In opposition to the iPhone and T-Mobile G1 which have capacitive touch screens, the Nokia N97 is presented to us with a resistive screen, meaning that you don't don't have the option of multi-touch and the necesity to press a little harder. A nice feature is that you can easily use either a fingernail or a stylus, which you wil have to hang it from the mini-lanyard in order to always have it with you. Making a few comparisons, we would have to say that the HTC Touch Pro2 also has a resistive touch screen but still it feels much more consistent as well as more responsive to touch.
At a first glimpse, the N97 seems more controllable and more responsive than the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, but the user interface that Nokia has to offer is a turn off. While in the web browser things are pretty normal meaning that you drag the page in a normal fashion, (when you drag it to the left the page obviously moves to the left), when it comes to icons in the application home screen and lists such as contacts, these are surprisingly designed to be moved with the aid of the scroll bar, a total mistery to us. Indeed, you have the option of grabbing the list of contacts instead of the scroll bar itself but this requieres you to drag the list in the same direction you'd move the scroll bar as opposed to the iPhone or HTC ToucFLO 3D for example. Sure, it's easier to move through long lists on the N97 rather than the Nokia 5800 but still, if you have more than 50 items in a list, it's a real bore. As far as the screen goes, we have to notice that it's really sharp and bright, although it hasn't got that enthusiastic effect of the Samsung Omnia S60 with it's Amoled display. And even though it's a tad brighter than the iPhone and G1's, it's not nearly as attractive.
