Hi all,

Please note that all future postings about the N97 or anything mobile related is now going to be moved to the following blog.

http://mobileinfo.nomadsnirvana.com/

More Funny Video’s – Sports Reviews

Hi All,

I'm back again, sorry it's been so long. I found some more funny video's that I made sometime ago, relating to the N97 and games, the information in the films may be outdated now, but thought I would share with you anyway :-)

 

 

 

Review 2 – Home Screen, Apps and Navigation

I hope everyone enjoyed my first basic review. In this second review I hope to cover the home screen, some of the built in apps (calendar, web etc) as well as try to cover some aspects of the phones menu navigation and memory handling. Please note this was first written based on firmware 10.0.012.

OK I’ve updated to firmware 11.0.021 and will make notes in red where needed

HOME SCREEN: Being a new feature to Nokia, I’ve tried to show as many screen shots as possible and I try to cover all the settings that go with it.

So where does one start. I love the look for the home screen in both landscape or normal view. In the options menu you can turn to offline or online mode for your widgets. You can Hide content (also done by sliding the screen left or right) and then you can also edit content. When in edit content mode you can add remove items by either selecting them and going options or holding down on an item. (this can also be done when not in edit mode). One problem though is if you choose to add an item when you home screen is full, you can get an error rather than an option to replace an existing item (hopefully they put this in the next firmware. You can also change the wallpaper, one the nice things here is that you can select a slide show from some or all of your photo’s. Please note this takes up battery power.

Some other quick access items to note here are the Clock and the profile items. By double clicking either of there you are taken to the respective applications. Please see clock and profiles further down.

Ok so onto the widgets. To be honest there are not that many around at the moment. My phone game with a few namely Facebook, Accuweather, bloomberg and one or two others which I don’t use. The main problem is that there seems to be a online offline problem with trying to connect all the time and dropping connections, I’m sure this will be in the next firmware fix. The connect over the last 5 hours has been good so it looks to be fixed for Facebook however I’m still having problems with Accuweather. I did find that sometimes adding new content did cause the phone to crash sometimes.  The alphanumeric problems with facebook are also now fixed..

After Firmware update my face book has a menu on the side and the app no longer fits the screen. Not what we wanted.

The Facebook widget is often giving me errors when trying to connect and the alphanumeric keys seem to be mixed up,as a result I am going to remove it from my home screen as it’s very irritating. I’ve also noticed that when the Accuweather widget is loaded, I’m continuously getting pop-ups asking me to connect to the net, I have already done so. With regards to connection I get pretty irrigated being asked all the time when a connection is lost. You can opt for setting a default however on my device if I set my home WLAN as the default and then 3G as my secondary some of my widgets will never connect using 3GP but prefer to complain about not getting a connection from the WLAN. (This of coarse is another thing that can be resolved using firmware).

Another thing that I love about the front screen is the top right section where you can see some of the apps that are running currently, for example, Bluetooth, GPS, Alarm WLAN connection, and the best part is that if you click on that section you get a list of the items and a quick click access to go to the respective menus to disable or change any of the settings you feel you need to. Nice touch…

Home Screen when clearTop right symbolsOptions MenuEdit Mode   Edit options     Add Item options

MENU BROWSING: This is accessed from the menu button, which is the silver button on the face of the screen. Single Press gives you the menu, press and hold gives you the task manager.The browsing and screen responsiveness is very good on the N97 and faster than the 5800 in most cases. I say in most case because I have noticed the responsiveness of the menus to slow down in two situations. The first when you have transitions on, and the second when the memory starts to run low. Some the affects that this has on the navigation is that selecting icons sometimes does not register, but most they do register but because the next screen/application takes some time to load, that I find myself still touching the icons and when the next screen loads I’ve now already initiated a touch and some random application then loads. I must say this is not always the case, but can be experience in the situations that I mentioned. I do feel, that memory management and firmware upgrades in the future could help solve some of these issues. The icons in the menus look great and clear, you can view the Menu in both grid and list views (Grid being my preference). By touching <options> –> <Organise>, you are able to move applications and folders to new locations if you feel you want to reorganise you menu’s.

