N95 PLAZA

New poll - features you didn't get

noreply@blogger.com (MarkC) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 10:18:00 +0000

In this week's poll we'd like to know what are the features you wanted to have but are not available in N95. If you can't find your favorite feature(s) in the poll answers, share your thoughts and your list of features you didn't get by leaving a comment to this posting.

New poll - N95 features

noreply@blogger.com (MarkC) — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 14:33:00 +0000

This week's poll is about N95 features. Tell us what features you use regularly. You can select multiple features.

Nokia SportsTracker

noreply@blogger.com (MarkC) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 07:28:00 +0000

When I was checking the Nokia Betalabs site today, I noticed that the list of application shows that Sports Tracker has received the last update on Nov. 22, 2007. However, if you follow the links to the download page, you'll notice that the latest version is actually v1.71, which was published on March 20, 2008. Visiting the Nokia Research Center Sports Tracker page gives you more information. There have actually been six updates since Nov. 20, 2007.

It was great to see that Sports Tracker, one of my favorite applications, has been updated recently. However, it would be nice if you could trust the version/update information on the applications list of the Nokia Betalabs site and not have to dig deeper to find our if a new version is available or not.

Two new polls

noreply@blogger.com (MarkC) — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 15:05:00 +0000

To speed things up, this week I decided to add two new polls. In the coming weeks, I'll be adding two or three new polls and I'll also always leave the previous weeks poll(s) visible. Once we are finished with all the polls, I'll post a summary of all your answers.

New poll - firmware version

noreply@blogger.com (MarkC) — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 15:39:00 +0000

A new poll has just been published. We'd like to know which firmware are you using in your N95-1.

New firmware - V21.0.016

noreply@blogger.com (MarkC) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 14:42:00 +0000

New firmware for N95-1 was released on March 26. For more info on what's new in this version visit AllAboutSymbian.

For the first time I had problems after updating the phone. I did everything just like with the previous firmware updates. I took a backup of my data before updating and then restored the backup after the update. Something went wrong this time because after the update process I couldn't access my text messages. I could see the list of received text messages but I couldn't open them. Also some of the other settings were not restored.

It's time for your opinion

noreply@blogger.com (MarkC) — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 07:32:00 +0000

N95 is a great phone but it also has many things that could be improved. Nokia has already released specs for N96, the successor to N95. According to the specs, N96 is most likely going to receive it's share of critique.

Now it's time to see what N95 users really think of their phone. Starting today, there will be a new poll each week. We'll ask your opinion on N95, it's features and what you think is missing from your phone.

The first poll is about battery life - probably the most criticized feature of N95. Give us your opinion and we'll combine your answer into specs of what N95 or it's successor should be.

Nokia Maps 2.0 available

noreply@blogger.com (MarkC) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 11:15:00 +0000

Nokia Maps 2.0 beta has been announced today at Mobile World Congress. This is a great update for Nokia Maps application. It's still beta and therefore not supported by Nokia Care. For more information read Ricky's preview on symbian-guru.com. To download, visit Nokia Beta Labs.

Nokia Maps is taking maps and navigation experiences to the next level and introducing Walk - pedestrian navigation, in addition to Drive - world class car navigation, multimedia city guides, satellite maps and other innovative features. With free maps of more than 150 countries, over 15 million points-of-interest, the world is in your pocket. Don't get lost or choose to get lost in the right places to explore, and let Nokia Maps show you the way.

Location Tagger

noreply@blogger.com (MarkC) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 13:01:00 +0000

Nokia Betalabs has released another great beta application called Location Tagger. It allows you to automatically tag your location data to your pictures. GPS coordinates are saved to the EXIF header of the JPEG file. This application is intended to give you a sneak preview of features that are planned to be integrated into your phone. Looking forward to future firmware updates with these features implemented.

Top 5 free applications for N95 - updated list

noreply@blogger.com (MarkC) — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 10:25:00 +0000

I first made the list of top 5 free applications for N95 in July. A lot has happened since then and I think it's time to update the list.

