Mobile phone world leader, Nokia earlier this month accounted its latest model into the N range of smart phones, the Nokia N97 mini. As the name suggests it is basically a downsized version of their N97 smart phone which was released back in June 2009. The main purpose of this phone is off course to save the size and weight. The Nokia N97 mini’s dimensions are 113 x 52.5 x 14.2 mm and it weighs in at 138g compare to 117.2 x 55.3 x 15.9 mm and 150g of the normal the N97.

It has the same 5MP camera used in the normal N97 and has a memory card slot however; the size and weight reduction affects the rest of the performance of this phone in a negative manner. The screen size is now 3.2inches compared to 3.5inches, the internal storage is down to only 8 GB (expandable to 24GB with a 16GB microSD memory card) from a massive 32 GB of N97. The battery stand-by, talk and music play time is also down by a large amount.

All these changes make this announcement kind of bitter-sweet but I can see through Nokia’s point of view, on this occasion they have targeted the potential customers wanting to own a N97 but who are only holding back because of its size and weight, although only 12g doesn’t make a huge difference, it’s the size that does. On the other hand it sacrifices some of the major performance advantages that it had on its rivals such as memory and screen size as well as the battery life.

Overall, it’s a great looking small phone with a QWERTY keyboard and a good range of features for its size, Nokia needs to get its cost-strategy right and price it considerably lower than the normal N97 if they want to make it successful.

Nokia N97 Mini Specifications are: