The Nokia N95 and ultra convergence

yeah...i really expected much more from this firmware update ...and have been seriously disappointed this time.Lots of more bugs have crept up ..and my phone restarts more than it did from V11.sad...really.. 😡

if you dont like it stop picking it up and trying again.
i love the N95 and use it day after day and after updating to V12 i havent seen this missing keypress yet even after sending loads of sms messages.

Steve's running a Symbian site.

People want him to pick it up and report back what he thinks.

Why do people become all definsive of something they have bought (I'm probably guilty of it to, but much less so these days). You have bought something with your money. You should be expecting things from it. There is no need to start defending it. It is not your child.

Constructive criticism can lead to improvements. And the comments from Steve are very much along constructive lines.

Zuber

Well, it is normal for people to get disappointed about a product, after it has been hyped to the skies. As I said before, N95 is just a phone, with rather regular (albeit plentiful) OMAP-based hardware. Personally, I would rather have an upgraded E70 with a new OMAP chipset and more memory.

Agreed. The infuriating thing is when they just abandon a product and move on to the next thing. I never forgave Opera for giving up on their Epoc 5 version to concentrate on Symbian; and I never bought anything from Logitech again after they failed to release Windows XP drivers for the QuickcamPro. We need to vote with our feet by only buying stuff that is going to be continuously supported.

Hi, i have upgraded to version 12 do not receive any of the bugs you are talking about.
I can search by category from within the maps without a problem.
i dont get the key press problem.
everything seems to work great.
Maybe there is some other program on your phone or setting causing it?

"The infuriating thing is when they just abandon a product and move on to the next thing."

I know where you are coming from. But from a manufacturer viewpoint. Provided they supply you with something that works (another topic on its own), they have fulfilled their obligation. Unless they claim that they will supply future version for future OS etc. that is.

I think, there is an expectation that they should provide updates etc. for a reasonable timescale. Depends on the product as to how long. For smartphones, I think 2 years from when they stop manufacture would be sufficient. Though I'm probably being optimistic to expect that.

Zuber

Interestingly, the official Nokia Discussions thread on all this now has a post saying that the v12 upgrade has been withdrawn. Hopefully there's a fix on the way.

w.r.t. the Maps bug, I just don't buy the fact that it might be a clash with something else loaded. I only had 2 or 3 other apps installed. For an app to cause a complete restart of the OS means that it was trying to do something at a very low level and that there was a bug of some kind....

Anyway, roll on a fix for all the problems mentioned. As indicated in my post, I LOVE the N95 and really want to keep returning to it, but only if the software can get up to about 99%. Currently I'd say it's down around 85% reliable on the (patented) 'Steve Gut Feeling Index' (SGFI) 8-)

Steve

I have the 'Keypress' bug, but don't have any problems with 'Maps', search by category works fine for me.

Since the the V12 firmware upgrade just over a week ago by N95 hasn't restarted once, I still get the 'odd out of memory' problem with the browser with large sites.

Battery life is what it is with a daily charge required, I've even got used to the 'Turquoise Nokia Theme' after they cruelly removed the 'Default (blue/white)' one, this may be a bug as the files for it remain on the rom but are unaccessible

But by far the my biggest gripe with the N95 is the amount of Ram which is responsible for 80% of the problems with the N95, Nokia really should have learnt that lesson with the N80, E70 etc and although it would have used more battery life I think the benefits would outweight the the hit on battery life.

Having said that on the whole I am pleased with my N95, and since the release of Opera Mini 4 even the built in browser memory problem is less of an issue as I only use the built in browser when in range of my router now. When out and about I exclusively use Opera Mini which tends to handles big sites like eBay better, and if you set the 'Higher Image Quality' on in settings, pages look as good as in the Nokia Browser.

Not a bug in the N95 but it is a shame that the 'All About Symbian' site fails to display correctly in both the Nokia and Opera mini browsers, due it would appear at first glance in the Nokia Browsers case to the advertising banners, but no advertising = no site I guess!

Just out of interest Steve, Did you do a clean install of apps etc after the firmware upgrade or did you restore a backup.

If the latter it could be the reason for your Maps problem? as I read on another forum somewhere the bug only occured after a restored backup and that a *#7370# cured this.

I did 'Restore' the basic 'Settings', now I come to think of it. Which might perhaps explain why Maps was misbehaving. But the keypress bug has been widely reported and is surely something very fundamental.... And in any case, wasn't Ewan's rant in yesterday's audio podcast partly about the way it's becoming almost impossible to use the provided 'Backup' systems?

