The N97 is Nokia's logical successor to its popular business-focussed Communicator range. Like the Communicators it has a small QWERTY keyboard. But unlike them it has a touchscreen, is small and pocket friendly at 117 x 55.3 x 18.25mm, and is aimed at both business users and consumers alike.

The Communicators were clamshells, but here the keyboard slides out. When it does so the screen sits up at an angle of about 45 degrees making it easy to view when the N97 is sitting on a desk.

The keyboard is comprised of fairly small individual keys and a relatively large amount of space is given over to a navigation pad. This could, in fact, have been smaller and allowed the keyboard to be wider. The presence of just one shift key, on the left, may also annoy some. More annoying, though, is that the space bar is for some reason further to the right than it should be.

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The touchscreen supports handwriting recognition and the N97 comes with a short stylus that hangs from a lanyard, or you can use a fingernail. There is also a soft keyboard for use when the physical keyboard is tucked away and you are working in ordinary phone mode.

The screen measures 3.5-inches across diagonal corners and delivers 640 x 360 pixels. It is sharp and bright, and responsive enough to the finger.

There is 32GB of main memory and a microSD card for adding more. Wi-Fi, HSDPA, Bluetooth and GPS are present. There is a digital compass. The many applications include the BBC iPlayer, YouTube, Nokia Maps and Nokia's Ovi. QuickOffice lets you view Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, and there is a PDF viewer too, plus an accelerometer.

The N97 has a 3.5mm headset jack and among the more interesting enhancements is an FM transmitter that lets you send music to any FM radio. There's a radio on-board too. The 5-megapixel Carl Zeiss camera has a dual LED flash and the lens is protected by a sliding cover. All of which makes for a high end set of specifications.

The real problem with the N97 is Nokia's S60 5th edition operating system. It does not feel like a bottom-up, touch-focussed operating system, more like the standard S60 with touch bolted on. If you are an S60 user coming to touchscreens for the first time you may find it easy to accommodate. But if you are used to an operating system designed with touch at its core, for example the iPhone or Android, you may find it awkward to get to grips with.

The N97 has plenty of features and its touch based operating system is still something of a novelty for Nokia. We aren't convinced it is as responsive or intuitive as other touch based smartphone operating systems, though.