Very quick news here - the latest firmware for the N95 V21 is now available to Vodafone-branded handsets. So for those unwilling to risk debranding your handset - what are you waiting for!

Most of you will likely be going from V12, so V21 bring amazing improvements to your phone - demand paging (enables multi-tasking, improves menu navigation speed and startup time), full youtube compatibility in the native browser, web runtime support (for widgets), massive improvements to GPS functionality, amongst a raft of other improvements.

Thanks go to psychrn for breaking this one!

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Maps update

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Vodafone - Protecting the user experience in NZ since May 1st 2008

Bah, in the face of imminent competition in the GSM market Vodafone (currently the only GSM carrier in NZ) has today announced they will begin to lock handsets from May 1st. There will be a $50 fee to unlock the phones.

This is what Paul Brislen (Vodafone's external communications manager in NZ) had to say on it:

Hi all,

Vodafone’s mobiles are sold exclusively for use on Vodafone New Zealand’s network.

From 1 May we are locking new handsets to our network.  All new handsets sold will include information about handset locking and how to unlock handsets.

Locked handsets can be unlocked for a fee of $50.

This is being done to protect the customers’ experience of the Vodafone brand.  Vodafone brands its mobiles with both the Vodafone and Vodafone Live! look and feel.  If a customers takes a Vodafone mobile to another network, the customer won’t be able to access the Vodafone experience and services.

Cheers

Paul

Spin-doctoring

Hi all,

Just a very quick post regarding an update to Nav4All (one of several download-maps-as-you-go styled GPS softwares).

I received an email this morning from Nav4All to let me know that they have now added New Zealand maps support to their service.

You may be thinking "So what? I already have google maps, and MGMaps installed on my phone for that". Well here is the thing: Nav4All has voice guidance - a rarity for this style of free-GPS software.

I've yet to try it, having just received the email from them - but rest assured I will give an update once its installed and running replete with screenshots!

Ricky Cadden over at symbian-guru had this to say about Nav4All - bear in mind that the software has been through a couple of iterations since then and you may its performance improved over Ricky's experience.

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Black N82

Black N82

In typical Nokia fashion the release of a new handset colour is made known by photos on their website with no accompanying press release. This time its the black N82 that was rumoured around a month ago.

Personally I think this is a very attractive handset, much nicer looking than the photoshop efforts that went around before. I'll be getting one for sure - how about you?

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N-Series QWERTY???

Well, if this report at boygeniusreport is accurate it looks like I may be crossing off at least one of the most-hoped-for items from my wishlist in 2008! The report also states the device will have "DVD-Quality" video recording, and other features that "will take N-Series to the next level". Colour me excited!

The next question of course is what form-factor to use to accomplish the addition of a QWERTY keyboard? The article talks about using a form-factor reminiscent of the E61, but I really hope they don't go there. To my mind the E61 is one of the least pleasing form-factors from an aesthetic standpoint. So if not that, then what? A Nokia patent filing was recently reported at a number of places, and it just so happens to be a Triple-Slider form-factor. Take a look at the image below from Nokia's patent filing - tasty. I really hope they steer away from the E61 look the article talks about and go for something like the triple slider, which handily would also facilitate the use of a beautiful big, high-resolution touchscreen...

Triple Slider

If this were the form factor for the QWERTY Nokia I'll be in UI heaven! Touch screen but with regular keypad, multimedia keys and QWERTY? Of course the obvious concern is how will the build quality be on this phone? Nokia has yet to make a good quality single slider in the N-Series, let alone a triple. If Nokia fulfills another of my wishlist items in this handset, namely better build quality, then this will surely be my Jesus-phone. For a few months anyway... 

How about you?

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I opened discussions at a few forums regarding this post to get ideas on what other S60 users want from new N-Series devices in 2008. While it was great to see my wishlist almost universally mirrored, it was even better to see where others lists differed. Since there were a number of things that emerged as common threads, I thought a follow-up piece would be worthwhile.

What 2008 holds instore?

To bring you up to speed on whats already been said here's my first post. If you haven't yet had your say, and you feel like contributing to the forum discussions you'll find them at Symbian-Freak, N95users, and Howardforums.

Heres the extended list, categorized into Hardware, Software/OS and Gear, with a little commentary:

HARDWARE

• Better batteries - this was no surprise, I'll just add here that people appeared implicitly to be talking about higher capacities within the same size, rather than sacrificing form-factor to accommode larger capacity batteries
• Larger internal memories - exactly how much more was being called for varied from user to user from 1GB- to 8GB-inbuilt, the main thing was that this was wanted in addition to a card slot
• USB Charging
• Some kind of expansion slot - for example for users to increase RAM, or along the lines of PCMCIA slots
• A larger imaging sensor for cameras
• Also on the imaging front - built in tripod mounts
• and the most common hardware wish for users? Hybrid-Hexband handsets

 

SOFTWARE/OS

• Better browser - many different things people wanted improved, but primarily the inclusion of tabbed browsing and better flash implementation
• While high-definition recording is unlikely to be available on handsets in 2008, an improvement to video recording at 720x576 @ 30fps doesn't seem like an unreasonable goal
• Full support for Office documents - this would be huge for me personally, and makes sense given the increasingly productivity-minded outlook for N-Series users
• Support for WMV format was on high on the list for many
• Mac versions of the PC-Suite and Software Updater
• Threaded messages
• Better implementation of a connections hierarchy - for example where the phone always uses the home network for data when in range, rather than the current prompts requesting the user choose the access point
• Better volume controls - for example volume controls that work in java applications too!
• Bluetooth Mouse enabled
• Stopwatch and Countdown timers 
• and last but by no means least - FULL SYSTEM ACCESS!

