We’ve been talking about these two devices for a while now, but what exactly are they, and what’s the difference, and, possibly more importantly, which is the “flagship” device for the Nokia N-Series?

Well, the Nokia N900 is a Maemo based Internet Tablet (following on from the Nokia N810, N800 and 770 Internet Tablets), but it adds phone capabilities, and not just to improve data access, but to also act as a phone.  Having said that, there does appear to be an element of just bolting the phone software on top of the existing platform; the phone application is pretty much the only application that supports the portrait mode (at launch). We make the point about “at launch” because many of the apps included on the device are by third party developers, who may well provide portrait support in their apps faster than Nokia and Maemo can achieve the same for the core applications.

The device includes a 5 megapixel camera, 3.5″ 800 x 480 touchscreen display, 32GB onboard storage, plus microSD support, A-GPS with Ovi Maps, 3.5mm headphone jack, FM transmitter, TV-Out, Bluetooth, and DivX Support.

Now, the Nokia N97 Mini is another key device launched at Nokia World.  It is basically a slightly cutdown Nokia N97, although it still features many of the high technical specs of the Nokia N97;

• It has 8GB storage, as against the Nokia N97 32GB
• It has a 1200mAh battery, compared to the N97’s 1500mAh
• The screen drops from 3.5″ to 3.2″, but retains the resolution

The main other difference is the removal of the D-pad on the keyboard, which is replaced by a set of four cursors keys to the right.  Of course, it will retail at a slightly lower price too.

So, which is the flagship device; well, that’s for you to decide; the Nokia N97 Mini is a smaller, lighter, lower spec device than the Nokia N97, but that slight size reduction may make it more popular at time goes on; as for the Nokia N900, it is lacking some of the all round features of Symbian S60 (and application support), and so right now, we reckon the Nokia N97 remains the top device, but whether it can retain this crown throughout 2010 as Maemo apps improve is another question…

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 17th, 2009 at 10:02 am and is filed under Gadgets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.