I've read a lot of reviews and posts the last two days about how fabulous the lates firmware (12.0.013) is. So first the good news.

This release adds support for AGPS (Assisted GPS uses the data network in tandem with the satellites), speeding response time (and arguably accuracy) slightly. I'm not a heavy GPS user on the N95. In fact, I have to force myself to use it, so I can't really speak to this. The GPS has been lethargic and largely unimpressive other than that fact that it exists.

Support for Flash 9 in the browser now is supposed to redned videos more quickly. I don't watch a lot of video on the N95, so I haven't noticed anything. It all worked pretty well for me before.

SDHC support has been added, allowing larger capacity memory.

What I find problematic is, frankyl the memory management still sucks. Badly. The N95 runs fine bare bones, or at least it seems to. But one of the strengths is the extensibility, which frankly doesn't work any more. I think the OS is consuming more resources taht ever, precluding the ability of thrid party programs to work effectively.

I've added Jaiku (beta), TalkPlus (beta) and a screenshot capture program. A day or so before I did the firmware upgrade learned that Shozu had released a new version and had an official N95 release. I loaded it and it worked fine, so I left it installed. I've had a number of problems with Shozu in the past.

In the upgraded N95, memory isn't just at a premium, it's a painfully scarce resource. Jaiku and Shozu are both programs that run in background. With them running, over half the time the Gmail app won't run. It simply says there isnt' enough memory. Most of the time the camera won't function unless I shut Jaiku down. I leave Shozu running because it's picture management software. Then when I'm done with pictures, I manually restart Jaiku.

I haven't tried running GPS so Shozu can geotag and take pictures, but I'm inclined to think it won't work. It certainly won't work reliably.

The N95 is the iPhone's biggest threat. It offers all the things the iPhone fails to deliver. I'm not interested in the iPhone myself because most of my work is business work. A Blackberry or another Windows Mobile device would be more useful to me than an iPhone. The N-series presents a middle ground that brings broad potential.

I'm disappointed that Nokia failed to deliver and left the door open for even deeper penetration of the inferior iPhone in the market. Nokia had a window of opportunity to really raise the bar, and from what I see, they failed to deliver.


Technorati Tags: Nokia, N95, Jaiku, TalkPlus, Shozu