Edible Apple

Gizmodo published a review today on the new Nokia N97 and it doesn’t take them long to say how they really feel about it’s chance to give devices like the Pre and iPhone some serious competition.  The article begins thusly:

The N97 is Nokia’s attempt to stand tall in an unfamiliar, hostile world populated by the iPhone, Pre and Android the only way it knows how: by throwing the kitchen sink at them. If this is it, they’re doomed.

Ouch.

Overall, Gizmodo liked Nokia’s hardware but couldn’t complain enough about its inconsistent and seemingly outdated software.

I don’t even know where to start the hate parade I want to unleash on S60 5th edition. Nokia’s managed to make RIM’s BlackBerry Storm OS retrofit look like a work of art. And when legacy (sorry, mature) software runs into a crappy half-assed UI, it’s a steaming pile of suck on a slab of garbage toast. All I could think about was how badly I wanted to shove Android onto it…

[The] Ovi Store manages to have the worst mobile app store interface I’ve seen yet. Just try to use that header/scrollbar thing on top to move between categories. And it’s “stuff,” not apps, since Nokia hawks a melange of goods at Ovi, from wallpapers to ringtones to apps, often jumbling them all on a single page. Speaking of Ovi, the desktop suite, also named Ovi, didn’t fall far from the Ovi tree—it’s a natural disaster that’s not a single app for managing your phone, but a handful of distinct apps that intersect in the actual “suite” launcher application. Imagine iTunes, then its remarkably confusing total opposite, ontologically speaking. (And I’m not even getting into the Ovi online services, which are distinct from Nokia’s other offerings, so I wound up creating two wholly different accounts in the process of getting my N97 totally setup.)

Ouch x2.  With the battle for smartphone supremacy likely to be fought with competing app stores, it seems that Nokia’s efforts with Ovi leave much to be desired.  And so goes another attempt to challenge Apple’s iTunes App Store.

You can check out the full review over here.