7 reasons why the Nokia N97 is an iPhone killer

Nokia’s surprise announcement of a new flagship smartphone, the N97, took us all by surprise this morning. Sadly the public won’t be able to get their hands on one for a good few months yet, but that hasn’t stopped us getting excited. We recently judged the iPhone 3G as the best mobile phone on the market today. We think the N97 will change that, and we’ve come up with seven good reasons why:

1 Nokia + touchscreen = finally

We’ve been waiting so long for a touchscreen Nokia that we've been talking about the forthcoming Tube (or the 5800 XpressMusic) like some kind of mobile messiah despite the fact that it’s actually a fairly limited mid-range handset. The N97 is the one we should have been waiting for all along, and the touchscreen means a bigger display (3.5in) and a cleaner interface.

2 Bigger, better, faster, more

The main strength of both the N95 and N96 was a hugely impressive specification, and the N97 continues that trend. Onboard memory is 32GB, upgradeable to 48GB, it has a 5MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics, a Qwerty keyboard and highly versatile connectivity, social networking capabilities and format support across the board.

3 It looks great

The secret of Apple’s recent success is a simple one: it recognises that products billed as being desirable should actually be desirable. It’s ridiculous that we spend hundreds of pounds on unfinished technologies (hello, Blu-ray) and put up with products seemingly aimed at making our lives more difficult rather than easier (that would be Windows Vista). The N97 looks like it has both style and purpose.

4 Nokia has learnt from its mistakes

The N96 is a good smartphone but it’s fair to say it hasn’t had nearly the same impact as the N95 it replaced. Why? Quite simply, it took far too long to appear. Just recently we said Nokia wouldn’t get away with waiting that long again, and it hasn’t.

5 The N97’s launch has been stage-managed perfectly

The N97 announcement reminds us a lot of how another big technology company goes about things. This was a genuine surprise to most of us, and as a result it’s jumped straight to the top of the headlines. We were all so focused on the Nokia Tube that we missed this one altogether.

6 Nobody hates Nokia

There are a lot of people who don’t like Nokia’s handsets, but nobody actively dislikes the company. A lot of people won’t consider the iPhone simply because it’s made by Apple, while others won’t go near BlackBerry because of its stodgy all-business heritage. Nokia has always been a company about phones, and it’s been rather successful too.

7 Comes With Music

Nokia has been quietly building its add-on services like Comes With Music, N-gage and Nokia Maps, and clearly they are as much a part of its medium-term strategy as the N97 is. Comes With Music doesn’t have the market traction of iTunes, but it doesn’t have the limitations either, and the N97’s huge storage capacity is perfectly designed to do it justice.