Unfortunately when you want to delete an application that you have install(not all apps/folders can be deleted), you need to dig a little deeper in the menu structure than I would have like. <options> –> <Organise> then click the app you wish to delete then <options> –> <Delete>, this once again a preference thing, but would like to be able to delete without having to organise.

The other issue that I have is that on the right (landscape) and bottom (normal view) of the screen there is a menu bar with normally two options <back/exit> and <Options>. It would be great if this was undocked, as I feel it takes up a large amount of the screen, especially for those that have loads of installed.

After Firmware 11 updated I did notice a slight increase in navigation speed which is promising.

GridListOptions Menu     Organise Menu

CALENDAR: The reason I wanted to cover the calendar is mainly because I use it a lot and and the N97 being a smart phone I think the Calendar/Task part of the phone should be very good to help us the users organise our time.

I like the calendar in comparison to the N95 8GIG.  There are a view different views which you can see below(weekly, daily, Monthly) I prefer monthly, but find that even with monthly set as my default if I enter the calendar from the home screen widget it always opens in the daily menu. However if you open the calendar from the menu system it will open with your selected default. Other thing to note, which Nokia has still not done, and I’m in the process of written a tool myself is that when you add an anniversary or birthday to a contact, it will NOT show in the calendar automatically.  I have noticed that sometimes entries that I add can’t be found, this seems strange and could be a bug on my phone.

As normal you can add the following types of entries: Meeting, Memo, Anniversary, to-do note. Over all I really like the calendar.

After firmware 11 update I haven’t had anymore entries go missing so I am assuming it was a bug, and from looking at the change log they did implement a fix for this. Good work NOKIA

Day View Week View Month View

PHOTO BROWSER: I wanted to just give a brief menu break down and review of the photo browser. However I will cover photo quality and the camera in the next review.

I’ll start by getting this out the way as I’ve been asked by a few people. “Is it true that you can only see captured images in the default photo browser?””. The answer is yes, and I really hope Nokia change this soon, as it’s very annoying. Videos are also no longer viewed in the photo gallery, but rather in the Videos & TV browser.

Not much else has changed from what I can see in the photo section, you can view by month, album or captured. You can add tags which is nice. With regards to sharing images at the moment there is only built in support for Flickr and Vox. I hope to see facebook and others added soon. You can of coarse use Shozu for you online image sharing needs.

When viewing images you can still edit, rotate and crop images on the go and of coarse view you images in slide show mode this is always nice when you have your TV-out cable connected.

Main Menu  View Images Image Options Share Online

MUSIC BROWSER: The music browser is still the old plain Nokia browser. I’m not a massive fan of it, but it does seem to do the job. There is direct access to the music store here if you are inclined to purchase music online. You can access the Radio from here too(must be connect with headsets still).

I have noticed that when I have the music widget on my home screen that is does not always keep up to date with what I am listening to, until the back light goes of and I exit the screensaver mode. Not sure why this is as it happens when I have loads of memory available.

Music MenuMusic Menu Radio Options   Music Library Playing Music

AUTO ROTATE: As with the many new Nokia phones the Auto Rotate functionality is great. By default my phone would only rotate when I opened the keyboard, but going into the settings menu under sensor settings this can be change so that when the phone is closed and you rotate from up-right to landscape the phone will auto rotate. Generally speaking the sensor is pretty good and rotates pretty fast, however I have noticed that when I low memory the rotating does slow down, but nothing to seriously worry about.

TASK MANAGER: There does seem to be some additions to the built in task manager in that you can now close apps directly from the task menu. I personally still think the task manager is limited and I would like to see more options available as a result I am using the trail version of Handy Taskman. However I would say that when JBak Taskman becomes available I would probably use it instead.

