33 posts tagged “n95 8gb”

Just some more pictures I took with the Xda Zest the other day.  I say 'just' - um, I've never known conditions like this before in England and it was a real struggle at times to walk, let alone take photos!

And finally my favourite photo (shot in macro mode)...

Oh, and as a comparison I've got a bunch of pics from the say day taken on my N95 8GB...

Am I?  If the buzz on the interweb over the last 24 hours (or whenever it went live) is anything to go by... YES!

And it doesn't look like I'll be trying it any time soon.  Well at least not on my 3 Mobile contract phone...

I'm gonna give 'em a call (for ships and giggles as calling 333 is usually a comical affair with misunderstandings that would seem OTT even in the craziest of sit-com set-ups!)  This has been going on most evenings for much of this year.. (yeah I know we're only just in February!) Not good, not good at all!

Oh and here's another screengrab from one of those previous evenings...

Oh well, my loaner from O2, the Xda Zest is doing equally poorly - this despite having a good signal on O2 as well as on 3.  Maybe mobile phones aren't meant to work after midnight or something?  Gremlins in the works?  Better not top-up the PAYG if that's the case! :D

Oh well (hmm, I must think of other ways to start sentences, oh well!) I can just read this round-up from Mobile Industry Review and imagine that I too am able to use Google's Latitude and the interweb on these phones I have here before me!

...well, kinda.

Don't go digging out your C64 from your basement or loft just yet.  Certainly don't start swinging it around!  There's an emulator for S60 phones (such as the N95 8GB - mine!) that turns your phone into an old school Commodore.  What with the TV-out and BT keyboard supported on mine, I have a fully functional 80s home computer and no over sized beige keyboard or wooden 14" TV are required!  It's been out for a while but now it apparently supports phones with accelerometers built-in!

I could never get this Frodo app to work though.  Probably a good thing as lets face it, these computers should be left in the 80s where they belong!

Found via Engadget

Yes it's true!  Wave a suitable mobile handset at a can (and presumably bottle) of Pepsi (in all varieties I believe) and get yourself two pretty decent mobile games for nada, zilch, nuthin'!

There are a few caveats though.  You'll need the following...

• a phone with a QR code (aka 2D barcode) scanner.
• a lot of patience
• mobile internet access
  
• a phone that's compatible with the games

Actually I can help you with the thirst first one, just go straight to these links instead:

• Brain Genius: wap.pepsi.co.uk/index/games/id/8
• Project Gotham Racing: wap.pepsi.co.uk/index/games/id/9
• Aquarium Life*: wap.pepsi.co.uk/index/games/id/16
• AthleteXXLThrowing**: wap.pepsi.co.uk/index/games/id/17
• Pro Evolution Soccer: wap.pepsi.co.uk/index/games/id/34

*doesn't work on my N95 8GB
**doesn't work well on my N95 8GB (and you don't throw athletes either!)

For more on Pepsi's giveaway and their decision to use QR codes:

The Beam Team / silicon.com / Britvic

I got papped at the last MGoL so I papped back this time.  So there Donna (from WOM World)!

The host with the most... Mr Whatley(dude)...

And um, ones I took on my ill fated walk to Waterloo in time for last train (maybe had I got a taxi, maybe had I not stopped to take pictures, maybe had I realised that there is no service after 1.05am from Waterloo - damn you National Rail Enquiries website and your promise of a 2.38am train!)...

Not really Earth-shattering but still cool nonetheless.

Nice and easy, nice and simple.  And, when upped over WiFi > ADSL, nice and quick. Beats digging around for a USB cable, hooking it up and wading through a tonne of prompts before getting it on the PC and then having to upload it from there.  Much the same process even with Bluetooth.

Only downside seems to be you have no idea what the picture looks like before you've upped it (some pictures look great on the phone's screen but when you see them at their full resolution - on a big screen, they look all out of focus etc).

Quite a busy day for announcements, the most exciting one being the new Nintendo DSi (in my humble opinion).  Nokia's 5800 (you may know it as the 'Tube') is to be bigged-up in just over an hour but it doesn't excite me as much.  The iPlayer on the N95 (as well as a bunch of other S60 handsets) is interesting and will be useful for many people, there's no content that interests me there though.

