Tips for your New N97 Phone

Image by suanie via Flickr

We got a few requests over the last week from new users on what they should and shouldn’t do with their N97 phones.We’ve just compiled a list of great advice on other blogs from around the web apart from some of our own tips.

  1. Protect your screen – Install a scratch proof film on your phone. Even if you did see this video of a stress test on the N97 phone, where they scratched the screen of the phone with various objects, I did get a few on my unit. So go out and get your screen protected asap. You don’t want a large scratch across the front of your phone. The screen is not fully scratch-proof.
  2. Your Phone Memory is precious – save it! When you get new apps, themes and games for your phone, install them on Mass Memory, you’ve got 30Gig there. Don’t install them on your phone memory where you’d have less than 20MB.
  3. Where do you install your Themes? If you’re just trying out themes, install them on your Mass Memory or Memory card. But if you’re planning to stick to the one you like, move that theme into your phone memory. Having the theme on your phone memory actually improves the performance of the phone. (thanks Harsha for tip).
  4. Free up space on your Phone memory – By default the N97 comes with quite a few preloaded applications which hog up your phone memory, which work perfectly even if they’re installed on the mass memory. This and more tips on reclaiming your Phone memory over at a post from SymbianBlog – How To Recover Phone Memory On Your Nokia N97
  5. Clear your Browser’s cache – Another quick way to clear up some phone memory is to clear your browser’s cache. The cache files actually use up to quite some space after you browse around for a while. To do this, in the browser, choose Options> Clear Privacy Data > Cache. (Thanks to  Khopesh for this tip).
  6. Your N97’s camera glass is susceptible to scratches. Yeah – that camera cover which is supposed to protect it actually scratches it up. Here’s a tip from Nokia N97 User’s blog which will help you avoid these nasty scratches – Protect your N97 lens from scratches. If you’re good with your hands, you can try Symbian Guru’s fix for the camera slider.
  7. Get a push mail client – You have a choice of solutions (free and paid) of push mail services for your N97 phone. We’ll do a detailed post on each service and comparisions a little later. Here’s the list of services in no specific order:
    • Nokia Messaging – Free as of now.
    • Emoze – Free for one mailbox. Pay for more than one mailbox.
    • System Seven – Free if you join their Beta program
    • ProfiMail – Paid
    • Roadsync – Paid – Only for Exchange Mail
  8. Install a good Task Manager – This is must have for any N97 user to check for memory usage and kill unwanted apps. With so many apps and widgets running on the N97, we keep running out of memory on the phone constantly. Jbak Taskman helps us see what’s running and quickly close or kill unwanted tasks. It also gives an overview of free memory on the phone. Get Jbak Taskman app here.
  9. Google Applications and services for N97
    • Google Maps – Using your mobile browser head over to m.google.com/maps to get the Google Maps app for your phone
    • Google Mail App – If you don’t want a push mail client, but would like to check your Gmail, download the Gmail app from m.google.com/mail using your mobile browser
    • Check out other Google Apps and services for your mobile at m.google.com/mail
    • Install Google Sync on your phone to sync your contacts and calendar – Here’s how from Nokia N97 User
  10. Care to Tweet? If you’re a Twitter User, check out the following native apps for tweeting:
    • Gravity is a paid software which has an excellent UI and multiple twitter account support. You can also upload photos directly from your phone to services like twitpic and others.
    • TweetS60 is a free Twitter client which provides the basic functionality for Twitter from your mobile phone.
  11. Blogging from your N97? If you are an avid blogger and want to blog to your WordPress blog straight from your phone, check out WordMobi, an excellent application to install on your phone. You can setup multiple wordpress accounts and post, edit and manage  your blogs straight from your phone.
  12. Into Social networking? The N97 comes with widgets for Facebook, Hi5 and more networks. You don’t have to be next to your computer to be online on these networks. If you can’t find widget for your favorite network, there’s a high probablity you can find widgets for these on Ovi Store or on the Ovi Store App on your phone.
  13. Games anyone? The N-Gage client allows you to try and buy games which will run on your N97.  Check under the Game menu for the N-Gage client. If you can’t find the N-Gage client there, perform the software upgrade mentioned in the next tip and you’ll get the N-Gage client installed on your phone and you’re ready for gaming. Apart from N-Gage you can find quite a few free and paid games over at Ovi Store.
  14. Keep your Phone’s firmware and Software updated. The latest firmwares and software for you device usually fix bugs and add missing functionality – so update frequently.
    • The N97 allows you to update the firmware of the phone directly from the phone. Just head over to Settings > Phone > Phone Mgmt> Device Updates to check for updates and install them. Always make sure you have backed up your contacts, messages and important data before you perform a firmware update.
    • You can also check for updates for the software installed on your phone from Applications > SW Update.
  15. Clear up the junk : After installing a lot of apps on your phone, sometimes the phone begins to slowdown or restart on it’s own. In most cases uninstalling the apps and themes from your phone sorts out this problem. If that doesn’t help, try a hard reset of the phone. This resets the phone to the default factory state clearing up all the junk. Here’s an excellent tip on how to go about this from Nokiaadict.

If you have a tip to share which is not listed here? Let us know by adding a  comment about it, and we’ll add them to our list.

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