Well it’s been a while since I wrote anything here, there is a good reason.
My N97 got squashed! It fell out of my pocket as I got out of my brothers car a few months ago, and before I could grab it he pulled away and drove over it.
Unfortunately my brother doesn’t drive anything light, he drives a Landrover!
The result, one blank screen. It still rang, and I could still answer calls, but trying to use a phone without visual feedback, especially via touch screen, is somewhat tricky. Luckily I was able to type in my power on pin with the fold out keyboard.
I took it to bits, and apart from a squashed chrome front surround, and a couple of cracks in the case, there wasn’t actually anything visibly broken. I managed to plug it into my laptop and backup everything and then brought my old N95 back into service whilst I wondered what to do with the N97.
Being forced back to the N95 provided an interesting comparison. It’s just so much more responsive. It even recognised the 8gig MicroSD card I’d bought for the N97 (up until then I hadn’t tried anything bigger than 4gig in the old phone).
So what did I miss about the N97, well the big screen, keyboard and the GPS that locks quickly (the N95 takes ages, epecially if you dare to move).
What I didn’t miss was the touch-screen interface. On the N95 everything just feels like it’s all designed to work together. There is a button to do copy/paste, I don’t have to rely on the phone to provide a button the screen where the designers thing I might want to do copy/paste (they always seems to miss places I do use it).
Anyway, eventually I decided I had better have a look at fixing the N97. Having taken it to bits and found nothing visually broken I tried the unplug and reconnect all the boards technique. Unfortunately it wasn’t going to be that easy, so being presented with a blank screen I thought the first thing to try would be another LCD panel. £34.99 later and I have a fully working N97! I’ve had to hammer the chrome strip back into shape and reglue it onto the facia which has a few scratches, but it works! I didn’t even have to replace the facia which contains the touch sensitive surface!
I found there was a new firmware for the N97, V21.0.045. It’s probably not available for UK Country variant phones yet, but I lost patience waiting for UK CV approval last year with the V20 fiasco, so I’d changed the model number on my N97 so I can use generic Euro firmware updates.
I wiped the phone completely, installed V21, hard reset it again, then imported the business cards from the N95. All seems good.
The wireless reception is better than the N95 too, I’d forgotten how good it was in comparison, but you know what, I still prefer the N95’s touch-screen free interface.
I’m still unconvinced by the idea of touch-screen on mobiles. I was using my friend iPhone last month and it illustrated my main complaint, how are you supposed to select text on the screen when you’re putting a fat finger right in the way of what you are trying to do?! At least “old” “unresponsive” resistive screens let you use your finger nail, but on a capacitive screened iPhone you have to use something with capacitance, some people have even resort to frankfurters so they can keep their gloves on!
So now my SIM is back in the N97, it’ll be interesting to see if I prefer using it to the N95 or not. Not that I can do much if I don’t, I doubt anyone wants to buy a rather battered N97!
Today I have been mostly playing with Opera’s latest public beta of their mini web browser.
Opera Mini V5 beta *has* been designed with touch screen in mind, and boy is it good. This beta is more stable and finished than some of the software supplied on the N97 by Nokia… The buggy/restricted Facebook application for example.
So what are you still doing here?
Well it was bound to happen, from the moment the damn thing arrived through the door I knew this day would come.
