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With the keyboard out, the angled screen position is great for viewing video when the phone's sitting on your desk or lap.
The display is large enough for a reasonable video-viewing experience, and playback looks smooth and bright on the display. It supports downloaded or streamed video, so you can watch footage online or get clips from compatible services downloaded to your phone.
Nokia aggregates video content in a Video & TV sub-menu folder; within this you can get onto Nokia's Ovi video service and find some free and paid-for content, including clips and movie trailers - though it's not a particularly compelling offering at the moment.
A RealPlayer app is standard Nseries fare. Unlike some handsets from the likes of Samsung, DivX and Xvid video formats are not supported on this handset.
While the N97 Mini's internal storage has been scaled back from the original N97's 32GB, it still has 8GB worth of space for loading videos, tunes and other content.
The music player looks typically Nokia Nseries, and regular MP3, WMA, AAC, eAAC, and eAAC+ files can be played, with the phones music library arranged as a familiar list of categories. These are automatically refreshed if you slip in a new card or load up more tunes.
Nokia hasn't introduced any eye-catching iPhone-esque gadgetry or graphics for the music player presentation - it's a fairly straightforward user interface. Cover art is supported, and it has intuitive, functional touch buttons and draggable timeline. Additional options are available for equaliser and settings adjustment - all standard issue stuff.
The N97 Mini's audio performance is really pleasing to the ears. The supplied earphones are better quality than you normally get with a mobile (or iPod) - they're in-ear buds which come with alternative silicon gels to ensure a snug fit.
Music sounds rich and detailed through them, with a well-balanced frequency range including a heavy but well defined bass presence. The phone has a 3.5mm headphone jack socket on top, should you wish to try out your own headphones, though the in-box set are pretty good for a standard set of ear-gear.
The N97 Mini cuts one of the features from the N97's music functionality though - there's no FM transmitter on this model to play tracks back on nearby radios.
On top of your sideloaded tracks, Nokia offers a facility to buy tunes over the air from its Nokia Music Store portal, with an app in the music folder directing you there. An easy to tune and operate FM radio with RDS is featured too.
A familiar S60 Podcasting function adds to the listening package. It enables users to search for, subscribe to and listen to podcasts from the handset. A Podcast option is also included in the Music Library categories.
As mentioned earlier, the N97 Mini has a selection of online media apps pre-loaded into its Applications folder, giving access to services including YouTube and CNN Video's news service. Mobile network video services will also be supported on suitably configured handsets from operators.
