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!

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It's been an uncharacteristically warm evening here and almost too unbearable indoors.  What better excuse does one need to pick up a football and head for the park?  I brought my two youngest nephews with me and after a bit of a kick around I handed them my phone and got them running.  I explained to them that the grass was like paper and they were the pencils and off they went drawing.  Here are the results...

Running 'round with rascals

We also had a contest to see how fast we could run.  I was the fastest despite a dodgy ankle and er, less than ideal physical form.  To be fair though, one nephew has club feet and the other is just five.  Despite everything, I've always been able to run very fast over very short distances.  Not exactly the most useful skill in the world as I collapse into a pile after about 50 metres...

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Sometimes things seem obvious to me and sometimes I'm completely unaware of what everyone else thinks is obvious.  Where am I going with this?  All About Symbian (for those unfamiliar, they report about all things Symbian - think Nokia Nseries handsets etc) have posted about the fact you can use the multimedia keys on the N95 as handheld console-like gaming buttons whilst playing games.  I never thought about blogging about my "discovery" of this as I just figured I'd stumbled upon the obvious!

Maybe there's a case for Nokia's N-Gage people to advertise this? Yes, the Nokia N95 DOES have gaming keys

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I got an email earlier from MyMemory (the online retailer, not my actual memory - that would be crazy!)  The main thing they were trying to hock was a SanDisk SDHC card.  The interesting thing about that was it prominently features what appears to be a Nokia N95 8GB next to it.  Why's that interesting?  The N95 8GB doesn't take memory cards! 

How not to advertise a product

Maybe Nokia released (or is releasing) a black version of the original N95 (the one that does take cards)?  And perhaps they're styling it on the 8GB version, not the original?  Still, I think it would've been wiser to have placed a picture of the most popular phone out at the moment that takes MicroSDHC cards to avoid any confusion!

A penny under £21 delivered would appear to be a good deal though... if your device accepts these!

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Over the past few weeks I've become increasingly annoyed by my phone's problem with streaming audio.  Whilst my N95 8GB is connected to WiFi it can play internet radio streams fine, on 3G it's a very different situation.  Buffer, buffer, bu... f... f... e.. .. ..

I used to be able to listen with barely a problem.  Occasionally I got the odd second or two of buffering - but often listened for over an hour without even one blip.  My trusty old N73 even managed fine and that didn't have super fast 3.5G.

It's got really annoying now though and I've had enough!  I want to find out what the root of the problem is and fix it.  I've got great reception where I use my phone most, so that doesn't seem to be the problem.  I have a phone which is supposedly cutting edge, has lots of memory and supports HSDPA - so that shouldn't be the problem.  It's gotta be the network right?  They must be the ones that are throttling my connection, it has to be...

...that's what I thought anyway but I've just discovered it can't be.  Why?  I've just had my phone hooked up to my Eee PC and have been streaming the same stations, same streams that I attempted earlier on my phone and had completely different results.  Listening on my phone I suffered buffering problems every couple of mins on average.  Listening on my laptop to the same stations, using the same connection, I had no problems at all (well that's not entirely true but one station I tried is useless on anything other than my home broadband).

So it looks like there's something wrong with my Nokia and I need to suss it out.  Why does the phone need to buffer a stream on the handset but dosn't need to when it passes the connection on to the laptop?  It makes no sense!

Nokia Internet Radio seems to suffer worse than S60 Internet Radio.  Anyone got any ideas why?  Anyone else having similar problems?

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How not to demo something

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I don't think anyone has reviewed the AC adapter that comes with the Nokia N95 8GB before and I don't think anyone ever will!  The next best thing is a few pictures showing you how small the UK one is - it's actually smaller than a regular UK plug!

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That's as catchy a title as I can come up with.  However, like Ronseal, it does what it says on the tin!

These were taken whilst out on a run (okay, it was mostly a walk!) and are perhaps even blurrier than they should be as my hands were like icicles!

The N95 8GB is great for daily exercise as you can fit a ton of music on it, listen to podcasts, have up-to-the-minute weather forecasts and, of course, use the likes of Sports Tracker, Activity Monitor and Wellness Diary.  If you don't need to worry too much about the path ahead, you can even do some web browsing, watch some video or do a little IM-ing!

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