When Nokia released its N97 smartphone, the company certainly knew it needed a lot of work, but Nokia also knew it had to have a splashy new touchscreen smartphone to compete with the iPhones, Android phones and Palm Pres of the world. 

There's no question that Nokia built a good smartphone with the N97 handset, but it needed something more modern. If there were no other snazzy smartphones on the market, the N97 would have been king. As we all know however, that's not the case anymore.

At least Nokia was willing to listen and learn. Users told the manufacturer that they wanted a smaller sized phone with a more intuitive operating system that would be able to simplify as many functions as most of the other top-of-the-line smartphones.

Nokia answered back with the new N97 mini.

The first thing you'll notice is that it's a somewhat smaller design fits in your pocket a lot easier than its bigger brother. The N97 mini measures 4.45 by 2.07 by 0.56 inches and weighs in at just under 5 ounces. The 640 by 360 pixel touchscreen measures 3.2-inches (diagonally measured) and is surprisingly usable for a resistive panel.

The mini sports a slide-out QWERTY keyboard that actually allows you to build-up some speed and accuracy when you type. In most cases, physical keyboards can help your typing when designed properly, and Nokia has done a good job with this one.

The N97 mini is a GSM world phone (quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE) and it works on AT&T's 3G network here in the United States.

It comes with 8GB of internal storage and up to 16GB of removable memory along with a rechargeable battery that is said to be good for as much as seven hours of 2G or four hours of 3G talk time, and more than 300 hours of standby. Remember, these numbers are estimates. Expect to be able to get a full day (12 hours) of light-to-medium talk and data use -- definitely an acceptable performance for a 3G smartphone.

There's a 5 megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS (with maps) built inside. All in all, the N97 mini is a modern feature-packed device.

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