[Gllug] new mobile phone

[Christopher Hunter]

On Mon, 2008-02-04 at 12:12 +0000, Chris Jones wrote:
> Hi
> 
> James Roberts wrote:
> > now only flattens the (new FOC) battery after 18 hours instead of 8. The 
> > GPS is useless as you have to have the keyboard open for it to work. The 
> > camera and video is superb quality, the audio dreadful, the software 
> > still unstable after multiple updates which were also useless, the radio 
> 
> I can't speak for the 8gb version, but I have an original n95 and while
> it's by no means perfect, it's easily the most capable phone I've used yet.

I've just got rid of one - it was appalling in every possible way!

> The battery life is poor compared to my k750, but I wasn't browsing the
> web via wifi on the 750, so it's not a fair comparison.

No - the battery life's appalling whatever you're doing with it.

> The gps works with the keyboard closed if you have a good view of the
> sky. The aerial for the GPS is indeed underneath the keyboard, so
> angling that part of the phone up and out from you helps - I can record
> GPS tracks just fine with it oriented that way in my jacket's breast
> pocket.

I found that the GPS receiver is really "deaf" and wouldn't work in most
parts of London.

>  Also with the v20 firmware you get assisted GPS, which gets me a
> lock in under a minute, vs the 5 minutes it used to take on the original
> firmware release!

It worked fine outside my house, at the top of Muswell Hill.  As soon as
you went down into the London basin, it just didn't work.  I have a
cheap (£25) bluetooth GPS receiver that talks to my PDA in the car.  It
works everywhere in London, just left on the dashboard of the car!

> I'm not sure what the criticism of the radio was about - FM radios are
> by and large very simple and they play the radio at you. Bam, that's
> exactly what my n95 does, with the added bonus that it downloaded a
> station listing from the tubes rather than bore me scanning through the
> airwaves.

No.  The FM receiver is largely useless - it has poor sensitivity and
selectivity is a joke - tuning to Radio 4 in North London allowed you to
hear BBC Radio London as you moved about. 

> I don't particularly like the speakers in it, but the audio through my
> headphones is fine.

No.  It's too quiet in many environments, and is very poor quality.

> I've had one or two crashes in the couple of months I've had it, which
> is never good, but then for all I know it's the fault of third party
> software I've installed.

Mine went back after a day of virtually non-stop crashes.  It was
useless.

> I've not used any of Sony Ericsson's smartphones, but I'm generally
> pretty impressed with the n95, mainly because of the huge variety of
> connectivity options it gives you (GSM, GPRS, 3G, BT, WIFI, GPS, TV-OUT
> mainly)

I'm waiting for an Ericsson "smartphone" right now.  It';ll be
interesting to compare it to the Nokia!

Chris


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