Posts Tagged ‘N95’

Owning the Nokia N97 – Ooops

Friday, February 19th, 2010

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!

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Posted in Geek, Nokia N97, Observations, Opinion | 3 Comments »

iEverything

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

iphone I’m not a fan of Apple products (the fanboys can fast forward straight down to the bottom and flame me in the comments now).

However, for those that are still reading, I’m quite willing to explain my point of view in a logical and adult manner.

Apple products do seem to obtain cult status, and demand a following that is verging on the religious. I find this all rather strange. The closest comparison I can find is to football fans. They too follow their chosen team, and will fight (sometimes physically) anyone who disagrees with them. Luckily I have yet to be physically beaten by an iPhone owner. Maybe I should find a Motorola 8500 brick to use for self defence just in case :-)

To me Apple products are far too expensive. I admit their pricing has got better over the years, but there still is a premium. To my eyes all this premium gets you is some pretty design and a funky user interface. This applies as much to the computers as it does to the phones.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything against a nice design. If something looks good and does what it is intended to do, then brilliant. I would love a Ferrari or Lamborghini. However I find with Apple products that much of the time the physical design and user interface may be a joy, but technically the product is flawed. A triumph of form over function.

Then there are the fans, I find the blind faith of others actually repulses me from the products. I have friends with iPhones, and they just will not admit they are anything other than perfect. Even going back to the original iPhone, in their eyes they had no faults or shortcomings (how they explain the newer, updated models in their minds is beyond me!).

So let’s have a look at the first iPhone. First I should explain that I am in the UK, and I believe this actually has quite an impact. In Europe phone use is actually quite different to the USA. Text messages can be sent across networks and countries without any issues. It’s been like this for years. In the USA text messaging has always been a bit “iffy”. I believe it worked if both phones were on the same network, however when phones were on different networks you never knew if the message would arrive. Given the number of disjointed networks in the USA, text messaging never took off. Instead our American cousins got into sending emails from their phones. This directly lead to the Blackberry.

Then the iPhone appeared in the UK. Unfortunately what appeared was an American phone for an American market, with an American business model. In the UK we’re not used to paying for phones. Phones are usually bundled with a network contract. Occasionally we would pay a few £s for a premium model, but certainly never more than £100. The iPhone was horrendously expensive. This was enough for me not to even consider it. Then the true nature of this American phone was revealed. Text message support (SMS) was basic, very basic. Messages couldn’t be sent to a large group of people in one go, there was no forward message function and MMS (Multimedia message service) was completely missing.

To me this was very strange. In Europe the ability to send messages to groups, forward jokes between friends and send picture messages is such a norm you don’t even check it’s supported! If the phone has a camera you’ll be able to send picture messages. To me this was a perfect demonstration of the difference in target market, and Apple just not bothering to check if there was any cultural difference. There is an American stereotype which is quite widely believed in Europe that those on the other side of the pond are unable to find Europe on a globe, let alone know anything about us. The stereotype was holding true. I summed up the first iPhone as an iPod Touch with a phone bolted onto it in a bit of a hurry.

Over the last couple of years the iPhone has improved. Support for 3G networks was added (again, something which was far more widely supported in Europe than the USA). Messaging has been improved. MMS support has been added. Camera resolution has been improved and video recording has been added. I didn’t even know that was initially missing! However it’s still not exactly ground breaking on the technical front. Camera resolution is still best described as “OK”, but there is still no flash.

I’m still finding myself bumping into fanatics… I really cannot understand what the fuss is about. They go on about the number of apps available from the store, yet here I am with a 2+ year old Nokia N95 and I don’t feel there is anything missing from my mobile phone world. I have instant messaging thanks to fring (free), and I’ve got a choice of web browser (either the built in Nokia one or OperaMini), again both free. I have a 5mega pixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens and a little LED flash. It’s surprisingly good, so much so that I gave my compact digital camera to my father as I was never using it. I have removable MicroSD cards with mp3s to listen to, movies to watch and preloaded maps of most of Europe for navigation purposes (Nokia maps – Free). No need to pay for an expensive roamed data connection if I happen to find myself lost somewhere in Warsaw!

For a symbian phone the internet is the store. Nobody says what I can and can’t run on the phone that I own. Good java support adds even more.

So please, will someone tell me, apart from looking pretty and having fingerprints all over my screen, what extra would I get from an iPhone that I can’t currently do with my N95 (free on 18th month contract).

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Posted in Opinion | 2 Comments »