Details of the N97's Facebook application

Nokia has published an interactive demo of the much anticipated Nokia N97 which is due to launch in a couple weeks time (it will take a little longer before we see the N97 available here in South Africa because it has to go through an approval process first). You can get an idea what it will be like to use the N97 using this demo. One of the aspects of the N97 you can try out is the new Facebook application which I believe has been developed for the N97. The Facebook app demo connects to your Facebook account using Facebook Connect if you decide to log in and try it out with your account info. I logged in and played around a little with the interface:

This is what the landing page will probably look like:

I updated my status using the demo too:

I really like that I can upload photos to Facebook from the N97’s Facebook app too. I still use Flickr as my primary photo service but this option is great:

You can do a couple other things with the N97 demo like customising the home screen (it uses a widget concept to add and shuffle different widgets around like the time, calendar, shortcuts and a Facebook widget). This is more or less that that would look like (without the navigation labels of course):

There are a couple new ways you can interact with Facebook using the N97’s app. For one thing you have more meaningful control over your events. You can view upcoming events, comment on your attendance and, if you decide to, you can add the events to your N97’s calendar! This is a new level of interaction with Facebook on a mobile and while I don’t know if this is possible on the iPhone (I don’t believe it is), Windows Mobile or the Blackberry, it is certainly a vast improvement over the anemic mobile site Nokia users have been forced to use.

last100 has a great overview of the Facebook app’s functionality including this handy series of screenshots demonstrating how you can respond to a Facebook event notice and ultimately add the event to your N97’s calendar:

You can view media on Facebook too including photos and videos and you can even post your videos to Facebook.

Fans are going to see a lot of activity leading up to and following the N97’s launch internationally early in June. I am very excited to see these devices filter down into the market and to see what the phones will be priced at by the various networks who I assume will have them. No doubt this is not going to be a mass market device but I have started putting a few coins aside in the meantime. This may even be worth renewing my contract for!

Hopefully users of other Nokia devices will be able to install this application sooner rather than later. It would be a shame to see this application confined to the N97 and future, similar, devices.

(Source: Symbian-Guru.com)