TOP 5 FREE APPLICATIONS FOR N95

RotateMe v2.0 - This is a beta version but the final version should be released soon. RotateMe jumps straight to first place on my list. It's a great tool that allows you to switch from landscape to portrait mode automatically by tilting the phone.
Google Mobile Maps - The latest version of Google Maps supports the internal GPS receiver. It also shows your an estimation of your location even if you don't have a GPS signal.
SportsTracker - New version of Sports Tracker was launched in November and Nokia also launched Nokia Sports Tracker Beta Web Service.
Widsets - Widsets is not really a single application but a platform for mini-applications called widgets. Widgets bring you content from your favorite websites to your phone.
Opera Mini - Great web browser if you don't have an unlimited data plan - Opera Mini helps you save money by reducing the amount of data transferred

New firmware version now available

noreply@blogger.com (MarkC) — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 09:08:00 +0000

Firmware version v20.0.0.015 is now available for Nokia N95. Lots of improvements including new camera software, new version of Maps application and most importantly Demand Paging. I just installed the new firmware and I can confirm that demand paging really makes a big difference. The phone seems so much faster now.

Nokia N95 Software version 20.0.015 released - 26 November 2007

This software version includes battery, stability & performance improvements enabling you to run faster and longer - giving you up to three more hours of music (up to 30% increase, from 9h to 12h of music playback). This release also includes a new version of Nokia Maps which provides faster positioning, faster Map Loader, and free 3-day navigation. Free N-Gage demo games are included and other games are available via Download! With the Nokia Music Store now live in the United Kingdom, users can enjoy the convenience of instant over-the-air downloads, regardless of where they are.

After updating your device software to 20.0.015, and restoring your personal data, you can optimise the menu layout by installing the New_Menu_Structure.SIS file. Download and install this file to rearrange your menu layout specifically for SW 20.0.015. Reboot your device to see the menu changes.

noreply@blogger.com (MarkC) — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 16:13:00 +0000

It's been a while since my last post. First I was on holiday and then traveling for business and there just wasn't enough time to update my blog. I didn't even have much time to follow what was happening in the world of Nokia and N95. What a surprise when I visited Nokia Beta Labs yesterday. The betalabs team has been busy.
There are new versions of:

Sports Tracker
NSeries PC Suite 2.0
Gizmo for S60
Mobile Web Server
Wellness Diary
Device Status

And if that isn't enough, there are completely new application as well:

Internet Tablet Video Converter
Advertising Powered Download!
Nokia Audiobooks
Mosh Client

Looking forward to test many of these in the coming days.

Nokia Beta Labs

noreply@blogger.com (MarkC) — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 11:11:00 +0000

In addition to the not so succesful launh of Nseries PC Suite 2.0, Nokia beta labs has recently introduced three great applications:

Conversation - "Conversation is a messaging application that allows you to follow your conversations, organized by individual contacts. In addition, the application provides an easy way for replying to messages, and to continue the conversations."
Share Online - "Share Online makes it easy to post photos and video from your phone straight to your blog, photo sharing site, or other online community. You can control the file size and quality of your photos and video, add text to your posts, and browse to your page to see how it looks once you`re done."
Device Status - "Nokia Device Status is a self-diagnosis tool that allows you to collect detailed system information both from your PC and your S60 device. Your current device configuration and phone settings are presented in a detailed summary, which you can use to determine the exact cause, if you run into problems."

Keep an eye on Nokia Beta Labs for great free applications for your phone.

Finally - Google Maps with GPS for N95

noreply@blogger.com (MarkC) — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 15:06:00 +0000

This is great news for all of us N95 users. The latest version of Google Mobile Maps now supports the internal GPS of N95. To see your location on the map, go to menu and select "Show my location".

To install point your phone's browser to www.google.com/gmm and follow the instructions.

Time out for Nseries PC Suite 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (MarkC) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:03:00 +0000

The Nseries PC Suite 2.0 was released for public beta testing last week and now it has been temporarily removed from Nokia Beta Labs. It just wasn't ready for public release yet.

This was definitely the right decision and hopefully soon we'll have a better version to test. At least I'm looking forward to it.

Nokia Nseries PC-Suite 2.0 Beta

noreply@blogger.com (MarkC) — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 07:22:00 +0000

Nokia has released a new beta version of Nseries PC-Suite. It is actually a collections of Nokia Nseries and third-party PC applications, such as Nseries Update Manager, Map Loader, Software Updater, Nokia Music Manager, Nokia PC Sync, Download!, Nokia Photos. In theory it sounds great to integrate all this into one easy to use package. In practice it's not that simple.

