Don't use the general public as guinea pigs

*I believe people who do buy N95's and N96's or any high end smartphones are in a sense geeks.

Great points in this article and the forum posts.

Indeed following AAS previous separation of end users. (Media creators, email / sms freaks and others) the N96 as the example is for people who struggels to get the latest in technology.
Yes, we do know how to get around errors, backup and so on, but one crucial thing that came into my mind is.

"Will Nokia really support the devices with future FW releases?" If they do for how long?

Comparing it to the computer world (Windows) with service packs they come out very rapidly. When it comes to Smartphones the software updates aren't that rapidly released.

Can we really count on that a new fw will fix the bugs. I've read about many examples of fw updates which again introduced previous bugs. Some in which never went away.

With the proximate lifespan of a "new" smartphone being 1 (Top 2) years, how many fw updates will Nokia be willing to squeeze out?

(With the exception of Nokias E-series phones which is estimated to last 3-4 years approximately)

Almost all the other manufacturers thinks this way and it truly shows on the devices and their choice of materials.

What I mean here is that the "others" group lies in between using maybe some media features such as playing music, watch some clips and mostly use their phones for calling or text messaging.

For those people the outcome is 1 of 2:
1. The minor bugs is not visible to them. (Okay, no problems here)
2. It makes their life a pain.

2. The company as the article states will get a bad reputation. Drawing customers away and in worst case they'll never return to the brand.

My point is that similar to Mr. Steve.
That things should be tested thoroughly before coming out to the market.
(I know of SE owners who have serious bugs on their phones, so Nokia is surely not the only one)

I will somewhat include myself to those who are willing to take a risk by buying a future phone with bugs in hope to have it fixed later in a fw update.

However as I can see it I'm starting to retreat and just stand idle until a phone is proved to be more stable before jumping on, due to the tendencies mentioned above.

If your in for the game, then you take the pain.

[quoteI believe AAS underestimate the people who buy these type of phones. Your average Joe looking to upgrade from their N95 know the N96 doesn't offer anything noteworthy to be tied in a long term contract. They rather look elsewhere...[/quote]

Got to disagree, I refurb/resell mobile handsets as part of my job and you wouldn't believe how many N96s I've been offered since it was released, can't say any of the 'owners' looked like they had any clue how to properly use the handset. The worst offender is the pink Blackberry 8120 though, they usually come along with a 'I brought it because it looked cute' tagline.

Do E series get more thorough testing and QC? I've never had any issues with my E90, esp compared to the glaring bugs on my N93 and N93i. Can't say I've seen any E series get returned at work either.

I fully agree. It gets even worse when no firmware upgrade is available for e long time. My E71 is buggy as hello. As crashes very often on starting web favourites. I've also had several memory problems. And after many months I'm still waiting for the first firmware upgrade. Has Nokia forgotten this one????

I fully agree. It gets even worse when no firmware upgrade is available for e long time. My E71 is buggy as hello. As crashes very often on starting web favourites. I've also had several memory problems. And after many months I'm still waiting for the first firmware upgrade. Has Nokia forgotten this one????

as someone who got the n95 the day it came out, then replaced it with the n96, i CANNOT believe how much the n96 struggles with the most basic of tasks.

with no application open, the N96 takes around 3 second to bring up the recent call list when you press the green key.. on my 6230, this is instant, literally, on the n95, even on the first day, it was instant but needed to load contents of the screen for about half a second..

top and bottom, the N96 is not an acceptable phone to use, just as a phone, let alone anything else! opening a text message took 15 second to load!!! i will get a vid asap

I notice you have the N96 from Vodafone. I assume its not debranded?

I have heard from a number of people saying that the N96 with Vodafones firmware is extremely slow. A few have debranded, and said there is a huge improvement.

Unfortunatly debranding invalidates your warranty, so its up to you if you do it.

Network firmware is a large part of the reason I renew my contract simfree and get my handsets simfree.

The ones with debranded/simfree N96's say its actually quite responsive.

good to hear, but i guess this is a point where the phone companies who insist on bloated and much-less updated firmware are to blame.

Nokia should still insist on at least an internal engineers test.. even of each carriers firmware, toknow that is at the very least, a pleasantly usable phone. i would say 80% of people are buying the N96 and only use it as a phone, its the advertising that pulls them in, so make sure it works well primarily as that.. a phone! so processes like writing a text, or opening a call list, dont lag behind the user.

as an architect i would never let anything go out of the door, even with tight deadline, that I know is not quality.. and that could hurt mine, or my comapnies reputation in the highly competative market place. It is all about fulfilling the brief, add-ons can be sacrificed to meet the brief. The brief of an N96 is that it is a smartPHONE.. a range topper at that, so should really out-do its lower range phones in this area, not with features, but with HOW its executes features present in all phones... i've had the 6300 classic too, and its mighty fast at being a phone... likely with much lesser hardware at that.. the n96 should easily match its low range 'load times' with its hardware, especiallyw hen nothing else is running in the background.

Engineers/Developers should have pride in the product that they developed, and after spending so long writing code, and configuring hardware to make it look great n pretty, it should damn well at least work well for its brief. Incidently, there are plenty of building out their what look great with lots of half assed bolt ons, but hell, they work really crap against their original brief...

rant over for now, but i am really frustrated that they would let a product out where they find the problem (and they are not even 'deep' problems) after release.

For now, I will possibly going back to the 6230, the BEST most functional phone i have ever owned. Either that or get my N95 unlocked, and change that so i can get the very lastest OEM nokia software on that.

wiltjer wrote:My E71 is buggy as hello.

How about not announcing a phone until it's ready? That is it has gone through intensive testing and had all major and critical bugs squashed.

Right now it is marketing department that writes the specs and announces the product, and then the engineering department cobbles together something that minimally meets the marketing drivel.

N96 is The Great designed device I have ever used.
I have installed 50 application,2000 songs and a half a dozen movies and it is working fine .
TV out feature is cool..
DVBH works marvellously.16GB internal memory with 8 GB expandable slot is too good to have.
Camera quality is amazing .Flash gun is quite powerful.

Well I do not think user is even aware about which processors mobiles have?
So how does it matter if it is ARM 9 or ARM 11 ?
If the device works fine it is a fine product.