MESSAGING: Ok so I’ve covered the keyboard, but lets just say typing messages is a dream. I like the new predictive text functionality which automatically adds words to your dictionary. It also prompts you for a selection of words when you make typing mistakes, and it predetermines some of the words you type, which you can auto-complete by pressing the space bar.

Adding Attachments

Messaging Options

One thing that is really missing are some short cuts for copy and paste, currently you have dig through menu’s and input options to copy and paste, with such a nice keyboard a simple shift+c would be good.

MAKING CALLS: The only problem that I have had here is that sometimes when my phone is locked and I try to call it there is no incoming call, even when the other phone is ringing. I’m really hoping this is just my phone and my network. The slide to answer when you phone is locked takes some time to get used to. The call quality does vary a lot, 90% of the time it’s great, but I have had times when I’ve just hung up and called back as the sound was terrible. I’ve had people that I call complain about poor sound. Once again this is hard to confirm as a problem with the phone so I’m hoping it’s just my operator. The built in flip silent is a great feature which allows you to turn you phone over to silence an incoming call, simple but very useful.

OVI STORE: Well I must say I am some what disappointed by this. At first the Ovi Store app that come with the phone would not work at all. I then had to uninstall and reinstall it. So far so good, and the Ovi store now loads which is great. The problem that I now face and many other N97 users face is that when trying to buy/download any application you will get a “download failed” status for you downloads, please refer to NOKIA DISCUSSIONS  for more information, one of the Nokia support people have said that this is being looked into and should be fixed soon. Forgetting the above issue for a second, I still feel that we will need to wait sometime before the software support for the N97 starts to grow. The number of widgets and apps around for this device are still limited. The interface could do with more filtering options allowing users to find apps easier. However I must say that it is great to know that we as Nokia users now have a central area to download and recommend software from. This will open up the world of amazing applications to the everyday user.

Opening Downloading Browsing

CONTACTS: Contacts are pretty standard. There is loads of information you can store against a contact, including IM details Skype user names and much much more. When in portrait and you type in a letter to search for a contact, you will only be shown remain letters that will help to narrow down you search which makes things easy for the user, I really like this touch.

SETTINGS MENU: I just wanted to cover some of the changes to the settings menu and some of my personal pro’s and con’s.

One thing that Nokia tried to implement to the profiles section of the phone was a timed profile, however all this means is you can set a profile to expire. It would have been nice if you could set a permanent start and end time for each profile, something like the Best Profiles app for s60 v3.

There is a menu that allows you to set the sensor settings of the phone for example auto-rotate and also the Flit to Silent calls, I love this, and before on my N95 I used to have to install a separate app to handle this function, it’s good to see it built in.

Below are some images of the settings menu's.

Settings MenuPhone SettingsProfiles Options (timed)Sensor SettingsSoftware UpdateUpdate Options

MEMORY: Ok this is a hot topic and I’ll admit that I am not a hardware pro, so I’ll only be able to give my opinion based on my own experience. Firstly my boot up memory is: 48 – 50M.

Image 1 shows boot memory however because I had a photo screen shot app loaded this dropped down to 43.9M

Image 1

Image 2 I loaded many apps here including web, fring, maps, Sportstracker, music palyer, contacts, log, settings, main menu and afew others. After I took the image the memory dropped to 6.8M.

   Image 2

Image 3 This image was taken when I loaded the x-plore when the phone was on 6.8M and as you can see the phone seems to have such down none-essential applications to free memory, so I some of the apps that closed where, contacts,  settings, menu, email and some others

Image 3

 

So as I have tried to show the system will shut down apps with no warning when memory becomes low. When the memory gets to around 10-12M, the phone does start to run slowly, web browsing becomes very slow, and menu browsing becomes very unreliable, meaning that applications take ages to open , menus sometimes get stuck graphical when applications load, and in fact sometimes even after memory has been freed up I have need to do a full reboot, to get everything working again.

