Symbiosis60

After a L-O-N-G wait Nokia finally released long awaited update for N95-3 (the US edition of N95 basic). Unfortunately Vista users are out of luck as Nokia removed vista support temporarily from the updater software. Sweat no more...there's always an XP machine around so yesterday I stayed long(er) at work just to get the update rolling. The update itself was flawless...it took about 5 minutes to download the 113 MB file and then about 5 more minutes for the update itself

The first thing that I noticed was the start up time. GREATLY reduced; around 20 seconds from power on to a "ready for take off" mode. The new firmware introduced demand paging. I won't get into the explanation of it (just click the link to read more) but essentially what it does is it gives you more memory to run the whole OS / applications. How much more you ask... I'd say as much as 90% more. Before I had only about 30-40 MB of ram left after a clean restart with Shozu running in the background. After the update I now have 81.30 MB free. Amazing. One thing I need to mention is that I downloaded the most recent version of Shozu which seems to be updated (now it boasts 4.0.56 version) recently where the previous one was a step or two older. Either way demand paging rocks. Another great improvement is the camera start up. As most bloggers have reported this was reduced by a GRAND number of seconds. You no longer need to wait 8-10 seconds for the start up. Press and hold the camera button and voila...a 2..that's TWO seconds of time to get the camera up... Lights, action...rolling....now you can do that. This will allow you to capture your child before the food spews out of its mouth vs capturing the vomit dripping all over their bib.

There are other things which I like. One would be the "semi standardization" of the home screen. The old firmware did not have search or share online plug in appearing on the stand by screen. I wrote about this in my previous posts (N81 review) and hoped that such features (home screen plug ins) would be uniform among all devices. Well...we're slowly getting there. You can't select which plug ins appear on the stand by screen just like it's possible in the E-series) but it's a step in the right direction. The menu structure has changed a bit where Podcasting application is now a part of music player; it's no longer a stand alone application and is nicely implemented into the player. Some folders were moved around. Before there was an Office folder on the main menu screen; this was moved to applications and is now replaced by N-Gage shortcut. It's not a very drastic change - no worries - nobody will get lost. And if it's not to ones liking, it's possible to move everything as needed. Interestingly Nokia did not include share 3.0 or Maps 2.0 applications which are now Nokia Labs graduates but again it's S60...it's a PC in a phone form factor so it's very easy to update everything. Web browser has been updated as well with Flash 3.0 which allows you to watch YouTube videos on the desktop version of the site (not the mobile one). As I'll be using my phone in the next few days I'll try to pinpoint the changes and will add them but for now I give it a thumbs up
and recommend that you find that old fashioned XP machine and get the update on your phone asap.