4 posts tagged “firmware”

Not impressed with Nokia's recent announcements, I decided to get a replacement N82 Black.  It arrived Wednesday and I immediately went about installing my favorite apps.

On Thursday, v30 firmware was released.  When I updated my N82, it bricked!  Much to my surprise, Nokia Software Update provided instructions for getting it back up and running.  Simply removing the battery and holding down the power button brought it back to life.  A second try with the update process and I had v30 firmware.  A great thing about firmware updates on the N82 is User Data Preservation.  I didn't lose anything when I updated.

Most news sites and blogs didn't notice any major changes, but I just found one that changes my viewing habits immensely.

It wasn't until Saturday night that I opened up the Video Center.  Normally I use a combination of Podcasting for my phone and Video Center for my Internet Tablet.  I watch a lot of video podcasts on my N800 since the screen is larger.  Some shows I watch on the N82, since it can handle higher quality video.

I added Rocketboom to my channels and noticed that there's some new options.  You can refresh your feeds and set up automatic downloads.  This is great news, to me at least.

From now on, Podcasting will be dedicated for audio downloads and Video Center will handle all video.  Some people will prefer using Podcasting to handle all their new media needs, but I like to keep things seperate. 

One good reason to only use Podcasting is for opml support.  You can import and export .ompl files that are filled with links to shows.   The Podcasting app makes it easy to import shows.  Using Video Center, you have to manually add shows.  Even with cut and paste or a bluetooth keyboard, it takes time to input. 

So why am I putting myself through that kind of torture?  Any video played from Video Center has a resume function.

Recently, the N95-1 and N95-2 also got v30 updates.  If you have one, does your Video Center also have these upgrades?

While at BarcampLA5, Ralf Pieper gave a demo of the N95-3.  He won it back at MobileCampLA.
He gave a demo of his prize and sang its praises and aired many grievances.

He likes the wifi and SIP capabilities. 
He likes the ability to add applications and task manager. 
He likes the loud speakers.

He doesn't like the steep learning curve or slowness of the UI
He loaded too many wifi locations and has run out of memory every time the wifi wizard loads.
He hated how slow the camera loads. 

I think that's the most important annoyance about the N95 NAM.  The camera is very slow.  The N95 NAM has a terrible 7-8 second load time. 

A typical end user like Ralf is not going to want to climb the learning curve if the one of the N95's main features doesn't perform well.

How can this be fixed?

NEW FIRMWARE

On the original N95 (with v20 firmware), the camera application loads very quickly.  It takes about 4 seconds for the camera to load after opening the lens shutter. On the N95 8GB, its even faster with 2 second load time.  This is due to a combination of new camera optimizations and demand paging.

Demand paging would fix a lot of the problems Ralf or anyone else might have with the N95 NAM.  It speeds up the loading time of the camera and speeds up the whole UI as well.

The N95 NAM hasn't seen an update in almost 3 months.  That is long overdue.
 

On Wednesday, my Gallery stopped reading my memory card.  I tried rebooting, nothing.  Took new pictures, didn't show up.  The Music Player also had problems with podcasts.

Doing a bit of searching and found someone suggested that formatting the memory card would fix it.  That would be fine, but I also noticed that my RAM would constantly fall under 10MB free.

I decided the only thing to do was to declare phone bankruptcy.  Getting the phone back to factory settings was the best option for me at this point. 

I went into the application manager and made a list of all the software I had at the time
I backed up all my essential media; my pictures, my music, my videos, etc.  Next I reloaded the firmware without a backup.  Then I formatted the memory card.

It took me a few hours to get all my ringtones, apps, themes and media back on my N95.  But its worth it now.  Its very stable.  I also freed up 1.5 gigs of space on my memory card.  I wonder where all that bad data came from.

List of apps now on my N95:
large time screensaver
handy taskman v1.6
garmin mobile
stowaway keyboard support
best profiles
y-tasks
devicescape
share online update
conversation
internet radio
n-starter
energy profile
google maps
location tagger
calcium
gold theme
channels
y-browser
salling clickr
mobile weather
emtube
SIC! ftp client
best timer
frozen bubble
sensible sudoku
qik
calsync s60
shazam ID
audio books
light sabre
emtube

JAVA

micro sky
tetris
gmail
ext GPS
cellfire
geocache navigator

That's the list.  I cut the things I thought were memory hogs or no longer useful. 

Today is a busy day for me.  The new firmware for the Nokia N95 came out today.  I've spent most of the morning installing my old apps.  Been toying so much with it I didnt eat until 1:30 PM! 

Also today, Nokia put out an official release of the firmware update for the N800.  So now I have to manage both my N800 and N95 today.  Busy busy busy!

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