N95 GPS Revisited

I previously have written about the N95 GPS in August 2007: My love/hate relationship with the N95 GPS .

Since that time, Nokia has released new software that improves the utility of the GPS significantly. Opinions vary about the N95 GPS, as can be seen from the comments on the above post. However, the fundamental flaw back then was that it took so long to get a fix (to figure out where you/it are), that it was effectively useless.

With N95 firmware version 20.0.015 that problem has been corrected. The N95 now gets a fix within the same time as dedicated GPS devices from Garmin, Magellan etc. That means it’s usually nearly instant, or within one minute (It can be longer in rare cases).

So with that problem behind us, I recently had an opportunity to spend time with the N95 GPS again, in real-world driving situations (i.e. when I actually wanted to know how to get from point A to point B). Here are few highlights:

• Never use the GPS yourself while driving – let a passenger use it to help guide you. if you’re alone, pull over, check out the maps, and then drive again.
• The N95 will now create a “route” (driving directions) from Point A to Point B, without requiring any additional purchases.
• Turn-by-turn “navigation” (spoken real-time navigation) is optional and must be purchased on a subscription or pay-per-use basis – I did not test/try this and, therefore, I can’t comment on it further.
• While the driving directions (routes) seem accurate enough, they are difficult to use. I could not figure out how to display both the route and my real-time position on a map at the same time, which kind of defeats the purpose of having GPS.
• The point of interest database is very incomplete and, as a result, its practical utility is limited.

I think I still have a love/hate relationship with the GPS. The love is better, but the hate is still there, albeit to a much lesser degree than with previous versions of the N95 mapping software. Perhaps something that best captures the state of the N95 GPS is that, in real-life situations, I found times when it was “easier” to load Google Maps on the laptop, manually figure out where we were, use Google Maps to create a “static” route to where we wanted to go, and then follow that, rather than use the live, real-time GPS and routing of the N95.

Next time I’m going to try the S60 version of Google Maps, which now comes as a native S60 version that runs directly on the N95 and uses the built-in N95 GPS hardware, to see if it works better than the standard N95 mapping application.

UPDATE: Check out my mini-review of the native S60 Google Maps application: S60 Google Maps on N95 Rocks

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Symbian Signed Followup

Bruce Carney from Symbian was nice enough to comment on my earlier “Why Symbian Signed must die” post.

There is no intent to prevent long term access. The Symbian Signed infrastructure hit a step change in demand. In periods of overload we have a policy to prioritize the service to ensure professional users can continue their work.

– The problem is shown in this link (i.e. a massive spike)
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/symbiansigned.com
– The underlying reason was posted in our developers forums here https://developer.symbian.com/forum/ann.jspa?annID=36
– Free Developer Certificates *already* downloaded over the past years are valid for 3 years, There are millions and millions of developers who *are* not being impacted by this outage.
– We have been trying to contact the developer of RotateMe to get the app signed (for free) and awaiting response?

If anything, this underscores
(1) How Symbian OS is around an order of magnitude more popular than iPhone or any other mobile OS.
(2) As the smartphone OS market leader, Symbian OS is solving real world mobile developer problems every day, not preaching to the faithful on podiums with powerpoint.

We just ask our developer community to be a little patient

Bruce Carney
Director, Developer Programs & Services
Symbian

Thanks for posting, Bruce.

I’m sorry I missed your call and I hope you are able to call back.

It’s great news that Symbian intends to restore the ability of people to get devcerts. And I understand and have read all the reasons and reported causes for the Open Signed outages.

I also agree that the volume of certs does suggest the popularity of the platform.

However, all that misses the point. The Symbian Signed server being down is just a symptom, as is the load on that server caused by the volume of developer cert requests. People are requesting so many certs because the signing restrictions are broken. The problem isn’t that the Symbian Signed site is down – the problem is that people have to use it in the first place. The problem is that apps need to be signed to be installed and the mechansm for freeware developers, or even small-time corporate or in-house developers, to get certs and manage getting apps signed (and tested and “approved” by Symbian) is defective. It’s untenable.

