One of the problems I had with the N97 mini’s UI is the size of the icons- they are too large. Large is not necessarily bad for a touchscreen, thats unless the icons size do more harm than good i.e. take up more space than necessary. So to fix this issue I modified my icon size, here are the screenshots:
After modifying the icon size I went on to add transitions. The nokia N97 mini by default lacked any menu transitions(except a few barely noticeable transitions in popup windows) mainly because of performance issues nokia had with them in earlier firmwares. I decided to use Atlantis by dscobsct in my custom firmware, here is it in action (please excuse the video quality, just look at the transition):
Transitions are surprisingly smooth and fast on the hardware, a processor at 434mhz and just 128mb ram.
My base firmware is one specially done for speed by ivo777, you can get it here (you need to register):
Because I used ivo777 as the base I had more ram than normal at startup- 55mb in fact, 10mb more than the usual 45mb.