The same question pops up many times on the forum, "do I need a screen protector?". During our Nokia N97 stress tests we give the screen quite a hammering, trying to scratch it with the stylus, coins and a key and yet it remained scratch free.

But many of our users have found their screen has become scratched with general usage. Most of the reports are of faint spider scratches but scratches none-the-less. So contrary to what I said about not needing a screen protector, I recommend fitting a screen protector just incase, it's an expensive bit of kit afterall. Though these hairline scratches are only visible in certain lighting conditions and aren't going to bother everybody but I know for sure they'd drive me mad.

I have no idea why our screen didn't scratch during the tests, because we applied a fair bit of pressure with the key and during the pocket test, it was shook vigorously. Perhaps the lighting was wrong and there were hairline scratches on the screen. I'll double check tomorrow and let you all know. Though there were certainly not any deeper scratches which would be visible in any light.

There are many screen protectors available, one of the most popular appears to be invisibleSHIELD for the N97. Check out the forum discussion to see what other users think of it and for alternative solutions.

Premium themer Tehkseven has released a new theme called "Shi". It's gorgeous. The widgets have been themed and feature a transparent “glass” effect. The Application, Photos, Games, and Video applications have been themed. The Equalizer indicators are altered, feature shiny red arrows and a stylish gradiented slider bar. The volume controls for 5th Edition have been themed. As well as much more.

I know there are hundreds of free themes available, but Tehk's themes are always very complete and highly polished and definitely worth a few bucks.

Tehk has agreed to give N97geeks 3 free copies of the Shi theme. We're going to give them away to the first 3 people to comment and leave their email address. The condition is that you must provide feedback or a mini review of the theme.

David from seqpoint.com contacted me to let me know about a project he's working on that sparked my interest.

Augmented reality isn't a new concept, it's been around for years but it's not been implemented on mobile phones for long. So far I don't believe anybodies attempted it on a Symbian platform. These guys are working on an "engine" that will allow other developers to take advantage of AR. On the website is a demo application made with the engine, the demo application allows the user to scan the environment and points of interest will pop-up on the screen.

By the sounds of it, users will be able to add their own points of interest to the database.

There's a free demo available for the Nokia N97, I've not had a chance to try it myself yet, so please leave comments with your feedback or suggestion

It's unlike that your current handset will be able to handle this new technology, but maybe in the near future there'll be new mobile phone contracts capable of this.

Nokia have released a new version of the Nokia N97 Firmware (11.0.021). This is a particularly quick update for Nokia but definitely music to many users ears

Fixes include:

Note: Users with branded handsets, won't be able to update their firmware until their carrier/network releases a custom version

Source: Boy Genius