Techgoondu had the chance to lay our hands on a Nokia N97, which Nokia says will bring the power of a mobile computer to a compact package.

The N97 is well-designed in several aspects, including its large 3.5-inch touch screen, solid build quality with a slide-out screen and an extensive suite of onboard software.

Because the N97’s screen slides upwards and outwards at an angle to reveal the QWERTY keyboard, the amount of space available for the keyboard is limited. The result is that Nokia can only accommodate 3 rows of keys, as compared to 4 rows found on the E series phones.

The limited number of keys also means more alphabet keys would have to double up as symbols, leading to the increased use of the shift key when entering symbols. While the keys are more spaced out, I found myself spending more time typing on the N97 keyboard as compared to the E71.

The space bar is also awkwardly placed towards the right side of the keyboard, and this may slow you down considerably especially if you’re typing long e-mail messages.

Unlike the E75 which provides a physical alphanumeric keypad in addition to a QWERTY keyboard, the N97 offers an onscreen alphanumeric keypad in portrait mode. That means you still have the option of typing with a single hand for quick SMS replies without bringing up the N97’s QWERTY keyboard.

In his opening address to the media and invited guests at the launch event of the Nokia N97, Chris Carr, vice president of sales in Nokia Southeast Asia Pacific, noted that mobile phones are set to become the most important gateway to the Internet. In addition, mobile Internet users are also demanding a more customized experience on their cellphones to reflect their rising amount of activity on social networking sites.

The N97 allows you to customize a home screen in a portal-like manner that includes shortcuts to applications such as e-mail, Nokia’s Ovi store, weather information and widgets from a pool of content providers such as the Singapore Exchange, Bloomberg and local newspapers. Facebook and Twitter widgets are also available for you to access these services directly.

Browsing the web on the N97’s touch screen is a tad different from what you’d do on HTC devices and the iPhone as far as finger gesturing is concerned. You can’t really flick your finger to scroll down a web page. Instead, your fingers have to be kept on the screen while you scroll.

The N97 comes with a five-megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens. Pictures appeared vibrant onscreen, though the built-in flash took a couple of seconds to recharge between snapshots.

My goondu take on the N97: the overall experience can be fine-tuned further. I noticed some software lag while switching from the portrait mode to the home screen. Users of the Nokia E71 will have to spend some time getting used to the N97’s keyboard layout. Active users of social networking sites, however, will appreciate the convenient widgets that come with the phone.

The N97 will retail in Singapore for S$1,028 (without Comes with Music service) or S$1,228 (with Comes with Music). Prices also include a three-month Nokia Maps navigation license.

A year after announcing its ovi online services, Nokia today showed off a near-complete version of its answer to Google, Yahoo and Microsoft’s online offerings here in Singapore.

At a demo for reporters at the Geek Terminal cafe here, it presented new features like remote file sharing and sync’ing of contacts.

ovi is Nokia’s attempt to hook up its phone users to online services, seeing how Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are reaching out to mobile users through their Web-based e-mail, calendaring and productivity offerings. Let’s not also forget Apple and its tightly-integrated iTunes and recently, MobileMe application.

When fully ready, Nokia’s ovi offers the usual calendaring, contacts backup, as well as maps and games. Sounds like Google? Yup. Reminds you a bit of Apple’s iTunes and AppStore? Uh huh.

The thing is, ovi has taken a long time to complete since its announcement last year. It seems like a defensive move, yes, but it does have some value in offering a better out-of-box experience.

Remember that not everyone is signed up to Google Docs or Microsoft Live. This gives ovi an edge, because it targets anyone who has a Nokia phone – and Nokia sells more phones than anyone -and wants to go online with it.

The demo today showed off ovi’s remote sync feature, which goes beyond the usual PC-phone sync, to one where you can seamlessly sync all your contacts to the ovi portal either over 3.5G or Wi-Fi. Lost your phone? No worries, you can sync back your stuff from ovi.

More interesting was the second feature, which lets you share files with friends easily. I’d call it a smarter version of yousendit.com.

You first select whatever files, say, reports or presentations, to sync to Nokia’s remote server, which you can access on your Nokia phone. To send this file to a friend or contact, you simply select the file from a list on your phone, which sends a link to your friend over e-mail. He then clicks on this link to preview or download the file.

The good news is that both of you can preview the file without downloading it first, saving download time and data costs if you are on the go.

To be sure, none of these ovi apps are hard to replicate, but Nokia has smartly clustered them together in one online portal that tightly integrates with Nokia phones. Sounds like Apple? Yup!

However, Nokia’s ovi only works with its phones now – most of the latest N and E series as well as “regular” phones should run well. This means you can’t use it if you are a Samsung or HTC user, and you better off using Google’s online sync features and Google Docs for sharing files.

How good is ovi, on the whole? It looks well thought out (after taking so long to build, it better!). But the real test is how much users want to be tied to Nokia.

Apple has shown that, with a strong brand and ease of use, it can attract users to its well integrated offerings. Google, on the other hand, offers unprecedented openness, and upcoming phones using its Android software, probably the most “connected” of all mobile devices, will give users access to Maps, e-mail and other online apps perhaps even more easily.

To be honest, all look promising, and it’s too early to say who will own the mobile Web in future. For now, if you are a Nokia user, you just got one more way to extend the usefulness of your phone.