 GEAR

• External Stereo Microphone
• A2DP headset styled like the BH-604's but with a wired connection option 

 

OK, that last one was all mine, but as for the rest? I like 'em. If Nokia does my list first, and then attends to these others I can expect to be in mobiles-heaven by this time next year...

N-series?

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This news just to hand - a black N82 has been confirmed by Mobile City Online! Providing there is some sort of official endorsement of this confirmation it looks like my next mobile purchase will be sooner than I thought!

Here are some photoshops from Stefan at Intomobile to give you an idea how it might look:

Black N82

Black N82

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Seasons Greetings everyone!

Heres a little Christmas present from me to all the frustrated N95 (N82/E90 etc) owners here in godzone who purchased their shiny new GPS-enabled handset, only to discover that Nokia Maps for New Zealand are utter rubbish; a little guide to getting the most from this aspect of your otherwise much-loved phone! I know that NZ isn't the only country affected in this way, so hopefully there'll be a little something here for users hailing from other countries too. If it isn't already obvious, I'm a little bit on the verbose side, so to keep this to nice edible, bite-sized chunks I'll break it up into 3 parts and post them up over the coming week or so. I'm really hoping that if you've been disappointed with this feature of your N95 till now you can usher in the new year feeling much better about it.

Someone who should avoid the V12 update

Straight off the bat its important to talk firmware, because for reasons that'll become clear in a moment this makes quite a difference in terms of the GPS experience. There are several firmware iterations available for the N95 - V10, V11, V12, and V20 - you'll need to find out which firmware version your phone is by typing *#0000# into the phone before going any further. If your N95 was purchased from Vodafone, chances are you're sporting the V12 firmware, which has Assisted-GPS (A-GPS) enabled. A-GPS lets you lock faster by augmenting the inbuilt GPS receiver with information from the Vodafone network regarding the signal towers nearest you. This of course does mean that you'll incur some data charges, but fortunately A-GPS only uses 6-12kb for each lock, so its well worth it. Vodafone issues their own custom firmware so V12 is currently the highest firmware available to you if your N95 is branded, if your handset is parallel imported then Nokia Software Updater (NSU) will probably show you that an upgrade to V20 is available. A word of warning if V12 is the highest firmware upgrade available to you;  the V12 firmware has a very annoying bug - it fails to detect some keypresses. If that doesn't sound like a big deal to you, try to imagine texting someone while it randomly drops a keypress here and there - you'll have to back up and edit your message, possibly several times for every message you send. If GPS isn't that important to you, or you're a mad texting fiend, then you'll have to weigh up whether you really want the V12 firmware. Luckily there is a way around this for brave souls willing to void their warranty. . .debrand your handset.

Screenshot from my V20 N95 - multitasking! Not an "Out of Memory" warning insight. . .

Debranding your handset sounds a little drastic, but its something I've done several times without incident, and certainly without regret. Its a little beyond the scope of this piece to walk you through the entire process - I'll just leave you a couple of links to places where help is at hand - here and here. If you haven't checked out either of those sites before I highly recommend joining both. So rather than producing a guide, I'll just talk about briefly about the considerable benefits of the latest V20 firmware. Basically the V20 firmware finally fulfills the promise that the N95 had from the beginning. Its not perfect by any means, but there are no bugs on the magnitude of the V12 keypress-bug, so on balance the positives far, far outweigh the negatives. The addition of demand paging and some other application-handling routines has increased RAM to ~30MB after a fresh boot, and even better true multi-tasking is now on offer.This also has knock-on effects to battery life, which is extended by around 20% on V20 (if you're struggling with your battery life then make sure you check this list of optimisations while you're at it). If that weren't enough startup time is improved, and the startup speed of the camera application is now  significantly accelerated (on a par with the N95 8GB). These major changes are accompanied by a variety of smaller, but nevertheless very welcome, improvements.

Hopefully I've convinced you to go ahead and get the V20 firmware, but if not you may at least have worked out which firmware you're on and begun to weigh up the pros and cons of updating. From here on in I'll be discussing the N95 from the standpoint of an A-GPS enabled handset, so I'm hoping that you're on at least the V12 firmware so that we're comparing apples with apples in the subsequent posts. In the next installment I'm going to look over Nokia's native maps application, and then cover some of the other software solutions out there, before giving an in-depth run down on the best GPS solution currently available for the Symbian OS in New Zealand.  

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Currently populated with photo's from Nokiaworld

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7588446@...

Photo's I took at Nokiaworld with my N95-1. When I get a chance I'll upload the photo's I took with the N82 test device I had there for a couple of days.

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