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Posts Tagged ‘n95’
S60 Google Maps on N95 Rocks
I my recent post “N95 GPS Revisited”, I mentioned that I’d be trying and reporting on the new native Symbian S60 version of Google Maps as an alternative to the pre-loaded Nokia mapping application.
Well, in short, the Google app blows the Nokia one away, IMHO. It finally makes the GPS function of the N95 useful and totally changes this phone for me.
Quick Overview
The Google application integrates with the N95 GPS hardware and it shows your current location as a blue dot on the map. You can jump to your current location at any point using the 0 (zero) key. The 1 key zooms out and the 3 key zooms in.
The search function has been amazingly impressive in finding the right location with a small amount of text entry (even with misspellings). It must use the GPS position to make a lot of assumptions about what one is looking for, prioritizing local places, and so on.
Click ‘Directions’ and you get a ‘Route overview’ screen showing the step-by-step turns. Click ‘Show’ and the route is shown on the map. You can move from step to step with the 4 (Prev) and 6 (Next) keys.
Hit 0 and you go to your current location (with the route still overlaid on the map) and then press 6 to go back to the ‘route’ again. Even when in ‘route’ mode, your current location is shown live, moving on the map, at the same time as the ‘route’ overlay. This feature alone is a tremendous improvement in usability over the pre-loaded Nokia Maps app.
You can do other stuff like show traffic (for selected areas) and show a satellite view if you prefer (although it’s more data, so it can slow things down). As a native S60 app, it doesn’t use as much RAM as something like the Java-based Yahoo Go 2.0 app. It also integrates with Contacts and Web in nifty ways.
The speed of the app is pretty much dependent on your Internet connection speed. Also, all the maps all come in over the data connection, which may impact your bill if you don’t have an unlimited data plan.
In summary, this is the best mobile phone GPS app for practical use in driving that I’ve seen yet and really improves the value of the N95.
Alec’s iPhone experience
Alec Saunders has a terrific post: iPhone: Brilliant. Frustrating. Alec has pretty much echoed my sentiments described at iPhone – Look but don’t touch and summarized beautifully with “I want to love this phone – it’s that good” but in the end he can’t due to its limitations, saying “The iPhone has the most potential to change the mobile phone industry of any device out there today, but it’s not the best phone … yet.”
Alec and I are in almost 100% alignment, but here are a few details I can challenge.
The network. [The Edge network is] so slow as to be unusable outside WiFi hotspots.
One man’s “useless” is another’s “adequate”. Edge is indeed slow. But it’s not useless on the iPhone. At least it provides a functional connection out of the box, in almost any area. The slow speed constrains what it can be used for, but it does work and permits on-the-go Internet access when there is nothing else available, for travel, news, and even Youtube movies, if you have some patience. Don’t forget that there is still a significant population of Internet users on dial-up and Edge is about the same performance, and somehow those users still find the Internet useful.
Stability. My other two favorite phones (BlackBerry 8300 and Nokia N95) crash, probably once a day.
Unrelated to the iPhone, but my N95 used to crash frequently. However, with software version V 20.0.015 and disabling a certain app (that shall remain nameless – you know who you are), the phone now essentially never crashes – it may still do so, but it’s infrequent enough that I can’t even remember the last time it crashed.
The browser. It’s a desktop class browser. Websites that don’t render correctly on any other mobile device work fine here
The exception is flash sites – The iPhone does not support flash in any way, shape, or form. Some say flash support is coming soon while others say it will never happen.
I’d also add a section on Fragility. This is probably one of the biggest reasons why I cannot make iPhone my primary mobile phone. It is simply too difficult to protect, and putting it in a large protective case sort of defeats the purpose of it being so light and thin.
Many people would also consider battery life an issue and in this regard, iPhone beats the N95 hands down.
Summary
As I state above, I think Alec highlights some key points, which I’d summarize as follows:
- So-called “Smart Phones” like the Nokia N95 have better hardware specs, but the iPhone does a much better job of making these features accessible to us mere mortals.
- Blackberry is still the number one device for extreme mobile email, bar none.
The iPhone is an incredible achievement for a first attempt at a mobile phone, but still has a way to go to be “the best ever”.
Hands-on with iPhone – Look but don’t touch
As many reading here know, I’ve been using an N95 for some time now. After one day with the iPhone, here are some first impressions.
First, of course the two phones appeal to different kinds of users. There may be overlap, but for the most part, the N95 is for the self-proclaimed ultra-geek while the typical iPhone buyer is more likely to be less tech-inclined, perhaps one might even say “the average phone buyer” (with a little bit of extra cash). So to a large degree any comparison is somewhat lame. There will not be a lot of common ground between the two camps.