First of all, before you download this application make sure you have a fast broadband connection - the installation package is huge, roughly 350 MB. Even though it includes the latest version of .Net framework, it's still huge. And why do I have to download the .Net framework if I already have it installed. It just doesn't make any sense.

Also if you have an older computer with not so much memory, don't even think about installing it. It's a real memory hog. I have a fast computer with 2 GB memory but I still don't want to install and use applications that use a lot of memory for practically nothing. I need the memory available for other applications that I frequently use.

I like the idea of bringing all the applications under one application launcher. However, a lot of software development and optimization is still needed before Nseries PC-Suite will be permanently installed in my computer. I already uninstalled it from my computer.

If you still want to try it visit Nokia Beta Labs.

US 3G variant of N95 announced

noreply@blogger.com (MarkC) — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 07:30:00 +0000

Symbian has officially announced the US 3G version of Nokia N95.

Some improvements over standard N95:

US 3G/HSDPA/UMTS
124 MB of RAM
1 GB microSD included
higher capacity battery

Sounds good! Unfortunately, just like the N95 8GB, also this version comes without camera lens protection. In my opinion this is a big minus. The lens protector in N95 works really well and has kept my N95 camera clean - no dust and no scratches after months of hard use.

Nokia Maps

noreply@blogger.com (MarkC) — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 10:56:00 +0000

Nokia Maps 1.0 has been made available for most of the S60 N- and E-series devices. With this version you get free 3 day trial of voice guidance. There's also a new version of Nokia Map Loader available for download (version 1.2).

To download Nokia Maps or Nokia Map Loader go to Nokia Maps.

Ovi by Nokia - The door to Nokia's internet services

noreply@blogger.com (MarkC) — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 07:16:00 +0000

Nokia has opened a new service called Ovi, which is a door to Nokia's internet services (ovi is the Finnish word for door). Among other things, it's a door to Nokia's new music store and Nokia Maps.

New Nokia N95 8GB released today

noreply@blogger.com (MarkC) — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:42:00 +0000

Today at the Nokia "Go Play" event, Nokia released new phone models, among them the much anticipated Nokia N95 8GB. As the name suggests, the internal memory has been increased to 8GB. The N95 8GB has also been given a bigger 1200 mAh battery compared to 950 mAh of N95. The 2.8'' display of N95 8GB is slightly bigger than the 2.6'' display of N95. You can download the full spec sheet here.
The new phone model looks really good. There's not too much negative to say about the modifications. The only thing I can think of is the lack of camera lens protection. In order to fit in the bigger battery Nokia had to modify the camera/lens setup slightly. Unfortunately that means no more lens cover.

Windsurfing with N95

noreply@blogger.com (MarkC) — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 13:53:00 +0000

Windsurfer Finian Maynard currently holds the speed record for sailing vessels. The official speed records are set on 500 meter course. During the last couple of years it has become very popular to use a GPS device while windsurfing. Using GPS you are not limited to a fixed course but can measure speed the whole time you are windsurfing. There's even a web site gps-speedsurfing.com, where you can submit your results.

I decided to test if N95 and Sports Tracker would be of any use while windsurfing. I didn't have any fancy waterproof pack for my phone so I just used two resealable plastic bags - I used two to be safe. First I thought of using just the N95 but for good GPS reception you need to slide it open and that's not very practical so I put a bluetooth GPS in another plastic bag.

Everything was set up and I was ready to go. I sailed for about half an hour and came back to shore to check the log. It worked great. Below is a Google Earth screenshot of my sailing session in Mellsten (local beach here in Espoo, Finland). The fastest speed I achieved was 46.7 km/h. Not too bad for a first attempt and considering my not so speed optimized gear (freestyle board and a wave sail). Sport Tracker allows you to export the log as GPX, XML, CSV and Google Earth KML-format. Click the image to download the track log as a Google Earth kml-file.

Best N95 videos on YouTube

noreply@blogger.com (MarkC) — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 07:31:00 +0000

YouTube is full of great Nokia N95 related videos. Here are some of the best I have found.

