I made it to v20.0.015!
Yep, another N95 post.
Tired of waiting for T-Mobile to come out with the latest firmware (see my recent post) I decided to take the plunge and debrand my N95. Thanks to an article by adonisdemon here, I found following the instructions quite straightforward, though I did hit a couple of minor problems.
Based on his instructions, I followed a fairly simple step plan, as follows:
- Note which applications I use/have installed. Make sure I know where the install kits are, or can be located. Make a note of the T-Mobile VoiceMail number - this setting will be lost! (See Tools/Call Mailbox)
- Backup the phone, using PC Suite. This is with the old Product Code, just in case.
- Install the NSS software.
- Connect the phone to the PC (note: close down PC Suite or NSS won't find the phone)
- Update the Product Code using NSS (I opted for EURO 1 SAND - 0534851)
- Power Cycle the phone Off/On - I had to do this as I was having problems backing up the phone contents at this point.
- Backup the phone contents again using PC Suite, Do it twice just in case. This backup has the new Product Code.
- Offer up a libation to the gods, and Upgrade the Firmware...
- Restore the backup from point 7. As long as the restore works, delete or otherwise lose the backup from point 2 - it will 'brick' the phone if you try to restore this onto the new Product Code.
- Add in the Voicemail Number again.
At this point, I was assured all would be well with my world. And it would have been, but most of my applications were now missing. Never mind, I had point 1 above to fall back on. It's an unpleasant task, but at least it gave me a chance to review all the stuff I'd installed. Do I really use it all? Are there any alternatives?
I decided to bite the bullet and give Shozu another go, as I'd had some comms problems earlier today with Share Online 3.0. My previous attempts at using Shozu were abortive, as mixed with Vox Mobile, the two conspired to kill video recording on my phone. I've come to the conclusion that T-Mobile must have been the culprit, as initial tests show that Shozu and Vox Mobile can live happily together on this firmware. In fact, they can both also live happily with the Location Tagger beta running as well! So far, I've tested Shozu uploads to Vox and Flickr (geotagged, yay!!), and I've uploaded a test video stream to Qik. I've not reloaded Kyte at this point - for my purposes I see no need at the moment with Qik installed, though that may change later.
All my other apps are now installed, all my settings for contacts, email accounts etc have all been retained, and with the Demand Paging in this version of the firmware, it's fun seeing how many I can run concurrently now. Something I only dreamed of with the T-Mobile firmware in place.
Oh, and the phone can still make phone calls! :-)
Differences I've noticed?
- The Web'nWalk button is now Music (I've changed it back to 'Web'). I've lost the T-Mobile home page, and starting the web now leads to a bookmarks page.
- Sliding out the music controls doesn't bring up that hideous circular menu thing - it just rotates the screen display.
- There are some additional options on the menus - including an N-Gage application that I've not fired up yet, and others that look equally intruiging.
Comments
The only problem I noticed yesterday is that emTube was much slower downloading than usual, and the Play button didn't appear at the 6-7% mark like it usually does. I'll try to take another look at that today.
I'd shied away from Shozu too, but now there's no compatibility issue, it seems to do the job. The only reason I didn't go with Share Online 3.0 is that the betalabs page says that 2.0 must be removed first, and I couldn't see it in the Manage Apps list! So safer than sorry, I've left 2.0 alone for now.
I use Google maps - I don't really need the 'satnav' directions from the phone, having a perfectly good in-car satnav. I also have some areas of the country covered by ViewRanger - expensive, but you get the OS maps down to field boundary level!
Excellent work.
re: Share Online - I've consistently had problems with it since 'upgrading' to v3.0 - hence the jump to ShoZu... I've been really impressed so far.
Oh and V21 will be out soon.. ;)
emTube measures the average download speed and only puts up the play icon when it calculates it can play the movie uninterupted until the end. As such a slow connection to youtube or t-mobile will postpone the icon appearance.
In the Netherlands a Yellow Pages application is part of Nokia Search with a direct tie-in to Nokia Maps. It's more up-to-date since it works online. Also I use Nokia Maps to calculate driving times from A to B while planning a trip. No need to get into my car.
If you like google maps, try mgmaps too, it's real spiffy. It does satellite and regular maps. Still the POI in Nokia Maps is more extensive. And seems well oriented for playing tourist and reconnoitering a city with minimal sole wear.
Personally I like Map24's mobile app best next to Nokia maps. It's incredible smooth zooming and has a extreme low datausage with everything being vector-info.It does route planning and gives traffic info as Nokia Maps 2.0 is rumored to provide too. POI is not near Nokia's volume but fancier then most others. Map24 has no sattelite yet.
I tried mgmaps some time ago, but I'll stick with Google for now. My map needs are fairly simple - navigation is actually the last thing I use them for!
Share Online wouldn't install - it must be in fiormwarre, but it's now upgraded, so I now have a choice when upoading of Vox, Shozu, and SO. I 've got the best of all worlds there :-)
T-mobile in the netherlands has not yet given me connection problems. I can run skype or SIP over the connection. Though it is to slow, the data-rate is low but unlimited. I use web-n-walk mostly for contineous e-mail and web browsing, downloading voicemail (.wav-file send via e-mail). A 100 MB movie upload to youtube over 64 kbps 3G... Ouch, I'd rather check-in at a wifi-point.
Still I'd like to have 1.8 Mbps connection from vodafone would be nice. But they put data and protocol restrictions. Perhaps you could install ssh on the N95. If they did a full implementation you could tunnel a relay-connection to a home ssh-server and from there to the world. You could even securely connect to the home uPnP servers and fix all your problems. I hate companies blocking ports or protocols or interupting my streaming connection. T-mobile seems to be the most pure.
For the homepage issue, go into the Web, settings, general, homepage if you want to change it.