I listened to Evan's rant about backup and totally agree with it and is the reason I never use it, I much prefer to do a clean install.
If there was a new firmware every week than it might be a different story, but while updates only appear every couple of months the clean install lets me get rid of the junk I have accumulated on my phone. (and most likely a ton of left over files from apps I have tried and uninstalled)
I like to think that it leaves me with a 'more stable' system, which is a hangover from growing up with Windows I guess!!

I have the 'Keypress' bug too. In the browser a click in the empty space wont bring up this menu bar and the browser itself crashes more frequently (App closed KERN-EXEC 3).
I think that the more we "complain" loudly - the more info we give to the ppl who can fix it 😊

PS:

Ratkat wrote:I like to think that it leaves me with a 'more stable' system, which is a hangover from growing up with Windows I guess!!

Add another major camera bug to v12. I was holding focus on a shot just now and the entire phone shut down instantaneously. Needed the battery out and back in to get things working again. 8-(

In the browser a click in the empty space wont bring up this menu bar

You need to press and hold to bring up the menu bar now

There is no new info here. It's a nokia smartphone and that means bugs. They simply don't have the ability to create quality software. It won't change anytime soon. The same is true for SE as well.

I have the E61i like you Steve.

Best phone I've had since Psion days and even better than the communicators(!)

It's not clear why some people have enormous problems and why others don't have. I am pleased with�this phone from the beginning. The only thing that annoyed me was that it took so long to get a gps lock. Since v12 even this issue has disappeared for me. I really use this phone like hell and I have had 2 crashes since April. I guess that these problems people have result from the combination hardware version - installed applications - net provider etc... dunno..

Ratkat wrote:You need to press and hold to bring up the menu bar now

Thanks!
Now that it is a step forward, menu wont appear unnecessarily.

It's complex to produce 100s of operator versions of a firmware for 10s of phones. The compile-test cycle is long. This kind of thing is solvable, though, so I should think it will be solved.

Just to try and prove a point, I hard reset the N95 and then went into Maps. "Search by category" restarts the phone. I then removed the memory card (preloaded with UK roads using MapLoader 1.1] and Maps then behaved itself. So, although not an instrinsic bug within the v12 Maps, it's certainly a buggette/compatibility problem that Nokia's Maps team needs to address.

The keypress bug was worse than ever though - I can't see HOW this one escaped QA at Nokia...... 8-)

Steve, you mentioned that you have gone back to the E61i as your device of choice, any reason why you have picked this over the E90 ?
Or has the E90 gone back to Nokia.

Maps wise, I first installed them using map loader when on the V10 firmware back in April then located them on the memory card and saved them to my computer, then have just transferred them back to both V11 and V12 firmwares with no problems.

Dont have a N95 yet but came across this link
http://discussions.europe.nokia.com/discussions/board/message?board.id=smartphones&message.id=45619&view=by_date_ascending&page=1
many have problems with v12.

😞

-Avinash Rathod

ratkat: the E90's going up to Scotland for Ewan to hammer (not literally, I hope) during his mobile activities covering the Edinburgh Fringe for his month long audio podcast - nothing to do with Symbian, but hopefully he'll be able to send at least one article back telling us how well or how badly the E90 performed 8-)

"There is no new info here. It's a nokia smartphone and that means bugs. They simply don't have the ability to create quality software. It won't change anytime soon. The same is true for SE as well.
"

There just isn't enough competition in the market. SE have let us down badly by producing software that is even worse than Nokia's. Personally I won't be buying an N95 until they get the software right. In another 6 months, maybe...

Steve,
Not wanting to state the obvious(!) but have you reported your bugs and all relevant details to Nokia? You guys must have the right contacts, right? Presumably you're not just relying on someone from the right Nokia department randomly reading this story? Would be good to hear in stories like this if you reported the problems, and what if any feedback you got - gives your readers that bit more hope that something has/will be done.

Thanks,
Alex

My N95 reboots after the update whenever I go to Maps/Options/Settings/Network

Would you like someone to offload your N95 on steve? =]

T

The guys at Nokia read AAS and they also read their own Discussion forums and I generally post bug reports on both. E.g. the camera scene/sharpness bug that I finally rationalised and reported and which was then noted and fixed by Nokia at last. So keep on reporting the v12 bugs here - they will be noted etc.