That said, here’s my quick take. Some things are easier and more comfortable on the iPhone. At the same time, the closed nature of the phone surfaces frequently and in ways that effect more than just geeks. The N95 is open to the extreme. Somebody that paid $750 for it will probably find all these deep and powerful features (why else would they pay that much). But if you just gave the phone to someone as a replacement for a common phone, that kind of person is probably not going to know how to use the majority of the features. These people might buy the iPhone. They will just accept that it is AT&T only (that’s all they know anyway). But even they will eventually wonder why it’s so restricted.
For example, take something as simple as ringtones. The iPhone can play MP3 files. Yet Apple wants to force customers to buy ringtones for $2. Yes, there are hacks to overcome that, but the point is with the N95, no hacks are needed. Any media can be loaded as a ringtone. Apple had to code specifically to block this capability (i.e. it’s more work to prevent it than allow it).
The two phones are at the EXTREME ends of the spectrum in terms of openness. The N95 is incredibly powerful but requires a serious geek to operate. The iPhone is easy (mostly), but closed and annoyingly so.
So for me, the first impression is I kind of wish I could use the iPhone as my phone, but Apple’s decisions to make it closed, keeps it just out of my reach, like it’s behind a window. I can look, but I can’t touch.
Video on the N95
I keep trying out more things on the N95, as my schedule permits.
I can guarantee I at one time have said something like “who would want to watch TV on a two inch screen” when all the hype around video on mobile phones started up a few years ago.
I pretty much felt that way even as I ventured into a project to try loading my own home-brew videos on the N95 and see if I could get them to play. I should note that there is a “user friendly” way to put videos on the N95. Specifically, there is the Nokia Video Manager (I could only find a link on the European Nokia site). But I figure that has already been talked about elsewhere. I wanted to see if I could create my own files that played on the N95 from video content I have.
In short, to tip the ending, I have successfully taken videos from Tivo and played them on the N95. I did it on the Mac and on the PC, just to show that it’s possible (Nokia’s official Video Manager only works on the PC). I have to say, I was (a) amazed it worked the first time (figuring I’d surely get something wrong) and (b) shocked at the quality.
So assuming you already know how to get video off your Tivo (an exercise for the reader), that gives you a pretty high quality MPEG2 file at roughly 700 x 500. After reading around, I found that the format the N95 seems to like is MP4 at 320×240 encoded with the H.264 codec. I was able to successfully convert my MPEG2 video to mp4 and load them into the N95 using the following tools:
- Mac OS X
ffmpegX
I believe both of these use the open-source ffmpeg tools underneath the covers (which explains why it worked on both the PC and the MAC), but it was nice to know it could be done on either platform.
I was surprised that the resulting 320×240 MP4 file was nearly the same size (in megabytes) as the original Tivo 700×500 MPEG2 file. A 30-minute video was about 320MB. The settings I used were:
file format: MP4
video encoding: H.264, 320×240, 30 fps
audio encoding: AAC, 44100 Hz, 96 kbps
I can tell no difference between the playback of the files made on the PC versus those made on the Mac. They both look and sound TERRIFIC on the N95 player (Realplayer).
When it comes to actually getting the large video files on the N95, I used both Bluetooth and a cardreader directly attached to the PC. The latter is much faster, but still slower than you might expect (about 10-20 minutes to load the MMC card with a 30-minute video). Bluetooth is much slower – I think it took almost an hour to transfer a 30-minute video.
With the 1Gig memory card I have, it looks like I could put about two hours of video at this quality on the N95, or certainly a 90-minute movie. I don’t know yet if the N95 battery would play a video for two hours straight.
Overall, it takes a rather painful couple of hours to perform all the video file conversions and write a 30-minute video to the phone. But I have to say, it is pretty cool to take a program off my TV and have it on the N95. Now that I have this capability, I’m torn regarding what shows or movies I want to load onto the phone.
N95 vs. iPhone
I have tried to be fair in my appraisals of the N95. I have given the phone some strong praise (including calling it “addicting”) but I realize I have been critical at times as well.
The iPhone certainly has been receiving all the buzz of late, but it looks like we are beginning to see the euphoria waning a bit and people coming down to earth. Amy Tiemann expresses some buyers remorse in her article “My summer fling with iPhone”
Apple convinced me that the iPhone was the next quantum leap in the digital lifestyle.