However all this being said I wouldn’t normally load that many apps at once so would not expect to in counter this problem on a daily basis. But I would still like to have seen more memory so that we as users could have peace of mind when opening and closing applications. All in all the phone does actually handle it’s memory well and in general the browsing and menu navigation is fast.

SUMMARY:  Ok so I’ve tried to cover most of the standard features on the phone, and overall I must say I do really really like this device. Ok it has crashed on me a few times and reboot when memory has been overloaded, but at the end of the day this device gives what it says it does. Some of the more hard-core users out there might struggle with the memory, but some streamlined software updates could help this, but we will just have to wait and see. I will try and update this review when I pick up more fixes/issues in firmware 11

The next review if there is time (I need to send this trail device back tomorrow) will be on Photo’s, Video and Web.

Firmware Update – 11.0.021

Hi all,

I have just finished my software update from 10.0.012 to 11.0.021. This is just a message to say it ready for everyone.I’ll make a later post to confirm that everything is working.

 

USB detection error fix

• PC does not detect N97 or USB charging connection not detected.

Widgets

• Home screen online/offline widget crash fix
• Fix for “Alphabetical and Number input are mixed in facebook until end key is pressed.
• Widget UI improvement – New facebook widget fixes a problem of Home Screen background visible on soft-key area.
• Browser fixes to improve widgets stability.

MfE related fixes

• Partial fix for Messaging/calendar entry lost.
• Mail for exchange calendar entry synchronization error fix.

UI transition error fixes (Portrait <-> landscape transition, there is a home screen corruption.)

• UI transition (Slowness and bad effects)
• Slow Touch UI response
• Picture of the device lock appears half of the screen when transitioning the UI sometimes
• Landscape: in some cases the soft buttons on touch (right hand) show the Home Screen in background (install maps.google.com)

Photos thumbnail performance and stability improvements

• Device performance deteriorates when lots of content in the device - especially photos
• Partial fix no display backlight illumination when unlocking lock-key – CAP Genius reported already
• New version of Accueweather to improve the “Connection error” situation
• Device reset when browsing with high speed packet access (for Malaysia )
• “Browser soft key UI doesn’t work after putting Chinese character with qwerty keyboard”
• Java fixes (TCK, Pre-install app disappearing, *#7370#*)
• Operator fixes (CMCC, Hutchson and Telefonica, Vodafone)
• Ovi store client now embedded in the core image

Review 1 – Touch and Feel

This is going to be the first of a series of reviews. Inside review 1 you will find my opinion on what is found inside the box of the new N97 and the touch and feel of the device.

      

Before I get started let me thank WomWorld  for sending me this device, it’s been great so far.

Inside the box of the N97 you will find the following included:

• Screen cloth 
• Ovi Suite CD
• N97 device
• Phone Changer (wall plug version)
• Mini USB charger/Data Connector
• Mini USB Charger extension.(fits on small/large nokia charges)
• Manual
• Battery (?????)
• Stylus (Nokia’s pen version)

and the following not include: (things you would have liked)

• The Beautiful Nokia case (included in the Indian version)
• TV-Out cable. (You can still use you old one)

I’m not going to go through the whole spec of the phone, as most of you are already up to spec on the details. see here for more information Full N97 Spec

Weight: The phone has a great weight feel to it, I found it to be heavier than the 5800(109g) but very similar to the iPhone(133g) and N95 8GIG(128g). Some friends of mine have said it feels to heavy , but personally I like to know my phone is in my pocket. I weighed mine and it was 148g.

Size: I’ve taken some comparison pictures below for you to see yourself. The phone/keyboard does look smaller than I first expected it to, from all the online images that have been floating around. In conclusion I like the size and the feel and weight, I do have big hands so maybe it’s just me.

Look: This baby is sexy, my girlfriend immediately said “I want one". So there is definitely a physical wow factor about this phone. I’ve had looks of people staring on the train and bus, so yeah enough said.

