Re: Play. Want. Bin. Nearly end of May. Hooray.

Chris Whitworth wrote:
On 2008-05-27, Chris Stevens <news@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
New Phone (RL)
Last week I bought a cheap Motorola RAZR-type thing. I thought it
was the worst phone in the world. So much so, in fact that I wrote
it off as money already wasted and spent this weekend sizing up
alternatives. Restraint not being my middle name, and trying to
learn from my errors with the cheap Motorola, I ended up with a
Nokia N95 (the newer 8GB one).

If you haven't already investigated it, one of the best things you
can do with an N95 is debrand it - essentially, you can remove all
the shitty operator customisation and return it to how Nokia intended
it to be. The practical upshot of this is that you get VoIP back, and
the ability to install firmware updates as soon as Nokia make them
available - when you update a branded phone, it'll only update to a
branded firmware, and the networks tend to lag behind the official
firmware by some considerable measure (Orange are particularly awful
for this - they're a good 6 or 7 major revisions behind at the
moment).

Cheers for the advice. I'll look into it.
For what it's worth, I'm on 3, and VoIP is there with the branded firmware.

The latest firmware adds a whole load of goodness - basically, speeds
everything up (faster camera, faster GPS lock thanks to assisted-GPS,
general responsiveness much faster because of some cunning caching
stuff, etc).

Mine already has the assisted-GPS option, so I wonder whether the firmware
version is already reasonably up-to-date. Like I said before, I'm really
impressed by the GPS performance. My job involves working with assorted GPS
modules (as well as the standard fit GPS chip in our units with external
antennae we've also played around with various bluetooth GPS units for phone
navigation) and for a compact, built-in antenna, the N95 is astonishingly
good. I'm obviously not willing to pay extra for the navigation service as
I've got satnavs coming out of my ears, but it's fun just to use whilst out
walking the dog, etc. :)

--

Chris

GT: SomethingWitty


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