Nokia N97 Mini review

Slick version of Nokia flagship phone arrives to upstage its big brother

Nokia N97 Mini
The N97 Mini is a slightly cut-down version of the full-blown N97, but it's still a winner

TechRadar Verdict

Pros

  • +

    Decent QWERTY keyboard

  • +

    Large 3.2-inch display

  • +

    Wi-Fi and HSDPA

  • +

    A-GPS built in

  • +

    Good music player

  • +

    8GB storage

  • +

    3.5mm headphone socket

  • +

    Excellent build quality

  • +

    Homescreen widgets set-up

Cons

  • -

    Resistive display

  • -

    S60 5th Edition Relatively bulky

  • -

    Wi-Fi could be easier to set up

  • -

    Camera flash has limited effect

Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Nokia's powerhouse N97 touchscreen, QWERTY keyboard-packing smartphone may have arrived to mixed reviews, but its new, rescaled Nokia N97 Mini stablemate offers a refreshed take on the device.

Its 'Mini' moniker doesn't mean this is a heavily stripped down version of the original N97, however.

While it does pare down some elements of the N97 - such as a smaller screen and reduced internal flash memory from 32GB to 8GB - the N97 Mini is still a big hitter in the pure feature count department.

The N97 Mini is a full touchscreen smartphone device, running on Nokia's Symbian S60 5th Edition platform - previously seen on recent models like the N97 and 5800 XpressMusic.

It has a 3.2-inch display, and has a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard with a tilting screen, and, geared up to be a web-orientated multimedia device, it supports high-speed HSDPA mobile data as well as Wi-Fi connectivity.

nokia n97 mini

It's loaded up with an impressive amount of applications out of the box, and as well as multimedia player capabilities it has A-GPS location finding with Nokia's Maps software, plus a 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics.

But as we all know, particularly post-iPhone, smartphone success isn't just about stacks of features - usability and performance are key to the touchscreen user experience too. So does the N97 Mini affirm the maxim that less can be more?