Personal

A funny thing happened to me recently: after being contacted by Nokia WOM World about testing out a N95-4 — The US edition of the N95 8GB — I was then contacted by Shozu to inform me that I had just won one of them by taking part in one of their surveys. (Lesson being, having an offer in a survey works for everyone!) Naturally, I wrote WOM World back to tell them to move on to the next blogger on their list… but of course, I still planned on writing about the differences in the phone. (Again, works for everyone!)

Really, who needs another unboxing/side-by-side photo gallery of these two phones? There are loads of them out there; in fact, here’s the standard vs. 8GB N95 photos you may need to reference for my post, if you’re not familiar with the phones. But like I said, I just plan on writing about it.

(Just to note, there were many changes between the original N95 and the N95-3 when it was finally released for the States, and the N95 8GB models share those improvements. So you won’t be reading much about, oh, the loss of the camera lens cover or the extra memory because the N95-3 had the same adjustments.)

When the phone finally arrived, I migrated myself off the N95-3. While the Switch app in the phone worked great for moving Notes and SMS/MMS between the two, I did not move any Contacts or Calendars data. I let a round-trip through iSync handle that, since I consider my Mac to be the master source of such data, and iSync is such a great app. (I did need to download a new driver for the 8GB from the Nokia iSync page first, but that took no time to do.)

Bookmarks copied over but they did not show up sorted the way I had them originally, and as you may know, reordering bookmarks is extremely cumbersome in S60 because of its mark-then-command model combined with the Bookmarks commands being in a sub-menu. S60 menuing is almost always contextual, so I did not understand why some of these commands weren’t surfaced higher once bookmarks were selected (This is a subject for another post, however).

Now that I was up and running, I was struck by how similar they are overall. The screen is bigger, but only slightly so, and while I did feel like the screen was now easily equal-to (if not better) than one on an iPod classic, it didn’t feel so superior to the N95-3’s that it made me say wow or anything. It is definitely nicer to look at, to be clear, but it’s just a modest increase. I think some people say that it has a new daylight-readable screen, but I would have to take their word for it. It was a little easier to read, maybe, but in most of those situations there still is enough overall light and glare to make the screen hard to read, like any other electronic device in the sun. So while there is a little more heft to the N95-4, there was no major moment where I really felt like I had a totally new phone in my hand — the feel is that close. For obvious reasons.

The other big hardware difference are the keys on the face of the device. While the tactility of the keys are vastly improved over the N95-3, they are smaller and more cramped, making them a little hard to press accurately. This may be something I get used to, because I had similar reactions to the -3’s keys when I first got it, but they no longer get in my way.

The directional key is the most improved, finally feeling like its edges are raised enough to get a thumb on it quickly and move it easier. The center button also feels taller and is easier to press. Overall, gaming on this phone will get a little boost over the N95-3 because of these directional key improvements.

The menu and multimedia keys are also rounded and raised, which helps since they are much smaller. This is a big difference from the N95-3, where these buttons were treated more like negative space within the perimeter of the other buttons on the phone’s face. I miss those larger, flatter keys mostly because of the differentiation of feel and what that meant (these were modal buttons whereas the others were commands) but again, not a problem… just a preference.

However, I do think the soft keys are too small. Really. Most of the times I hit the soft keys to accept dialogs or unlock the phone and I don’t actually believe I pushed them, because they just don’t “give” enough when pressed and I don’t feel like I pressed on them directly.

On the whole, that was it. Most everything else was improved, and they were really the small software touches that a new firmware might have brought to the N95-3. For example, podcasts would now remember their playback point if you stopped them earlier. No more would I need to memorize a timecode and fast-forward through an hour to get back to where I was. And I even like the new panel system that the multimedia key launches. However, there are still bugs that have been left undone, such as requiring a data connection when reading downloaded RSS feeds: if there is an embedded photo, the phone will try to connect, but if you cancel, the Web Feed application QUITS. It doesn’t just let you read the feed WITHOUT PHOTOS.

The biggest thing to note is that is has Flash Lite 3, which means Flash Video support in the browser. However, leaving Flash fully-enabled made the browser crash on almost every Flash-heavy page I visited. Changing it to “images only” still allows you to click on Flash embeds and play the file in-page or in the Flash Player app on the phone, which worked much better. But desktop oriented Flash on a phone sized device is just not satisfying and not a good experience — choppy, slow, wrongly sized. For the desperate it will work, but it’s more of a back-up “just in case I have to access a Flash-driven site” type of feature. But it’s honestly just not that useful or necessary a feature.

