As mentioned, the N97 is a touchscreen/slide mechanism phone, and looks pretty good too. The full QWERTY keyboard is accessible via the lengthways slide mechanism, but when closed it has touchscreen facilities as well, which can be used with a stylus for those with a less delicate touch, and it is pretty responsive and easy to use as well. The QWERTY keyboard is a little cramped, and laid out slightly strangely, which could very well frustrate some people.

The screen is a very healthy 3.5 inches, and makes viewing web-pages and videos easy and enjoyable with its 640x360 resolution, although there are better screens available on competitor phones. The homepage is good too, with the widget layout simple, and the large screen allows for plenty of room to navigate.

It comes with a brilliant 32gb of built-in memory with a microSD card slot for even further memory. It has built-in Wi-Fi, HSDPA, Bluetooth, as well as built-in YouTube & BBC iPlayer applications. It also features QuickOffice to view Word, Excel, PowerPoint and a PDF viewer.

On top of all this it has a very decent 5 megapixel camera with a Carl-Zeiss shutter and LED flash. The battery life is somewhat poor unfortunately, but this shouldn’t be held against what is otherwise a very good business smartphone.

Summary:

• Good Points: The simple layout of the touchscreen interface, a good camera and fantastic memory capabilities.
• Bad Points: A relatively poor battery life.
• Others to Consider: BlackBerry Bold, HTC Snap.
• Free on Contract with: T-Mobile, 3, Orange &Vodafone.