Well, now that iPhone and I have been together for a couple of months, I wish I could kick it to the curb like a summer fling. Unfortunately, we’re bonded together by a two-year contract.
Martin Varsavsky says his iPhone was stolen and he’s not getting another one and provides a long list of reasons why.
I don’t have an iPhone. I offered to accept one, but none was forthcoming. 
Therefore, I can’t speak with first-hand experience, so correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe below is a short list of a few important things I can do on my N95 that I could not do with an iPhone.
- GPS. The N95 knows where I am, shows my location on a live street map, and offers real-time voice guided navigation.
- Shoot video. There’s irony in how much Apple brags about video and the iPhone, but while one can watch videos made by others with the iPhone, they can’t make videos of their own with it. At least they can watch the videos I shoot on my N95!
- Shoot real photos.The N95 shoots pictures that are comparable to modern digital cameras at 5.5 megapixels, certainly photo-quality, even for printing.
- Comfortably carry it in my pocket. The fragility of the iPhone is a major design flaw. The N95 is pretty rugged while still being light and small enough to survive my pocket.
- Download applications. I can install applications, both Symbian and Java (like PhoneGnome Mobile) on the N95.
- VoIP over Wifi. While the SIP capabilities on the N95 may not be perfect, at least it has them, including being configurable for any SIP provider.
And, one of the biggest differences of course is, with the N95 I can use any SIM card from any provider. I am not locked to a specific plan or carrier. This is an immediate show stopper for me when it comes to the iPhone — I’m never going back to a locked phone again. Consider the situation of international travel use where I can pop in a different SIM for different countries (really the only way to get decent rates abroad).
With a few of the harsh things I’ve said about the N95, it’s easy to lose site of how cool and powerful it really is. I do hope some of the iPhone user-interface simplicity and design rubs off on Nokia and the Symbian OS though (and other cell phones for that matter).
My love/hate relationship with the N95 GPS
I have a fair amount of experience with GPS devices, going back over more than 10 years. My first device was an Eagle Explorer (I still have it) and I’ve used countless GPS systems since. I also developed a GPS-based vehicle tracking system. So I can speak with some authority on the technology.
Compared head-to-head with modern dedicated GPS devices, the Nokia N95 falls well short. The drawback that surprises me the most is the time it takes to get a fix. This is of course an area where early GPS devices were highly criticized, so it was a key area of research over the years and is now rather well known technology. Nokia seems to be back in the 90’s with the basic ability to obtain and keep a fix. Typical time seems to be about 10 to 15 minutes whereas a modern dedicated GPS typically gets an initial fix (the first time you turn it on) within 5 minutes and subsequent fixes within 2-3 minutes (often far less).
That said, the N95 is not a dedicated GPS device – it is a cell phone. As a cell phone, it is a pretty nifty GPS device. Let’s put aside the matter of the length of time it takes to get a fix and focus on the GPS once it has a fix (although this alone often makes the GPS worthless, since you are already where you want to be, or hopelessly lost, by the time the N95 GPS is ready to use). The N95 pulls maps down over the air (using your data conection), so without an unlimited data plan, you might want to steer clear of the GPS feature. It also means the N95 is useless as a GPS for hiking or use anywhere that you cannot get a data connection. On the other hand, it means you do not need to have a lot of internal memory for maps, use CDs/DVDs, or pre-load specific maps for a specific region. As a device that pulls map data in dynamically as needed, it is one of the slickest I’ve used. The user interface in general, however, is difficult to use, a bit slow, and missing many features of a real dedicated GPS. Things like waypoints, routes, track-logs and such are nowhere to be found.
On the other hand, if you are lost, and the N95 is all you have (and you can get a data connection), it’s a godsend, even if a horrendously frustrating one. What I found particularly frustrating is that the N95 requires you to subscribe to a “service’” to receive navigation capabilities. You can search for a location on the device, but if you click ‘navigate’ you get a screen requiring purchase. In practice, this purchase experience is very awkward so I have never actually purchased it. It felt like the phone was running an extortion scheme, saying “buy this or get car-jacked when you get lost in the wrong neighborhood.” Supposedly, you can buy one week for about $10 or three years for about $100, and it works. But I wouldn’t know, and here’s why: It’s not a good enough GPS to justify using it all the time as a replacement for a “real” GPS (which provides navigation without any additional fee). If the rest of the GPS features worked really well, and if the purchase experience were simpler, and clearer, I might be a bit more inclined. But there still is this fundamental hurdle that those of us that have used GPS systems for years have come to expect navigation to be a feature of a product, not a service we subscribe to.
