Undoubtedly, one of the N97’s most touted abilities are widgets, even though they are nothing out of this world, being just another step forward from Active Standby, plus they look very much like Samsung’s very own widgets. Basically, there are several areas on the screen where you can store shortcuts and links to applications and features, or weather forecasts, message notifications, RSS feeds and so on. The widget pool will keep growing and most of them will be available in the commercial version of the phone. The good news about the N97, however, is that it offers very flexible settings for widgets, and its huge display allows the user to put more information onto the home screen.

Another thing of note is that the N97’s prototypes don’t have Active Standby mode, which can make you wonder how far they are willing to go with all this. Widgets will be utilized in Nseries and Eseries smartphones, while “ordinary” S60-powered products, such as the Nokia 5800, will be deprived of this functionality out of the box (but since it’s a separate application, there is a chance they’ll decide to take it to the mass-market).

» Read more: Softwares for Nokia N97