BGN wrote:

Nice summary and I agree with virtually everything, plus a couple or
three comments from me:

> 4) Audio player: A very good audio player, for a mobile phone. Why
> not give it a hardware equaliser instead of just a software one as I
> find that the bass isn't as strong as it could be, even with it up
> full. Still, a very good quality reproduction for a mobile phone and
> I can even leave my Bose QuietComfort 2 Noise Cancelling earphones on
> 'high power device' mode.
Mine hisses a lot - both with headphones and with the built-in speakers.
I don't use it much for music so not a problem but some will be upset
by it, I'm sure.

> 12) Podcasting. The Nokia Podcasting app seems pretty good (although
> it would be nice if it linked in with the normal browser instead of
> having to manually key in RSS/Atom feed URLs to the application) –
> When I download the BBC Breakfast Takeaway in the morning to watch
> when I'm sitting outside having the first cigarette of the day for 10
> minutes it always says something like "Video will not play on this
> device" but then launches it in RealPlayer and it plays perfectly.
> Someone needs to tell the podcasting application what the phone can
> and can't play.
This seems to be general feature of the web browser/RealPlayer
integration. It often complains about Listen Again from the Beeb and
claims no player plugin available but if you hack around and extract the
rtsp URL then RealPlayer on the phone will play it perfectly.

I've just created a small html file with the links of those that I
listen to regularly and click on those. One of these days I will get
around to writing a small app to do it all on the fly.

> 14) Move the GPS receiver into the top of the screen, perhaps bin the
> 2nd camera as I don't use it and video calling hasn't taken off in my
> circle of friends. The GPS receiver appears to be at the bottom of
> the phone, under the keypad. Yes, where you're going to be holding it
> and have your hands around it or if you want to take sat-nav into the
> car then that's likely to be where it's mounted too. If it was at the
> top near the camera and environment sensor then it would get a much
> better signal as nobody holds their phone by that area.

It would be nice to move it but who knows how tightly the hardware is
all squashed in there? I bought a cheapo car cradle that grips the side
of the phone and sticks to the dash, powered from the ciggy lighter and
it works perfectly.

> 15) My Nokia e61 has the option to kill off applications from a kind
> of 'task manager' but the n95 doesn't have this option. If you've
> exited out of an app by going to the 'hang up' button the application
> is still active and you can see it's active by going to the phone menu
> where a little icon shows next to active applications. If the app has
> died then you can't go into the app and then close it so have to
> reboot. If the option to kill off running processes was present
> (perhaps accessable by holding the 'hang up' key for a few seconds)
> then it would save power cycling. Not that any of the applications
> crash much.

You can do this. Press and hold the menu button and you get a pop-up
list of the running apps. Select the one you want to kill and press the
C button.

> 17) Despite my initial reservations this phone is excellent. After a
> month I haven't got bored with it and use it for pretty much
> everything. Well done Nokia.

Seconded.

Very good on the internet connectivity. HSDPA works well and you can
have more than one internet connection going at once. For example I can
use it as a modem for my laptop and also "listen again" to a Beeb radio
programme.

You can receive & send texts while a modem connection is open without
problems. Voice calls come through but the modem link is more or less
suspended (not actually dropped but throughput drops to a very low
rate). The impact this has depends on how robustly your software handles
such things.

Only caveat is that using it as a modem with a USB connection to a
laptop stuffs the battery - I get an hour at the most in that
combination. Ironically, Bluetooth to the laptop seems to last a bit
longer. I would have thought that it would draw power from the USB
connection if it got the chance but it doesn't seem to.

All in all a great phone if you want to more than talk and text.

Regards,
--
Bruce Horrocks
Surrey
England
(bruce at scorecrow dot com)