Phone reviews:
Nokia N95 Review (PhoneArena)
Nokia N95 Review (all about symbian.com)

Here are some of the latest additions:
Golf Distance Measurement with GPS
Copy & paste with an S60 phone
Flying with N95 Sports Tracker

More great videos:
A flying Nokia N95
Nokia N95 - GPS Demo
n95 wireless webcam

Six really funny videos:
N95 vs. iPhone - Ringtone
N95 vs. iPhone - GPS
N95 vs. iPhone - China
N95 vs. iPhone - Internet
N95 vs. iPhone - MMS
N95 vs. iPhone - Camera

Nokia in the 2nd quarter 2007

noreply@blogger.com (MarkC) — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 12:29:00 +0000

Excellent Q2 result from Nokia. Here are some of the highlights form Nokia's press release:

"Nokia device ASP of EUR 90, up from EUR 89 in Q1 2007"
"Excellent performance from new devices: Nokia 6300, Nokia N95 and Nokia E65"
"Nokia's share of the global device market improved to an estimated 38%"

Visit Nokia web site to read the full press release.

Mobile Poker

noreply@blogger.com (MarkC) — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 19:56:00 +0000

Lately, online poker and poker in general have become very popular. There are satellite-online qualifier tournaments where you can win a ticket to a major poker tournament such as World Poker Tour or World Series of Poker. Major tournaments are televised making poker into a spectator sport.

My own experience of poker is limited to occasional online poker during the last year or so. I can't say that I'm an experienced poker player. I just play for fun and many times I play "play money" instead of "real money" games. One day when I was playing for fun I thought if it would be possible to play online poker using a mobile phone. You'd need a reliable network connection but other than that it should be possible.

After spending some time on the internet I found out that you can play mobile poker. PokerRoom.com has a mobile poker client that you can download for free after signing up. Great - so I immediately signed up, downloaded and installed the client and was ready to go. Using my home wireless network to connect to internet, I started testing.

After the startup screen you enter the main menu (see the images below). There you can choose to play online poker, change settings, read help and view statistics of your previous games. You can also play offline poker against computerized opponents.

After clicking online poker you get another menu where you can select what type of game you want to play. You can choose "play money" if you want to play for fun or you can select "real money" games. You can also select what kind of table limit you prefer. After making your selections you press "GET TABLES" and you get a list of tables that match your selection. Now all you have to do is join one table, select an empty seat and start playing. The small screen of a mobile phone limits the view slightly. You can only see two thirds of the table at a time. You can manually scroll to view the rest of the table but during the game the poker client automatically scrolls to where the action is. The automatic scrolling works very well. The image below is from a play money table (player names and their stack has been blacked out).

After playing for some time, I can say that mobile poker works great on N95. Due to a relatively small screen it's not the same as playing on a PC but they've done a great job to considering the limitations of a small handheld device. During the testing I didn't experience any problems. As I said, I was using my home WLAN to connect and it seemed to work great - no problems with network latency.

I didn't really expect much from my mobile poker experience but I have to say that I was positively surprised. Although the auto-scroll feature works very well, it would be great to be able to see the whole table. PokerRoom.com is one of the largest poker rooms on the internet and it's great that they have made mobile poker available for us who like to use our mobile phones for more than just talking.

Note to U.S. citizens:
This information is for educational and entertainment purposes only and any use of this information in violation of any federal, state, or local laws is prohibited. Many poker sites no longer accept players from the US.

New firmware - good or bad

noreply@blogger.com (MarkC) — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 06:13:00 +0000

It seems like the new v 12.0.013 firmware works great for most of the N95 users while some users are experiencing problems. After upgrading to the latest firmware some phones seem to suffer from strange LCD behavior, unresponsive buttons and occasional lock-ups. See the two YouTube videos here and here. There's also a thread at Nokia Support Discussions.

According to the discussion at least phones with product code 0548763 seem to be in danger after upgrading to new firmware. Whether it's a hardware or firmware problem is not yet certain. If you have a phone with product code 0548763 you might want to wait for the next firmware version before upgrading. You'll find the product code of your phone printed on a sticker under the battery.