Mobile phone users who like to surf the web really like iPhone. Why? It has got a great web browser, controllable by touch and enabling you to zoom in and out to be able to see the whole page at once. Nokia now has a browser like that, together with a touchscreen, and a processor twice as fast. “A browser controlled by a touch screen? But Nokia’s don’t have a touch screen!” you will say, but the N97 does have a touch screen, and it isn’t an insensitive one like on the Nokia 5800 ExpressMusic, the only other Nokia phone to have a touch screen. It is not a multi touch screen, but the S60 edition 5 of the operating system isn’t built for multitouch gestures anyway.

It is the missing link, allowing you to go through menus at the speed not seen on Nokia phones earlier. Some will say that there are top models from other companies which have similar functionalities, and they will be only partially correct. Other companies don’t have a real operating system on their devices, except for the Windows Mobile, Blackberry and PalmOS devices. And the Windows Mobile devices are slow, and wipe the battery out pretty fast. The others don’t have a software base large enough to mention, or are slower in performance than the Symbian operating system. To prevent this from happening to it also, Nokia has created Ovi store, similar to Apple’s iStore, which enables you to load in new programs into your mobiles from a centralised software directory and increase the functionality of your mobile phone with exactly the functions you need in the shortest time possible. And with the functions for connectivity N97 has, you really will have the need to download some applications, at least an internet video phone application to use when you are near a WiFi hotspot.

The company that gave birth to the amazing piece of technology called the N97 Smartphone has for its humble origins a paper mill opened in 1865 by a certain Fredrik Idestam of southern Finland. This very successful business expanded into rubber and electrical cables. It was not until the 1960s that Nokia became involved in electronics. Telecommunications featured strongly within the electronics department and the company designed and manufactured a range of radio telephones that was used by the military and the emergency services. In parallel with the telecommunications developments which included digital exchanges, the company produced some of the most sophisticated mainframe computers of that time. Soon they moved into the manufacture of televisions and microcomputers.

This technology mix ideally positioned Nokia for a move into mobile phone technology in 1981. This year saw the birth of the era of mobile phones with the launch of the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) service. This was the world’s first cellular phone service. Nokia produced base stations and car phones. The first portable car phone was the Nokia Mobira Talkman. This was about the size of a briefcase. The first truly portable phone appeared a few years later in 1987. This was called the Mobira Cityman. By today’s standards it was still quite bulky, weighing in at over eight hundred grams. It had a hefty price tag too; in today’s money it would have cost around £6,000. The original model earned the nickname the brick. Back in those days mobile phone communications used analogue technology. The move to the digital GSM standard started in 1991, and Nokia was a key mover in its development.

A major advantage of GSM was that, in addition to voice communications, data could be carried also. The first Nokia GSM phone was the Nokia 1011. This spearheaded the expansion of the mobile phones market and Nokia was the world leader. Always the innovator, in 1999 Nokia introduced the first ever WAP phone, the Nokia 7110, followed by the first 3G phone, the Nokia 6650 in 2002. Gradually greater and greater functionality was introduced culminating in the Nokia N97, the ultimate Smartphone with a touch screen, multiple applications, full screen web browser, flip up QWERTY keyboard, GPS, five megapixel camera and a host of other features.