I have owned a number of mobile devices so far in my life. I have changed them mostly because I destroyed the device or the device got stolen. I think I might have gone through maybe 4-5 devices so far.

My current phone is the Nokia N97 and it’s the second smart phone I ever owned. I purchased this phone in August of 2009. I decided to buy the phone (even though to the bad press around it) because my first smart phone was the Nokia N78 and till this day the phone surpasses my expectations.

If any of you are asking why did I upgrade from my N78 to the N97 it was because the phone went swimming for me. I had purchased a new phone without trying to switch on the N78 and till this day the phone functions correctly. The keypad sticks sometimes but it is still capable of phone calls (speaker and microphone) and even the GPS and the WIFI chip works.

I have had the N97 long enough to be through the horrible firmware. Since I owned the device I believe 3 major updates have been released for the phone. Each update considerably improved the performance and the user (ME!) satisfaction. It is still not a perfect device though. If the CPU was slightly more powerful and the device had more RAM and phone memory I would consider it to be the ultimate device. Then there is the camera shutter which starches the camera lens.

Living on Malta means if you want to be an early adopter of tech you either have to be great at hunting deals (you can also try sneak them past customs) or be ready to pay practically double of what people pay abroad. Since I purchased the phone from abroad to fix this problem I would have to pay since the warranty does not seem to function in the barren lands of Malta (if any were wondering why I don’t just take it to be repaired). I asked if the warranty covers Malta and they said all Europe is covered. Guess Malta isn’t completely considered in Europe. Next time I shall ask about Africa just in case.

I would be prepared to forgive Nokia if they gave the phone one update; multiple homescreens. This is a feature N97users have been asking for since the device came out. Symbian recently announced that Symbian^3 will be out soon and they release a video of it. My hopes aren’t high that the multiple homescreen feature will be implemented on the N97. I don’t think the hardware is up to the task of handling it (however I could be mistaken because the people at Symbian seem to perform magic with very limited resources). Also one has to ask if they would want to implement this feature on the N97 since newer devices would be coming out and the N97 is technically Symbian^1.

A small glimmer of hope is that the developers implemented some features from Symbian^2 onto Symbian^1 (kinetic scrolling). However since Symbian decided to skip Symbian^2 and go straight to 3 seems to shoot down this little glimmer.

Below is a video of the user experience of the new Symbian phones. Anyone who uses smart phones will immediately be drawn to it. At least I would like to think so. I just want the multiple homescreens.

Eat Symbian’s shorts you iPhone lovers

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