Nokia N97 Analysis: Compared to iPhone 3G and Google G1 Phone
iPhones seem to be everywhere these days and even the release of the G1 phone hasn’t really had an impact on their growing marketshare. Palm have also announced that they will soon be launching their new smartphone called the Palm Pre, which is getting a huge amount of buzz at the moment. Thus bringing us to the final major player in the market who is yet to release a smartphone that can actually take marketshare and thats Nokia.
Nokia announced about three months ago that they will be releasing the N97 which is their rival to the iPhone. The N97 will be release in the 2nd quarter of 2009 and its sure to raise some eyebrows.
Here at Crenk we are still yet to get our hands on a new N97 test version, but I thought I would provide our readers with a basic overview of the phone and how it compares to iPhone and G1.
Nokia N97 – compared to the iPhone3G and G1
3.5 inches screen size
( iPhone3G : 3.5 inch ; G1 : 3.2 inch )
640 x 360 pixel resolution
(iPhone3G : 320×480 pixels ; G1 : 480×320 pixels resolution)
16:9 Aspect ratio,the same as that of TV,PC Monitors etc
(both iPhone and G1 have aspect ratio of 3:2 )
Resistive touchscreen display with tactile feedback
(both iPhone & G1 boast a capacitive touchscreen(feather touch sensitive) )
Sliding QWERTY Keyboard
( iPhone : No physical keyboard ; G1 : Sliding QWERTY Keyboard )
Inbuilt WiFi,Bluetooth,HSDPA,A-GPS,3G
( Both iPhone and G1 have it )
32GB Onboard memory (expandable through microSD card upto 48GB as total capacity)
(neither iPhone nor G1 go beyond 32 GB as total capacity )
Battery : 1500 mAh (Heavy duty ! )
(iPhone : 1400 mAh ; G1 : 1150 mAh )
5 MP Digital Camera (DVD quality video capture)
(iPhone : 2.0 MP ; G1 : 3.2 MP )
OS : S60 5th Edition
(iPhone : iPhone OS 2.2 ; G1 : Android 1.0 )
Weight : 150 g (approx.)
( iPhone : 133 g ; G1 : 158 g )
Price : $550 (before network subsidies so expect it to go way cheaper than this)
(iPhone : $199(min.) ; G1 : $179(min.) )
Conclusions:
After a direct comparison with all the feature of the n97, G1 and iPhone3G the Nokia is by far the leader from a hardware perspective. However, it terms of the software and the OS, Nokia is a long way behind Google and Apple but this is expected.
The key also is that the App Store has made a huge impact on making the iPhone such a big success, and with the Android Market just being launched I’m sure that the G1 will slowly gain more and more marketshare. Where does this leave Nokia? Nokia really need to think hard and long about how they are going to open up their software to outside developers and then allow the average user the ability to pick and choose the applications that are right for them. OS has never been a strong point for Nokia, but it is about time they actually improved this sector if they are going to continue to be a major player in the smartphone market.
Also that the ‘App Store’ is something that has played a very critical role in making iPhone a worldwide success and now the same thing is occurring in the form of ’Android Market’ for G1, Nokia(being ‘new’ to open developer support for apps) can’t afford to reach the standards set by the other two veteran smartphones(specially iPhone)
10 Comments
erm, nokia are launching an app store. It will be ovi store
Ummmmm isnt symbian open source….
So its always been app ready just never with an online store fronted by Nokia methinks.
There are always tones of apps for Nokias. Thats always been one of the good points of the symbian OS
This is the the fith build of the OS, so it is now rock solid. Simply copying and pasting text on a iphone is impossible. Multi-tasking (more than one app at a time) has been Symbians forte for ages. No chance of that with a iphone. You want to open something else, close current one first.
The iphone needs a app store beacuse it all has to go through itunes. Any app for Symbain can just be bluetoothed over – job done.
The iPhone will soon also have copy and paste in the new 3.0 release.
I’ve downloaded tonnes of apps for my Nokia N81 and N95, and written my own too. The phones have always been “open” – anyone has been able to create an application for the Symbian OS, or in Java ME for that matter. And now the OS itself is open source. But Apple has managed to wrap a bad thing – lock-in – in fancy paper – App Store, and people love it.
The Ovi site is up, but if I’ve understood it correctly, the application download section won’t open until the end of the month. I’m not at all certain it will be a success similar to the App Store, since people will be able to download the same apps from other sources – along with other crappy, non-”approved by Nokia” apps. Perhaps the lock-in a la iPhone is required to get some hype going and give a type of seal of approval.
And it’s not as simple as writing one Symbian s60 (or even Java ME) application and hope it fits all Nokia phones, it takes a whole lot of testing and adaptation to make an app fit e.g. the Nokia N-series. For iPhone you don’t have that problem – there’s only one gizmo to tailor your app for. Even for Nokia phones with touch screen, you will have to make sure your app runs on both the already released ExpressMusic and the N97
Nokia wont have to do much to beat apple or googles apps stores.
Heres some quick figures to show why:
- Apple App store current ~15,000 apps
- Symbain apps developed so far ~100,000 (any/all could be uploaded to ovi from day 1)
- amount of phones sold per year that can accesss apples apps store ~12million
-amount of phones sold per year tha can access nokias ovi store between 60 and 450 million depending on s40 intergration…. (wow)
Nokia doesnt have to do anything to beat the others apps store… The sheer number of potentual customers (not to mention nokias extremely generous profit sharing) will cause developers to flood to ovi and populate it with apps.
Combine that with Comeswithmusic (4.4 million free songs) and its goodbye appstore/itunes….
Nice post regarding the comparison of the 3 different models.