So its October, the month stated by Nokia that we would see the release of the n97's little brother – the Nokia n97 mini. With this in mind, I thought we would do a little back tracking and have another look at this phone and maybe a brief comparison with the n97.

 

[hardware]

Ok, the first and most obvious thing to mention about the mini, is that it is slightly smaller in all dimensions than the original. The mini comes in at a sleek 113 x 52.5 x 14.2 mm [-4.2 x -0.8 x -1.7mm on the original]. Along with these reduced dimensions, edges have been rounded and a total of 22g have been removed from the weight. This gives the mini exactly what we expect, a smaller, sleeker replica of the bigger brother that is more easily fitted into pockets and the like.

 

It goes without saying that as Nokia look to scrimp and save on size and weight – other aspects of the vanilla n97 will be changed and modified. One of the more notable change is the size of the 3.5” screen. This is now only 3.2”, however the resolution of 360x640 and 16m colours remains.

 

The qwerty keyboard has also had a revamp. Gone has the big D-Pad found on the left side. This has allowed Nokia to slightly spread out its keys and give an overall increased feel to the model. It should be easier to hit them keys!

 

The plastic back has also been changed, This is now a solid metal battery cover, adding to the overall sleekness of the handset. The lens protector has been removed from the back but the 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss lens still remains with its dual LED. As for the battery itself, this has been slightly toned down from the original by around 300mAh. This however still gives roughly 12 days of idle standby time.

 

The final most notable change to mention, and its quite a big one, is the reduction of the onboard storage. One of the major selling points of the Nokia N97 was its whopping 32g drive – this has been reduced to a now modest 8g.

 

 

[software]

Lifecasting – This is an exciting new application being brought out with the mini. The app automatically updates location of the user when they update their social networking status such as Facebook. This isn't exclusive to the mini and will be available to existing N97 users via the OVI store when the mini is released.

 

All in all, I am really liking the look of the Nokia n97 mini and I think it will be a big hit. Lets just wait and see when it hits out shops in the immediate future.