New DS has two bigger screens, two cameras and an SD slot.  It will play the same games as the DS and DS Lite but may well have specially made games to utilise the cameras.  I'm just speculating here but I imagine the inside camera could be used for video calls.  Why else do you need two?  Apparently there's a web browser built-in too.  Hopefully it's better than the Opera one (Opera really dropped the ball on that one!)

The Nokia 5800 is all well and good but from what I know of it so far it's not peaking my interest.  Maybe when it's officially revealed they'll be some goodies I wasn't expecting.  I'll know in an hour!

BBC iPlayer widget works on my N95 8GB and works well from what I've seen so far.  Having said that, they have Heroes listed but when you go to play it it comes up with an error.  Did the BBC not get the rights to stream it to mobile?  If so, they shouldn't display it on the mobile version.  Oh, and it installs but doesn't work on the E71.  That's a shame as the screen is already the right way up (landscape rather than portrait).

There's lots I like, but the best things...

• Battery life
• GPS
• Landscape screen
• Keyboard
• Solid casing
  

What I don't like...

• Camera
• Keyboard (yes, I'm aware of saying that it was one of the best things!)
• It's a paw-print magnet
• It has connection issues with my BT headset (as do other Nokia devices I've paired with it, but it works fine indoors when stationary!)

Battery life is, quite simply, amazing.  Just today I had it running Internet Radio - listening via Bluetooth, Sports Tracker, Google Maps, Opera Mini, Mobile Mail, Jaiku and the web browser.  I even took some snaps and shot video.  Altogether the screen must've been on permanently for a few hours, Opera and the web browser all of this time too.  Still plenty of juice.  I've never known a handset that could handle all that for that long and not start giving me those beeping warnings!  Battery life is in many ways the most important thing about a portable device - after all, you can't use a battery powered device on the go without battery power!

GPS works quickly and without fuss (well, without much fuss!) It gets a lock even in the living room.  Is that down to A-GPS?  Probably, but I don't care what it's down to as long as it works!  Both the E71 and 6220 have shown me how measly and pathetic the N95 8GB's GPS is.

The landscape screen is perfect for browsing and watching video.  More phones should have them, it saves having to constantly change orientation.

The keyboard is weird.  Why?  Well as I type I'm convinced my giant thumbs are hitting everything but the key intended, yet I rarely make a mistake.  Once you get used to it you can zoom along.

Nice solid casing compared to any other phone I've used (well at least of those that I can think of).  Ironically, because it is so solid I'd hate to think of what would happen if I were to drop it.  Fortunately there's little chance of that as the casing is quite 'grippy' compared to, um, the 6220 (which did slip out of my hand from time to time!)

With all those plus points, it's a shame that the camera is a real let down.  Darker colours produce stripy patterns and I haven't figured out how the auto focus works (there's no indication as to the camera doing it as far as I can see).  Also, despite the really good GPS, there's no location tagger built-in.

Back to the keyboard... it could be laid out better - but I don't know how!  The most confusing aspect of it is that it's not immediately clear whether you're in shifted mode or not and slightly off-topic... the pasting of copied text doesn't work (perhaps user error?)

The metallic battery cover is a huge fingerprint magnet.  Minor niggle, but still a slightly annoying one.  Fortunately you tend not to look at the back of a phone, so it doesn't matter too much.

There's connection issues with my Sony A2DP Bluetooth headphones.  This seems to be a common theme with Nokia phones and may just be down to the way the two different companies follow BT specifications.  The 3 Skypephone has some problems too, but nothing quite as bad.

This is 'work in progress' and I'm still not 100% sure this actually works - so far it seems to but anyhoo...

I have lots of problems with streaming audio via the internet connection on my phone (an N95 8GB) and the loaner from WOM World (Nokia 6220 Classic).  I have no idea how HSDPA (aka 3.5G) works, but for some reason I had a hunch that turning it off may improve matters.  I did so last night (on the 6220) and my streaming problems seem to have gone away.

I even managed to stream two radio stations at the same time and neither dropped the connection in the 10 minutes I had them going.

Living really close to an HSDPA enable 3 UK mast, it would seem counterintuitive to turn HSDPA off - but if it works, it works!