Nokia N95

From Nick Jenkins
Revision as of 10:42, 17 January 2009 by Nickj (Talk | contribs)

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Links to recommended free N95 apps

other apps to try

Less sure about:

  • Nokia Location tagger. (maybe - has as privacy issue of adding GPS tags to all photos). - [1]
  • Qik - Stream videos live online with Qik. This is the fastest way to get your videos online. Yet another cool application for free.


currently testing

email setup:

  • menu -> tools -> utilities -> setup wizard -> email. Email will be under "messaging". Supports IMAP4, but looks kinda sucky.

Non-free apps can trial from Mosh

  • PanoMan 3.0
  • Handy Taskman For S60_V3
  • iPhone v3.3

Useful mobile websites

Mobile websites I am currently trying out

Configuration

  • Menu -> tools -> settings -> general -> personalization -> display -> rotate screen -> Automatic
  • Download this page in the inbuilt browser, and save it.

N95 likes

I'm coming from a very old phone before this, so I'm easily impressed:

  • It has a real browser, based on WebKit (used in / related to Safari & Chrome & KHTML).
  • It can run SSH (requires installing the free PuTTY port).
  • It has WiFi.
  • It runs fine with no SIM card inserted - great for testing stuff and exploring the phone's functionality.
  • It has a pretty decent camera (5 MP).
  • Inbuilt stereo speakers, although the quality of the audio is significantly sharper using the headphones compared to the speakers.
  • Automatic screen rotation based on handset orientation (has an accelerometer).
  • Has inbuilt GPS.
  • You can copy and paste text - it's not as quick as on a keyboard, but it's usually much quicker than retyping.
  • Has an inbuilt reasonable VoIP client - so if you have this phone + WiFi or mobile data, then you have a portable VoIP client, which integrates well with all the usual mobile phone functions. E.g. calls show under missed calls/received calls/dialed numbers, incoming VoIP calls have caller ID, and make a call using VoIP you dial a number normally but just choose "Internet Call" as the calling method, and when you receive a VoIP call it rings just like a normal call, and so forth.

N95 dislikes

Dislikes for the N95 hardware or standard software:

  • The battery life is very short - you have to charge it every night.
  • The phone should be able to update its firmware over the internet. It has Wifi, it has TCP/IP, it has a real browser, it can download directly from web sites, it has several gigabytes of spare space, so why do I need a Windows computer to update? Instead it should let the user check for an update on the phone, which connects to Nokia, tells the user if an update is available and asks if they want to proceed, then downloads the right installer, and updates the firmware, all without requiring a PC. Note: this seems to have been added to the N96 (the N95's successor) and is known as "Firmware Over the Air".
  • The built-in browser has no "open link in new window or tab" function, although it does support multiple windows / tabs (allows up to 5 of them). Here's hoping that Mozilla Fennec for the S60 provides a suitable replacement browser with this functionality.
  • You can't use the inbuilt FM radio without a SIM card in the phone (starting "Visual Radio" gives an error like "cannot activate in offline mode"). That's just odd - since when does an FM radio require a SIM card?
  • You have to pay for turn-by-turn voice navigation on the N95. You can download the maps and even the audio data for free using the inbuilt mapping application, but the voice navigation won't work unless you have a subscription. This is a bit of a bait-and-switch because GPS was one of the key features of this phone, and GPS in a phone is only really made useful with turn-by-turn voice navigation. Furthermore, generally other personal GPS devices have no ongoing usage costs (apart from for updates to later map versions) - so when you say the phone has GPS, the standard assumption is that it will also have turn-by-turn voice navigation. In my personal opinion, turn-by-turn voice navigation really should have been included with the phone out-of-the-box ... but then it would have competed with the Nokia 6110 navigator, and we couldn't have that!
  • The GPS takes about 2 - 4 minutes to lock on and give the current location and has some limitations. That's much longer for a lock-on than my dedicated GPS (which takes about 1 minute). I'll try later with A-GPS enabled, which supposedly improves things significantly.
  • You have to have the keypad slider in the open position for best GPS reception. This requirement was removed in the N96.
  • The CPU is just a little bit too slow to play standard TV resolution DivX or XviD files - there's a bit of lag or dropped frames or blurriness, enough to detract from the smoothness, and after about 10 minutes of watching an XviD or DivX video, I find I have a headache - if the hardware was about 30% beefier, then it would probably be enough.
  • The screen looks like it should be a touchscreen, so people touch it, leaving finger prints on the screen. It doesn't have a touchscreen, but the N97 (2 generations on) will have a touchscreen.
  • Why does a SIM card need to be inserted to use the "share online" app? For example, I should be able to upload my photos to flickr without having a SIM card in my phone.
  • The Menu -> "Download!" app does not work: it says "catalog list needs to be loaded. Continue?", then you have to say "yes" for the app to do anything, then it says "Updating catalog list", then it gives an error: "Some catalogs failed to load. Try again." This is on a Wifi link that works fine for all other purposes with the phone (browsing web pages, making VoIP calls, sending emails, etc).
  • The http://mobile.nokia.com site in the default bookmarks (e.g. "download apps") is completely and utterly useless, and seems to have been outsourced. Nokia: Stop trying to sell crap to your customers, and just provide a gateway to Nokia's best free downloads. For example, why did I have to assemble by hand the above list of the best free apps with direct download links? Shouldn't the mobile.nokia.com site do this for me?


N95 add-on software dislikes

  • Fring was unreliable and flaky with both ICQ and Skype (drops skype calls after 10 seconds, poor quality skype audio, loses ICQ chat messages, loses transferred files). Probably more a fring problem than an N95 problem. Which is a pity, because fring sounds super-userful, but it's just nowhere near reliable enough for practical use, in my opinion. Nimbuzz was a better replacement.
  • Why can't nimbuzz make video skype calls? Would be quite handy.
  • Nokia messaging: when setting up my email, why do I have to enter a "phone number"? And this is a completely bogus reason. There is no technical reason to require this information whatsoever that I can see.
  • Worldmate is buggy - could not even get the demo version off their website to start up correctly! Seems unable to use the default access point, even though I used that very access point to download the software - others have reported the same problem, but the solution (remove, power off, power on, reinstall latest version) did not work for me.
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