The one-week navigation subscription is probably worth it, if you are really stuck somewhere and perhaps sometime I’ll try it and report on it. Without it, what you have is a live map that shows your position in real-time. That’s a pretty clunky way to navigate, and certainly not something a driver should try to alone – leave it to a passenger.
As a close to this post, to illustrate further the love/hate nature of my experience with the N95 GPS, I have used the GPS to help get “un-lost” and for that I’m grateful for it, but it has also crashed (the entire phone) mid-navigation which really screwed me up. So there.
Straight talk on the Nokia N95
I’ve been using the N95 for a few weeks now. I moved from the N80i so this is my second shot at a Nokia wi-fi enabled phone.
In a lot of ways the N95 is big a improvement over the N80i (which I review here). It’s MUCH lighter, thinner, and has a bigger screen. It also has a nifty two-way slide function with a “media mode” where it tries to be an MP3 player, and the normal keypad slide-out mode similar to the N80 (portrait orientation) for use as a phone.
With Om’s recent post Sometimes, a phone is just a phone, we are reminded that “a sizeable number of people just want a mobile phone to stay in touch on their own terms” as noted by John Barry, Director, Mobile Phones, Nokia. If you’re looking for a phone that is simple to use, small, lightweight, can store all your contacts, will last several days on standby and has good audio quality, I don’t think anyone can beat the Nokia 6610. The original 6610, IMHO, is the best mobile phone ever produced. It is no longer made, apparently, but the 6610i is still available (I believe). I put together some simple criteria in the following comparison table, and as you can see, when it comes to the basics, the 6610 beats the N95 at any price:
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(Note that the battery life figures above differ from the Nokia site. Nokia claims the N95 will last up to 228 hours on standby and 6.5 hours talk, but I have no idea what they’re smoking to get those figures.)
Those willing to spend $700 on an N95 probably want more than basic phone features. Of course the N95 wins hands down in the areas of Connectivity, Imaging, Personalization, and Internet/PC Integration over a basic phone like the 6610. At the same time, it’s important to know what one is giving up to get these other benefits, specifically: battery life, weight, size, simplicity, reliability, ruggedness, and IMHO, speakerphone and overall audio quality.
Nokia will also tell us that the N95 wins in the Media department, and of course it does. That said, for me, this is not very significant. I can sum up why the N95 is totally useless as an iPod replacement in one word: iTunes. What I think a lot of people don’t understand is iPod has little to do with the hardware. Anyone can throw some chips and plastic together. What makes iPod different is the integrated iTunes experience. Without iTunes compatibility, the hardware is of no import. This is the real reason why all the various other Mp3 players are failures compared to iPod, even if they are vastly less expensive, and frequently more capable hardware-wise. To paraphrase, it’s the software, stupid.
Getting back to the N95’s strengths, it has a terrific screen, very big and bright. It is also light and thin for such a feature-rich, wi-fi capable phone. The browser is very capable for a micro-screen environment – no flash, as far as I can tell, but many sites, even many sophisticated ones (or buggy, depending on how you look at it) work fine on the N95. The 5 megapixel camera is also quite good, although the user interface is cumbersome. What happened to good old point and shoot with one-click? If I hand the N95 to someone to take a photo, I have to spend 5 minutes explaining how to do it. That’s very frustrating and annoying – and gives a crumby first impression of the phone.
Finding and connecting to wi-fi hotspots is perhaps a bit easier with the N95 than it was on the N80i, but it’s still too hard IMHO. There are still too many screens, menus, and clicks (and flaming hoops) required to find and connect to a WLAN, especially if you want to use a new hotspot with a SIP VoIP service other than Gizmo or Truphone.
The native SIP stack on the N95 seems to be more robust and reliable than that of the N80i. I don’t really know if this is true, and have not been able to confirm it with Nokia, but it at least seems to be more reliable and robust. It works with PhoneGnome (see Using PhoneGnome service on the Nokia N95). Nokia has been fairly close lipped about the built-in SIP capabilities of the N-series phones (i.e. what it can do without a “helper” app like Gizmo or Truphone). This will be the subject of a future post.
Finally, it should be noted that when reviewing early production, cutting edge devices like this, one should not be surprised to find a few kinks and warts.The N95 I have does crash more frequently than one may like. In particular, web browsing and VoIP calls seem to produce crashes occasionally. These are the kinds of things that get worked out as the firmware evolves, but you may want to be aware that the N95 should still be considered “bleeding edge”, and as such, isn’t rock solid yet. That said, I’m not ready to give it up due to these inconveniences – it’s just too addicting!
