Nokia opens doors to Download Store After 9 months of beta testing, and numerous software versions, Nokia has decided that what punters really want is a website where they can browse and buy software, though the latter part isn't possible as yet. The PC Download Store was supposed to be the desktop equivalent of the "Download" application pre-installed on every …
Just like their phones then.
I bought an N95 8gb and hardware-wise it's great.
Software-wise it's a pile of poo, with frequent crashes, slow-downs and an interface that changes like the time of the day.
I wanted an iphone but wasn't willing to put up with apples lock-in and poo camera.
Argh... it's the old mac vs pc debate but transferred to a phone....
Nokia, Nokia, name rings a bell. Wait a minute wasn't that the company that used to make good mobile phones.
OK, I see, now they moved into the garage sales. Trying to sell everything and anything with the hope that the punters bite. Wasn't the N'Gage a sore enough lesson for the Nokia Veeps, just how much did Nokia lose on that particular venture ?
Mine's the one with "I don't belong to Nokia" on the back.
To resolve (some) of your software problems - particularly the "out of memory" and "random" crashes (which are mostly Out of Memory errors poorly handled by the software) - you can.....
a) Download a newer firmware version - using the official Nokia Software Updater PC program. If this program says that no newer version of firmware is available then you can
(b) Download NSS - modify your ROM product code to a non mobile operator specific code (eg. EURO) - and then go back to (a). The Nokia Software Updater should then tell you there is a newer version of the firmware available.
My N95 is on v21.0.016 - and hasn't crashed since I installed this firmware version 3 weeks ago. (It used to crash at least once per day). Camera is more responsive, and SatNav/GPS is quicker/better too.
BTW. I should stress that you will need to take a full backup of your phone - and copy your contacts to your sim. And here's a WARNING: the backup software won't restore the data back on to the phone properly. Why ? Because someone thought it a good idea to restructure where the apps go (which menus/categories they belong to) - and the restore program gets so confused that it hangs at around 59%. Still - the pain of losing some data was worth it to get a much more robust phone.
Paris - because even she would make sure that backup/restore worked between firmware revisions.
should just get a iPhone then.
yes, there's the lock-in, but at least the thing frikken works
5.. 4.. 3.. 2..1.. flame on!!!! :-)
p.s. yes, you're right, it's scary how all you need to do is swap 'windows' for 'nokia' and 'mac' for 'iphone' and all the old arguments can be rehashed all over again.
...Is hardware that is actually usable on its first iteration, yes? not something that's released with hideously b0rked firmware, so that there's no point in actually having the product until they ship the revised units the following quarter.
(I haven't actually had a Nokia for about 2 years, but observation of those who do leads me to the conclusion that they haven't changed their practices any)
Thanks for the advice, I plan to do that when I get the chance.
The only problem is doing something to my phone which might brick it.
I have read on some forums that people have had their N95s bricked when/if they fail and they are sent back to an engineer to fix.
It's also a pain in the arse *having* to do something like that.
I know it's more the fault of the networks for not letting us upgrade to the latest firmware, but still... the 'testers' at Nokia must have been asleep the day they were trying out N95s, and deserve to be fired.
Who am I kidding, they didn't test them for a day... more like 5 minutes.
Jason - actually the problem is more related to the Symbian OS and small memory footprint applications - how they should handle "low memory or no memory available exceptions".
There's a good (if rather dry) podcast over at http://se-radio.net - look for the Small Memory Management podcast - if you *really* want to understand the problem.
A background in software engineering will help (as it would have helped Paris when she knocked up some of these apps).
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