Smoothplanet » n95

New tools

jerome — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 09:11:36 +0000

I thought that my iPhone was broken yesterday night. I plugged it on my computer to charge it and synch it with iTunes for my weekly dose of podcasts and the screen turned suddenly black (”à la” windows blue screen) and that’s it, no way to switch on again.

I had to quickly found alternatives tools… on the left an iPod 1st gen (I bet you have not seen one of this for quite some time mmh ?), and on the right an HTC Magic phone. Both needed to be charged but are working just fine. The Android phone gets the preference over my good old N95 because I wanted to take the opportunity of trying out “new” Google OS.

It actually appears that a hard reboot was enough to heal my iPhone. I did not think of it at first because I am used to simply remove the battery on my N95 but it does seem quite obvious now (more and more often I do really wonder if I am really an engineer…).

I have to admit that I was a bit scarred to live without my iPhone but despite its recovery I will be testing the HTC Magic for a while… and might report here my thoughts.

iPhone feedbacks (cont’d)

jerome — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 08:06:07 +0000

So I finally had to use it because of a problem with my N95. I will fix it that but in the meantime I started using the iPhone as a phone… here are some feedbacks (pros and cons):

Synchronisation is not automatic and it needs cable. Once I overcame my problem with iTunes not recognizing my iPhone on my laptop I needed to set up the synchronisation between the device and my agenda/contact (hosted on Outlook). It worked but unfortunately it requires me to plug the device on my laptop and launch the synch manually. The setup with my N95 was just perfect, the synchronisation was done over Bluetooth and scheduled every hour. No need to think about and this how it should be imho.
SMS, it still takes me more time to write SMS than on my N95 but I love the way SMS are displayed, as a discussion (some application from Nokia Labs, “Conversation”, allowed me to do that but it was installed by default)
Browsing the web… is awesome! It definitively validates the use of web tablet. iPhone’s browser can handle any webpage but it is much more user friendly to use iPhone (or more generally mobile) adapted website!
Always connected device. Everything is done to use a maximum of datas online, no wonder the operators like the iPhone. The mapping application for instance will not let me download a set of them locally on my phone as far as I know. Meaning that when travelling abroad I will be forced to use datas network! Nokia Maps lets me upload the datas from my computer.
The app store is neat,… but I have not found one killing application… too much buzz there!

More later…

First weeks with an iPhone

jerome — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:00:28 +0000

I did it. Few weeks back I bought the iPhone 3G… I had to find out what this is all about and I have to admit that this is quite a nice device (and it comes from a Nokia fan :-).

I am still using my Nokia N95 as my main phone for three main reasons:

I have not yet found the time to synch my agenda/contacts with Outlook (for some reason my iPhone is not recognised by iTunes on my laptop)
Lack of connectivity while traveling. I use my laptop in the train to work and I like to be connected at the same time (through Bluetooth with my N95 as a 3G modem). I am not quite sure but my understanding is that I will not be able to do that with the iPhone.
Battery life sucks… we have heard lot of complaints about Nokia’s battery, but the iPhone one is worse than any other one

There are more and more iPhone/mobile dedicated website which makes the browsing experience on a mobile device really pleasant. Being able to browse normal website is nice (especially with the zoom in-out feature) but not perfect.

To complete the iPhone experience I should try to use it as my main phone and actually use all the phone features… will come back once this is done :-)

N95: hard reset and lock code

jerome — Wed, 28 May 2008 09:04:13 +0000

For some unknown and weird reasons I could not get and send SMS from my N95 phone, neither could I access my logs. Very annoying and I had to go through an hard reset to fix that… here is the process:

Backup the content with Nokia PC Suite (which get better every day)
*#7370# Soft reset code (restore factory setting but do not loose any applications/datas), did not do the job, still unable the sms/logs problems.
*#7780# Hard reset code (loose everything…) did the job (source #)
FYI the default lock code is “12345″ (source #)
Restore the content with Nokia PC Suite, which I actually did not do, a new synchronisation with Outlook did the job for me (really awesome!)

Switching on the phone I got more than 20 SMS that were waiting for delivery… weird!!

No update for my N95

jerome — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 09:23:48 +0000

I have been waiting for quite some time to upgrade the firmware of my N95. I am running version 11.0.026, and the lastest version is 21.0.016 something… There are many improvements, amongst them using A-GPS would allow me to get the GPS signal in 5 seconds instead the 15 minutes currently,… but the Software Updater tells me I can not, one reason being that my operator does not have the latest approved firmware.
I had a call a few weeks ago with Swisscom consummer service and they told me that they do not provide the new firmware because they were not happy with it and they were still testing it (while the rest of the world can get it). Sucks!

QR Code stickers with MOO

jerome — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 09:17:08 +0000

I get yesterday my stickers from MOO. I wanted to test out the service and thought I could give it a try to print out QR Codes stickers…

Kinda cool… one remark though if you want to do the same, make sure there is enough white space around the QR Code you are uploading on MOO because stickers have rounded corners. Once out of the book my QR codes are not complete any more (part of the corners is missing) and they do not work :-(
Good to know…

I was pleasantly surprised to find a datamatrix on the cover of the stickerbook…

I scanned it with the built-in reader of my Nokia N95 and here is the result:

Testing N95… and its mobilecode reader

jerome — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 11:29:02 +0000

Remember. I am currently testing this device as we have one at work for our developments. I might buy it but I had the opportunity to test it first… all good. The N95 comes with a mobilecodes reader in it and it is actually the first time that I could test Nokia mobilecodes reader. Quite good!

N95… so long

jerome — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 16:29:26 +0000

This one will be mine… the dreamed one!

Nokia N95 Availability: maybe in the first quarter of 2007(#)