Headphone Jack: Ok I must say I love the fact that it’s on the top of the phone. My N95 had the head phone jack on the side and drove me nuts for ages. Makes the phone sit easier in your pocket while you plugged in listening to the 32GIG’s worth of music.

Speakers: The positioning is good, in that if the phone is open in front of you while you watching a movie or talking in loudspeaker the speakers are facing you and hidden away. The sound quality I have found to be good, I haven’t had the chance to do much comparison but I will revisit this part of the phone when dealing with video and audio

un\Lock switch: Currently found on the right of the device, so opposite to the 5800. This I would say is purely a preference thing, I have no problem with it where it is. I must say that it does feel very platicy and I sometimes worry that I will break it off. (I did read a review over at SF where someone did actually break it off the first day they had the phone oooops)

Camera Button: Found where you would expect it top right like the 5800 and most other Nokia camera phones. I do wish they had kept the gallery button like on the N95.

Volume/Zoom button: Also found in the normal place. I’ll go more in the quality of the pictures and the video sound quality in a later review.

Menu button: This is the only “hard” button on the front of the device and very well positioned. I say this because if you have the keyboard open you simply lift your right thumb and BANG you there.

Mini USB: I like the placing of this as well, it’s in the front between the left speaker and the unlock switch. The reason I think it’s good is because you can have the device open sitting on the table begin charged/connected and still watch a movie. (this is based on the fact your computer is in front of you :-) )

Camera\Shutter: Nice and solid, and moves easily enough, I must say I am a bit worried about dust getting in there, but it is a great protector and much need for the quality of the lens. (This was missed in the N95 8GIG and 5800)

Slider: OMG it’s great, the sound the feel the look, it not only impresses you and those around you , but it really does make you feel confident that it’s not a dodgy Nokia slide like many of the other slide phones before it. It’s so firm that at first it wouldn’t open and I thought I was pushing the wrong side. So you need to give it a GOOOOD push until you get used it, which takes about 5minutes…

The screen auto rotates when you open the keyboard, and the speed is pretty good. I’ll go into speed and auto rotate in later reviews.

Keyboard: Ok there has been a lot of talk about the keyboard some good and some bad.  I like the keyboard and the full QWERTY is indeed an awesome feature. The Space bar as some people have complained about I find no problem with (placed the bottom right of the keyboard). At first I thought the function key was a problem, but worked out that pressing the key twice puts you in permanent function mode so you can type symbols and numbers as you please, nice little touch, thanks Nokia. The D-pad is great it’s good for games and I use it sometimes in web-browser as well, it is basically the controller for the mouse icon on the screen. The typing will take some time to get used to if you haven’t had a keyboard before on a phone, and I must say that with my big thumbs typing  is not a problem.

Stylus: Personally don’t like the stylus that comes in the box it’s a rectangular shape which feels awkward to hold, so I’ve stolen my girlfriends DS one, thanks Mish.

Sim Card/MicroSD and Back cover: The back cover is very poor quality, it feels like plasticy, mine moves around, as do many others, and when you try and open the back cover I am honestly ALWAYS scared that I’m going to break it. (My heart doesn’t like it). The sim holder also feels somewhat fragile, and I worry that this is a bit weak but it’s forgivable as it shouldn’t be used very often. The Mini USB Holder is under the cover to the right of the Camera lens, so it’s pretty save to say it won’t fall out.

Mini USB Charger extension: Don’t laugh cause I know it’s just a small thing but I like this little extension and it fits with both old original chargers and new smaller Nokia chargers. One thing I have noticed though is that it gets really hot after charging for a while.

Over all I’m very app happy with the Look and Feel of the device. It’s always something that is hard to review as a lot of it comes down to personal preference and needs….

Here are some photo’s comparing the N97,5800 and iPhone 3g

       

Thanks for reading this first of many reviews. If you a have questions please leave some comments, I will try and get back to you as soon as I can. Future reviews will be broken down as well. The next to come will be the Touch Screen, Home Screen and Menu’s.