Posts Tagged ‘V12’

Owning the Nokia N97 – Part 10

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

V12 Firmware finally available to UK users

Well Nokia, or whichever third party they have in the UK for distributing firmware updates, have finally pulled their finger out and released V12, only 6 weeks after world+dog got it.

Still no news from Nokia about why there is such a delay for UK phones.

I would like to claim some personal responsibility for it finally being release. 48 hours before it became available I got fed up and changed the model number of my UK CV (country variant) N97 to that of a generic Euro model. I then used NSU to check the firmware, it told me V12 was available, and installed it. Therefore I think I can claim under the ground of sods law!

What does V12 give us, ummmm, well nothing really. It is supposed to help with main memory use by the browser, but I haven’t seen much improvement. There are many reports of V12 updates corrupting existing wifi connection configurations, and worse preventing correction or creation of new ones. This bug was reported by world+dog when they got V12 six weeks ago, so it’s pretty obvious that the delay for UK users wasn’t caused by Nokia fixing anything!

One of the regular readers of this blog experienced this problem, he kindly detailed the steps he took to get things working again. Have a read here if you are experiencing problems.

None of the annoying bugs I have experienced with V11 have been resolved. The automatic screen pin lock (if you use it), sometime has the keypad in alphabetic mode when you try to unlock. Which means you have to have your wits about you when you unlock, otherwise you end up entering a string of letters instead of numbers and having your code rejected.

The browser still has my favourite “did they ever test this?” bug…

If you want to experience it yourself, got to a webpage with a text entry box, something like the comment box on this site for example. Now with the phone closed (so you get predictive text), start writing a new, unknown word (preferably one you won’t mind having added to the dictionary, as I don’t know how to remove custom words!

Eventually the predictive text will give up and give you the option to spell the word manually. Do it, and when you confirm you will be back to the web page text box with your new word shown. Unfortunately right after the new word will be the last word/letter combination the predictive text tried before giving you the spell option! Genius!

So if you have V11, and your phone is working, just leave it! Skip V12, too many headaches and risks, and no real fixes for issues. Wait for V20 which is due in October.

Not long… Well not for me anyway, I don’t have a UK model phone now… I also have a voided warranty! Who knows how long UK phones will have to wait. Maybe Nokia might have taken notice of the campaign for UK firmware equality. You have signed it haven’t you?

Hopefully V20 will be the firmware the N97 was supposed to have at launch. I get the feeling the N97 was rushed out to preempt the iPhone 3GS, V11 and V12 firmware releases have just been firefighting and bug fixes, and not very good ones at that.

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N97 V12 Firmware still not available for UK

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

There seem to be quite a few unimpressed people out here in intarweb.uk land.

Go sign the petition.

http://discussions.nokia.co.uk/discussions/board/message?board.id=swupdate&thread.id=56895

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Posted in Nokia N97, Observations, Opinion, Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Owning the Nokia N97 – Part 8

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

Firmware

Well true to the word of their automated message, I did get a reply to my “where is V12 for the UK N97″ question I sent to Nokia. Unfortunately it reminds me a lot of the old pilot lost in the fog joke (link).

The firmware in a Nokia phone is dependent on the country it is released for as the cellular networks in every country are different to varying degrees. The release of a firmware update is dependent upon 2 things :

1 – General adaptation to the specific networks found within the country in question,

2 – Adaptation by specific networks for use with phones SIM locked to their networks.

In your case, of course, only the former applies. Please be patient, it will be released shortly.

Can anyone define “shortly”… There really should be a ban on using that completely valueless measurement of time!

Oh well… It was worth a try wasn’t it?!

Instant messenging and VOIP

Well now we get down to some fun stuff. I’m sure you have an instant messenger account of some variety. Microsoft, yahoo, AIM, Skype, ICQ to name but a few. Well how about having them on your mobile phone (with your “unlimited” data connection)?

I have been using an application called Fring for quite a while on my N95. It works very well, and I’ve had quite a few conversations with people over skype whilst taking advantage of open wireless points in some strange parts of the world. Having a chat with friends back home whilst costing absolutely nothing is rather cool.

In 2008 there was a new arrival on the mobile IM/VOIP block, Nimbuzz, so I thought I would give it a go on my N97.

One of my main reasons for even thinking of trying a new IM client is a short coming they both share. I have two messenger account, one I use for business, and one I use for personal. Unfortunately both Fring and Nimbuzz only allow you to have one Microsoft messenger connection open at a time, a restriction I don’t have on my desktop thanks to Trillian. So although they both have the restriction, there is nothing to stop me running both Fring and Nimbuzz side by side, and can you think of a better way to test them?

(I will apologise in advance as I interchange “messenger”, “MSN” and “Windows Live” when talking about the instant messenger from Microsoft, they have changed its name too many time! I believe that this month it’s officially “Windows Live Messenger”).

So far today they have both been perfectly well behaved. Nimbuzz does strike me as a little more polished, and Fring does make me feel slightly sea-sick with it’s over-friendly huggy huggy website. It could be the green colour scheme, but the comic font really doesn’t help!

One of the issues I have always had with Fring is checking for updates. On the app you have to go into the about page, find the version, then open the website, dig about a bit to find the version history, then decide if you are out of date and download/install. just having the current version number shown on the download page would be an improvement.

Nimbuzz is far more integrated. There is a check for update link on the application. As the meerkats would say “Simples” (non UK readers will just have to take my word that you just missed the most hillarious joke ever typed on the intarweb).

So how do they measure up?