This is how we end up in the situation where developers release the apps “unsigned” and have the users themselves sign them (and thus, the high volume of “developer” certs). The arguments in favor of the signing requirement are about making phones “safe” and ensuring users can “trust” the apps. However that trust model is antiquated 20th century thinking. Look what they have to go through now to try to get freeware installed (getting a “devcert” and signing the freeware apps themselves). If they are willing to sign it themselves, it suggests that they “trust” the app, even though it has not been “blessed” by Nokia or Symbian. Why? The reason people trust these apps is not because some authority in the sky, like Symbian Signed, gives it a “thumbs up” but because the community provides a powerful degree of trust. Applications that jack around with people would be immediately discredited by the Symbian freeware community – everyone would know about it, and people would avoid the app like the plague. This works with things like Linux and Firefox and it would also work with Symbian freeware.

The current Symbian Signed process creates the opposite effect of its stated objectives. I’d suggest that Symbian Signed apps are actually less trustworthy, in the true sense of the term – it’s more likely for “official” apps that have been “approved and tested” to have bugs than the freeware ones because it takes months to get an app tested and approved (and it cost $$$) so bugs never get fixed; whereas problems with freeware get reported all over the place and they tend to get fixed quickly.

The solution is to release a version of S60 3rd edition that lets those users that are willing to take the risks install unsignd apps and grant the features, privledges, capabilities they wish to the apps, even if this is a “unsupported” “hacker” version of Symbian with “forfeit all rights to support” restrictions or some such – that would still be vastly better than the situation those people have today, where the only officially supported options are to not install the apps at all, ever or switch platforms/phones – and the “unofficial” solution is to overload the Symbian Signed site with “developer” cert requests.

So save yourself some money on upgrading the Symbian Signed server crypto hardware and instead release a simple version of S60 3rd edition. You’ll be happy, I’ll be happy, and users will be happy. And your phone manufacturer customers like Nokia will be happy too, happy that they don’t lose their customers to Windows Mobile, the iPhone, or other alternative platforms.

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Why Symbian Signed must die

With the latest S60 “3rd Edition” phones (such as the N95, N81 etc), Nokia in their infinite wisdom, has decided for us that we users don’t want to install “freeware” apps any more. These phones now require all apps to be “signed” – they don’t give the option to the user to install an unsigned app.

Nokia says this is supposed to protect users from “bad” apps. So what is the result? Freeware developers now release “unsigned” versions of their apps and provide step-by-step instructions for users on how to get their own “developer” cert and sign the app themselves.

See the irony yet? Nokia told us that users wanted to be “protected” from “bad” apps, yet what we really see is users going to the trouble of acting like “developers” so they can sign these “bad” apps and get them installed on their phone. They clearly want freeware, whether it’s officially “approved” by Nokia’s “Symbian Signed” or not.

And with all these pseudo-developers requesting certs so they can install these “bad” apps, guess what? Nokia’s certificate creation site “Symbian Signed” can’t handle the load. It has been mostly down for weeks. Here’s what it says today:

Not to mention all the support costs for Nokia and the overall costs to the entire ecosystem (where about 90% of S60 3rd edition discussion seems to be about signing and certs). Hopefully Nokia will wake up and put an end to this ridiculous nightmare soon. Here’s a few reasons why the time has come for enabling users to install unsigned apps on their 3rd edition phones, just like they can on 1st and 2nd edition phones:

• The overhead of depending on Symbian Signed for signing promotes bug-ridden software that is never updated.
• It is destroying the Symbian third-party ecosystem (which is where all the best Symbian software has always come from)
• It leaves the door open for competitors like Apple, Microsoft, RIM, etc. and dilutes Nokia’s significant lead in third-party developer support.
• If plain users, through step-by-step guides, are signing apps, there is really no argument for the “all apps must be signed” restriction

The signing debacle is nothing new, but the prolonged downtime of Symbian Signed is.

Nokia, please. It’s time to close the door on the the Symbian Signed experiment and let us install the apps we want on our phones again.

UPDATE: Monday February 18, 2008:

Today the site says:

Note their words “huge demand for developer certificates”. Nokia doesn’t that tell you something? And by the way, it is Monday February 18, folks, and the ability to get certs is still down.

UPDATE: Weds Feb 20 the saga continues:

So now it looks like end-users and hobby developers cannot get certificates at all, meaning they cannot write code or experiment with freeware on their Symbian S60 3rd edition phones anymore. I cannot tell from the above message whether this the new permanent policy or just more “damage control”.

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