWEVER this video is at least SIX MONTHS old showing N97 on first or second generation firmware which to be fair to Nokia they have improved way beyond this video (still doesn`t do what it was billed but that`s a compromise decision to make the OS work on the shitty hardware) and the person demonstrating it wasn`t really helping ( to make a very funny and valid at the time point at the time) so it doesn`t reflect the N97 experience today (don`t get me wrong I`m not recommending one).

I think a site like Into Mobile shouldn`t be pushing a SIX Month old hate mail as something current i.e. if you can.t get your facts straight how can we trust your reviews and opinions?
wmserver

Do people still buy Nokia?
I’ve given up on them since 2005.
Old tired OS, poor build quality, confusing model numbering etc.
LaW

Well this whole vid is BS, cause my N97 works fine, its fast cause i dont stack it up with apps like all these other hardcore users go crazy about doing and then complain, ohh there is no more space left and its laggy, well NO SHIT, ur fault there. then smooth scrolling is better than that, what the hell firmware version does this guy in the vid have on it. the n97′s speed has improved dramatically from begining to latest version, and at least nokia will provide users with beter software improvments overtime, i rather that than a phone that u buy and its software must last the whole time for all its lifetime.! As for the iphone, it is the biggest hyped up peice of flat rectangular crap ever made in human existance, if all people care about is apps then god help them, they have no idea the real meaning of technology and entertainment!
Niazi

wasted my dads hard earned money
Linda

2.5 month old n97, same issues as film displayed above and more, freezes 1/2 the screen every now and then, screen on off button broke off. sent to handset provider apparently “liquid damage” Phone has never been near any liquid warranty null and void…….wish i never bothered!!!Should have got and i-phone!
Steve Jobs

to LaW

Can you write that out again please, maybe you can use English this time?
AndyW

These WERE the same issues I had with the phone, I say WERE because I just bought a Nexus One. I’m debating to take a hammer to my N97 for my 15 minutes of fame on YouTube or the law suite that could happen if I sell it on EBay.

The N97 was defective out of the box and even with the 3 new ones sent to me. It will never be a real touch screen device.

To the poster above, my wrist was tired of shaking the device to rotate it, or worst when I finished a phone call it was always in landscape when I really needed it in portrait mode. No way to lock.

oh oh oh, how about having to answer 2 questions to delete a message, #1 delete this message, #2 are you sure?, support says its a designed feature so you don’t accidentally delete messages.

My Nexus one is my very first NON nokia phone. I do miss PC Sync, but love Google’s phone so far, I’ve only had it 3 days.
James B

I bought my N97 cheap from a friend who decided to get something better. Even as little as I paid, it's utter crap. I really appreciate some of the features when they work, but the UI is embarrassing at best. The phone needs to be reset at least a few times a day. When you touch a button, you have a 50/50 chance of it responding… sometimes is just queues up all your requests for a while then attempts to execute them all at once, fails, crashes and restarts. What a disappointment. On the brighter side, the camera is the best of any smart phone I've used, period. Just don't take too many pictures at once, it may get overwhelmed and decide it needs to lock up or restart.
Baadshah

Hmmm…. it seems i too am in the same league…

Yeah the camera is much appreciated and provides good quality.
But the matter i am wondering is why a Symbian OS has not been modified or improved enough to handle a 32 GB memory. Did nokia expect users to store 50 – 60 mp3 songs, 10 HD vids and the basic applications that come with the set. i ave installed applications from Nokia OVi store but to a max of 15 apps. It can even list the application names fastly when opening “aplications” folder. It seems the OS first thinks “why theis crap guy is buggin me every now and then ” whenever a touch or “folder open” is made. hmmm
really other features are too good. but Symbian is way too far to handle this big, and nokia too stupid to understand this fact even after recieving lots of user complaints
Mikey

Thanks for posting my video, and sorry for joining this discussion late.

For those who mentioned it I made the video AFTER the big firmware upgrade. And for the record that’s exactly how the phone worked – no intentional misuse to try and make it look worse. If the phone wasn’t so bad I wouldn’t have made that video, because believe me I have better things to do with my time.

Here’s my re-review 6 months on: http://www.rustylime.com/show_article.php?id=4113

Anyhoo, a few weeks ago I decided to not wait until my contract ends and purchased a brand new unlocked Motorolo Droid for less than $AU600. It’s an amazing phone. Loving everything about Android.
meister

lels i think in this video phone is broken? bcoz my n97 very fine..screen rotation working very fast just tested now.. internet i use opera mini work fast-open apps works fast.. so i can say this video is fake..
(p.s. maybe my n97 works fast bcoz i dropped 5-6 times on ground -was soft surface like carpet… anyways after v22 firmware update i got around 15mb more of ram. was around 41 free ram -56mb ram now..after next update i think will be even more ram.. but for me its enough 56mb some ppl use pc with 256 of ram and windows takes around half.. so so