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Contributor Sergio Aguayo lives in Peru. When not programming in PHP or Java, he is usually seeking new interesting things to do on his Nokia N95-3.

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Review: Nokia N95-3 Firmware 20.2.011

June 4th, 2008 • Sergio Aguayo • Filed Under •

After long delays finally Nokia released a firmware update for the Nokia N95 NAM (N95-3). I updated my phone as soon as the Nokia Software Updater told me about it. So far the experience has been mixed in my case.

Nokia N95-3

Demand Paging

This update at last implements on-demand paging on this device. The effect is quite noticeable: with the old firmware I had 70MB RAM free, while I now have 83MB. Note that this includes the antivirus. Besides the obvious free RAM, I also feel the phone more responsive and with a better startup time. Another performance improvement I have noticed is in the camera startup and processing time. Now it is really usable.

Flash

Also in this update if Flash Lite 3, the long awaited Flash update for this model. Functionality is now up to the experience described for the N95 8GB. I could watch some videos from within the web browser.

Browser

However there are some bad points in this update. The web browser is somewhat unstable, crashing sometime when I enter to Settings. Also I have a bug with WLANs which makes the phone not recognize a WLAN I have defined and asks the access details again. This creates another access point in the Access Point configuration in the form of “MyWLAN (1)”. This wasn’t there in any previous version (11.x, 10.x).

Menu

I liked the way the menus were in previous versions. They didn’t change from 10.x to 11.x. However in this version they have gone, in my opinion, a somewhat big redesign. While they are better organized, it adds extra clicks to get where you want. Anyway, you could tweak your menu to make it appear similar to previous versions.

Developers

If you’re a developer you’ll have problems with on-device debug. I recommend installing AppTRK version 2.8.9 (which comes with Carbide.C++ 1.3.1), as previous versions will not work.

Conclusion

All said, I think this update is worth installing as it enhances performance and includes some nice new features. It would be nice if Nokia released this kind of upgrades more frequently, specially for high-end models such as this one. Well done Nokia!

There are 3 articles linking to this post

  1. New review about Nokia N95-3(v20.2.011) | Adobe Flash Lite
  2. WOM World / Nokia » Blog Archive - N95-3 firmware update – a closer look
  3. NSeries US Daily News 06/05/08 | Getting more from your Nokia N-Series phone!

There are 8 comments so far. »

  1. neil on 5 June 2008:

    re: browser problem
    try performing a soft reset..

    Reply to this comment

  2. Micky on 5 June 2008:

    Great review Sergio.!

    Reply to this comment

  3. Maciek on 6 June 2008:

    Mark,

    It’s also worth pointing out that PTT and the IMPS IM client are gone..which frankly angered me a little (IMPS) since I was using IMPS server for IM on my phone. It’s a pity that Nokia chooses to remove a tiny bit of software code that people may use Yet S60 is not gaining anything by dropping it. In my opinion they should make it available in Download section.

    Reply to this comment

  4. Sergio Aguayo on 7 June 2008:

    Maciek,

    I made the review based on an unbranded N95-3. If you have a branded one, you may or may not have all the options. In my case i have PTT, even if my carrier doesn’t support it.

    Reply to this comment

  5. Frank on 7 June 2008:

    Sergio,
    thanks for your information.
    After the update, I got a problem with my map / navigation. After I start navigation, the map program stops complete. The same after trying to purchess a new navigation.
    Can you confirm that? Or do you have any solution for me?

    Thanks

    Reply to this comment

  6. Rasika on 7 June 2008:

    @ Maciek:

    I too agree with you on the IMPS issue. I was also an IM user.. and now its gone!

    Reply to this comment

  7. Sergio Aguayo on 8 June 2008:

    @ Frank:

    Sadly, my city (Lima in Peru) isn’t in Nokia maps so i can’t say anything about maps really. All i can say is that it gives my current position and doesn’t hang.

    Reply to this comment

  8. Cezar on 29 June 2008:

    Sergio,
    Does the menu have the option to animate the icons and change the icon size?

    Also, have you found out any new changes on the firmware update?

    Thanks for the review!

    Reply to this comment

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