Well for my use there is not much to choose between them, both do Skype, Windows Live (MSN), yahoo, AIM and ICQ. I think I err slightly towards the new boy right now. Fring can do Twitter (but I already have a twitter client I like – Tweets60), Nimbuzz can do Gadu Gadu (ask any Polish friend).

fring

Some of Fring's IM connection "add-ins"

nimbuzz

Some of Nimbuzz's IM "Communities"

The one thing that really does swing it in favour of Nimbuzz, in a big way, is the Windows Live status message, the little one liner you can do in messenger to say “Eating my dinner”. In Nimbuzz you can set this to whatever you like. Fring on the other hand sets this to “On mobile by www.fring.com”, a bit of self promotion is okay I guess, but this isn’t a default, that is it! You can’t change it! The earlier versions of Fring did not do this, and I don’t appreciate this being forced upon me. Apart from anything else, if I am using this as a professional contact point, I don’t want my contacts to know I’m away from my desk/office and doing my shopping! Even worse, it seems to be alarmingly persistent, even after you log in with a real Windows live Messenger client, the Fring advert status remains.

–> Part 9

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Owning the Nokia N97 – Part 7

Monday, September 7th, 2009

V12 firmware

Hey, Nokia, where’s V12 for us Brits? If I had an N97 from any other region than UK I would have had it for weeks already! Seriously it’s available for pretty much everywhere except here. Pick an ex-Russian state where only the gangsters could afford such a phone, and they’ve had it for weeks. Actually, maybe that’s the point, maybe we’re too polite. Does anyone have an AK47 I can point at Helsinki in a threatening manner?

This isn’t a delay introduced by the networks (although Carphone warehouse users are still waiting for them to authorise V11). My N97 is a generic black model from Phones4U.

I could use NSS and hack the model number to that of a generic Euro model (which has English language), and then I would get the V12 update, but why should I have to? If you have a Euro model with English interface, why not a proper British model release? Did you accidentally miss us, or have you forgotten the UK market since Orange rejected the N97? (Still nothing official about that from Orange of course, just the usual silence, but I have seen second hand information about the drop being official now).

I would like the V12 update so the browser would stop eating all the C: memory with it’s cache, and then I wouldn’t have to keep using y-browser to delete “c:\system\cache” to keep the phone stable! I use Opera as my browser most of the time so it’s not a major issue for me right now, but I have two browsers on the phone, I’d like to be able to use them both. Opera Mini 4.2 is okay, but it’s not fine tuned for the N97 yet, and has some interesting quirks!

Maybe you’re just skipping V12 with us (for some reason) and we’ll get V20 as the next update… However if I see V20 come out, and the UK doesn’t have it within 24 hours I’m going to be changing that model number to a Euro model (or maybe Polish – I have Polish friends and it would be nice to be able to use the correct characters for their names and words when I write in my broken polish) before you can say “invalidated warranty”!

Facebook app

Continues to look pretty, and continues to let me down when I try to do anything vaguely “advanced”.

Last night I took a photo and tried to upload it to facebook using the app “Script error”. Tried again, same problem. I eventually gave up, went onto facebook with Opera Mini, found the mobile upload email address for my profile and emailed the picture up.

Once up I then tried the Facebook app again to see if I could tag the picture. Sure enough when you view a picture full screen there is a tag button… Woohoo thinks me, and I press it. The button changes colour slighty to show it’s been pushed, and nothing. I tried tapping the picture to see if I was supposed to indicate the area I wanted to tag. Nothing happened. Pushed the tag button again and the colour changes back to how it was originally. Press again and the button changes again. That gets boring after a while, and it doesn’t offer any other form of functionality apart from changing colour.

I had to wait until I got home to tag the picture. Both my browsers get a cut-down mobile version of facebook sent to them by the site, which removes the tagging function.

Yes I know V20 has a new facebook application, pity it’s not being offered to us in advance. See previous comment about when V20 arrives!

Updates

I got a message the other morning on my phone, it wasn’t a text message or any other kind of known message, it was an update message. I have no idea how the phone gets this, I hope it’s not munching my data connection every few minutes checking! Anyway, with much excitement I opened the message, hoping it was V12, it wasn’t.

There were 4 updates.

  1. Installer update required to install updates
  2. Nokia messaging 10.0
  3. Ovi contacts 1.20
  4. N-gage

Being the curious kind of geeky person that I am, I installed the lot! First thing I noticed was none of them asked where to install, the precious main memory, or the huge bucket of mass storage. I was worried.

When I checked memory usage I found my main memory had taken a huge hit, I wasn’t happy. I checked, and N-gage had gone onto mass storage, but Ovi contacts and Nokia email had both gone on the main memory. They both got uninstalled. I still didn’t get things back to where they were, I bet the “Installer update needed before installing” has munched some of the precious… Grrrr!

Wallpaper…

I finally got round to customising my screen, I played with N97 wallpaper pics I found on the big wide intarwibble, and eventually got bored with all of them. I’m also a photographer so decided to use one of my own photographs.

Feel free use it on your N97. If I see it on an iPhone I reserve the right to tip beer over the phone and owner. It has been optimised for the N97 screen, just right click on it and save the image.

deckchair-tanks-blog-N97

Quick legal bit. I retain the copyright to this image. I am giving you blog readers a non-exclusive license to use it on your N97 only.

There, that’s better than me should putting “Tank’s blog” across it in horrible big letters.

Yes, I know I should give up on summer and start doing some Autumn ones… I’m working on it, honest!

–> Part 8

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