2009-11-11 18:04:13 - There are quite a number of Mini-Me handsets in the market as the trends continues to cover different market demographics using the same winning formula on a mobile phone. Nokia announced a mini version of its full-featured N97 during the recently concluded Nokia World 09 trade conference held in Stuttgart, Germany. There are other new releases slated to hit the markets in time for the holidays. One of the biggest news is the Nokia N97 Mini that Nokia hopes will address the shortcomings of the older N97 while outfitting it with newer features.

Dressing Down the Leader

Nokia’s flagship N97 gets dressed down with a firmer, smaller and lighter body that also comes in two color schemes to choose from – garnet and cherry black. N97 users have complained about the rather clunky shell on its otherwise magnificent smartphone and Nokia made sure not to repeat that on the N97 Mini. Weighing 12 grams

lighter and 1.7mm slimmer, the N97 Mini has a firmer more solid feel to the build quality but suffers a smaller QWERTY keyboard that some may find difficult to use or will require some getting used to over time. Also, while the 3.2-inch resistive touchscreen is goes down from the 3.5 inch display on the N97, it gives a more brilliant display of it 16 million colors on the same 360 x 640 pixel resolution

The cosmetic downsizing comes with a reduction in battery life and internal memory. The latter gets a rather substantial shaving off from 32GB to just 8GB on the Mini. Not entirely bad since you can still get 32Gb from its microSD slot. The smaller battery means a shorter life and the Mini’s lithium-ion batter delivers 2 hours short of the 9-hour talk time on the N97.

Considering the difference, is the 100 price difference good enough? The market will be the judge of that before the year ends. There are plusses to be had in the Mini, like its better build quality and compact size. Nokia made sure that the Mini gets updated from the N97 features.

Lifecasting and other New Features

The Nokia N97 Mini is the first Nokia handset to feature Lifecasting. That’s what Nokia has branded for a feature that gets your Facebook updated right form the homescreen with Nokia’s partnership with the world’s largest and most popular social networking site. Other mobile phone makers have a similar feature but Lifecasting goes a bit further by updating you location in real time. Nokia claims this adds a totally new dimension is communication and social sharing on the net.

The new Mini gets an updated version 2.0 firmware right out of the box allowing a new screen navigation featured called flip scrolling similar to the kinetic scroll feature on the iPhone multitouch screen. Apart from enabling one-touch access of your files, apps and social networking sites right from the homescreen, there are new widget icons that allows better customization of the N97 Mini screen. It also comes with an updated version of the Ovi Maps where you can access location guides from Lonely Planet, Wcities and Michelin.

Apart from these new features and the downsized attributes on the N97 Mini, all the other features remain the same. The Mini remains the same quad band GSM and 3G phone with high speed HSDPA/HSUPA phone sporting the same 5 megapixel camera and a host of other high end features.

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