Nokia N97 Mini review

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

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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

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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?

Phil Lattimore