So lets see the Speifications of each phone compared to each other:

Here i will try to comapre both  the phone specifications hands on.

Dimensions:

N97:

117.2 x 55.3 x 15.9 mm

IPhone 3 GS:

115.5 x 62.1 x 12.3 mm

Display:

Nokia N97: 3.5 inch TFT with up to 16 million colors

nHD16:9 widescreen (640×360 pixels).

iPhone 3GS: TFT Touch screen with 16 million colors and 320 x 480 pixels, 3.5 inches widescreen.

Processer:

N97 : 434MHz ARM 11 CPU

iPhone 3Gs:  600MHz ARM 8 CPU

Graphic card:

iPhone 3GS: 3Gs PowerVR MBX

Nokia N97: No graphic card.

Ram:

iPhone 3GS: 256MB Ram

Nokia N97: 128MB Ram

3G:

iPhone 3GS: 7.2 Mbps  HSDPA

Nokia N97:  3.6MBps HSDPA

Video:

iPhone 3GS: Yes, VGA@30fps

Nokia N97:  MPEG-4 VGA (640 x 480) at up to 30 fps

Querty Keypad:

iPhone 3GS: No querty keypad.

Nokia N97: Yes.

Seeing these specifications i can say that the iPhone 3GS is a far more superior modern age phone compared to the N97.

The Processer, Graphic card, Ram . . etc are superior than the N97 which makes the iPhone 3GS  faster and easier to use.

The N97 with the 5Mp camera and the sleek and beautiful looking Querty keypad is a plus point in this category but over all the iPhone 3GS is better of the lot.