I have yet to fill up the -3’s memory card, so doubling my card into 8GBs of built-in storage hasn’t been a notable change to me at all. Really, I have never swapped multiple memory cards into any device. I buy one card per each, be it a Memory Stick Duo for the PSP, or my CF card for my SLR, and it stays in the device all the time unless I’m transferring files to my computer and I couldn’t find a USB cable. I’m also not one of those people who travel with two or three cards for a device, so the fact that the N95-3 has a MicroSD slot wasn’t more valuable to me in comparison to a phone with non-upgradable storage.

So overall: the N95 8GB is a great phone, but it’s only a modest upgrade from the N95-3. You’re not going to miss out too much except for the software updates, which could still come to -3 if Nokia ever gets their ass in gear. It comes down to the memory card most of all, and if you have money invested in MicroSD, then your choice should be pretty clear.

More to come.

In May of 2006, I threw away standard television and launched uncabled.info. Today, the writings of Uncabled return as part of teradome.com, thanks to the helpful folks in #drupal, who found a solution for importing the site into my regular blog here. (You might find that some post that point back into earlier Uncabled posts will break due to the move. I’ll do my best to update them as I find them.)

In case you missed the launch of Uncabled, I’ve republished the About/manifesto page that the site kicked off with after the break. The internet TV-focused site will return someday, in a newer, non-redundant, more useful form. But you’ll find my reviews and musings right here, on Teradome, where they belong.

So here I am… a NetNewsWire lover with a dissatisfaction with NewsGator Online and NewsGator Mobile. I’m also a little disappointed with FeedDemon (which NewsGator bought as their Windows RSS client) which I use at my office. It’s close to NNW in features, but just not the same in the few ways I use NNW the most. I can’t view any aggregation that happens across all feeds — new items, flagged items, etc. I can’t do that from the mobile reader. I can do it from the web reader, however.

The experience itself is so dissimilar from app to app that what ends up happening is that I rely on the web and mobile clients the most. Even so, the web client can be slow, the views are stuck in a folder-only metaphor, and when viewing at folder levels, feeds that aren’t in those folders are somehow sneaking in. Saving an item makes the “clippings” folder look like there’s something new in it all the time, and there’s no way to make it look unread except for deleting the items themselves. The whole thing feels a bit buggy and off.

So relying on a web client basically means that I’m now seriously considering using Google Reader instead, since I’ve begun using Google Personalized Home instead of Netvibes (I know, I know, but Google’s page is just simpler, which is all I need from a “browser home” page). It’s just that I’ve never used the features that make a local client really worth having, such as keeping zillions of entries local, or reading when my laptop is off-line.

Also, when I needed my local client to auto-download files (re: “podcatching”), NNW would create a system of sub-folders for the files including a default, parent folder. That’s fine for most users, but the apps and scripts I use to folder-watch and act on new files don’t support that, so I ultimately ordered a copy of NewsFire, which auto-downloads everything into whatever folder you specify. Not to mention, these feeds are very few and specific to a single machine, so they don’t need to be integrated in a larger, always-synchronized source like NewsGator.

Now that NNW is subscription based, and it’s married to a NewsGator subscription, I can’t say that I’d pay for it again, which is sad, but I think I’m onto something here. When your needs change, it’s best to find new ways to best fill those needs, and not force old ways into new models.

Normally, I’d say I’ll miss using NNW, but I guess I already do, since I use a PC all day at work. Grrr.

…and one I think of regularly:

I have found no better way of avoiding race prejudice than to act with people of other races as if prejudice did not exist.
— Jack “Galveston” Johnson

Just added a new review of MediaCentral 2.0 over on Uncabled — it just might be my longest Uncabled post to date!

If you’ve got the time, why not take a peek?

France vs. Italy, baby! For that matter, it could be the battle of the cafes, wine, fashion senses, or snippy attitudes. Pick whichever one you want. But we’ll all be watching tomorrow, to see whose laid-back European culture gets to reign as the one of sports kings until the next World Cup. Tomorrow, even Americans will call it “Football.”