Using a Nokia N95 - features I'd love to see.

["Andraž 'ruskie' Levstik"]

On 14:30:19 2008-08-10 Stroller <stroller at stellar.eclipse.co.uk>
wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> I visited one of my customers yesterday - he has just got an  
> "upgrade" to a Nokia N95 and wanted it set up to transfer his
photos
> to his laptop.
> 
> Many aspects of using the phone reminded me why I hate mobile
phones.
> Once a mail account has been added there is no way to change its  
> name  - I initially spelled "aol email" in small letters, so in
order
> to make its title neat on the phone's homescreen ("AOL Email") I
had
> to delete the account completely and recreate it. I bought the  
> Freerunner so that I can fix stuff like this by editing a text
file.
> The N95 fails to create a mail account half the time you enter the  
> details, falling silently back to the mailboxes screen without an  
> entry for the new account you just tried to setup.
> 
> Orange, my customer's mobile phone provider, have installed a
utility
> to upload your photos to your "blog" account on their website, and  
> every time you take a photo it comes up with an annoying menu
asking
> if you want to do so. As free software zealots you may be
interested
> to read that whilst Googling on how to disable this menu I came  
> across a number of forum posts and news articles complaining how
the
> UK providers Orange & O2 have removed the N95's VoIP application
from
> their software builds, for obvious reasons. I never quite managed
to
> work out how to remove the Orange Blog Gallery software completely,

> as it's not shown in the phone's application manager. You are able
to
> remove the annoying pop-up menu, however, by choosing the "upload"  
> option, agreeing to the long and small-printed terms-of-use and
then
> cancelling out of the operation. Only after that is there an option

> present, so you're not able to remove this menu if you refuse to  
> accept the terms of use for their software. I find this sort of
non-
> obvious behaviour - for me it is logical to ask "do you wish to  
> disable the feature?" when I decline an agreement - the ideal way
to
> piss me off.
> 
> Another reminder of why I hate mobile phones was the connection  
> options. I told the phone always to get mail by 3G (and always to  
> ignore the user's home wireless network and any others) because the

> choice was to set one specific network or to ask every time which  
> network to use. The connection options included "Orange Internet"
and
> a confusing array of about half a dozen other "Orange ..." options.

> Previous mobile phones of mine have had a similar number of options

> included by O2 - "O2 Web And Walk", "O2 Mobile Web", "O2 GPRS", and

> so on. This completely baffles me, as I would expect only one
option
> for internet over mobile phone networks (and another for wifi). Why

> so many? I could surely work out what is going on if I spent enough

> time at it, but I am reluctant to delete all the
apparently-spurious
> options without knowing what they're for, and my technically- 
> challenged customer should not reasonably be expected to select the

> right one time after time.
> 
> Anyway, on to the stuff that is REALLY COOL about this phone. I  
> apologise if this is old hat to everyone else, but for me (even
after
> I discovered the N95 model is at least 9 months old) it was an eye- 
> opener into what modern mobile phones do these days.
> 
> Firstly under wifi is an option to wake up the WLAN module every X  
> minutes and scan for networks. As far as I understand the N95's  
> configuration, this isn't presently as useful as it ought to be.
But
> on an Openmoko device we could surely configure wifi to
automatically
> be used for services whenever available. The waking of the wifi  
> module (and then, presumably, putting it back to sleep) allows full

> wifi versatility, however, without the battery consumption of
having
> it on all the time.
> 
> Secondly, mail settings also have an option to connect every XX  
> minutes, with the option to only do so on "home" phone networks (to

> avoid roaming charges). I have been wishing for this since getting
my
> Sony Ericsson P990i, which requires a manual check of my IMAP  
> accounts. Obviously one only uses a manual email check when one is  
> waiting on a particularly important or urgent message, and one
tends
> only to do this on a mobile phone when one wants to check quickly.  
> For me, at least, this isn't a daily occurrence, so my P990i has to

> spend ages synchronising the last 3 weeks' worth of messages across

> GPRS before its able to tell me whether the important message has  
> arrived (or not) yet. But on the N95 you're alerted immediately  
> (checks can be scheduled every 5 minutes) if a new email has come
in
> - it doesn't need "push technology" for this to be as seamless as
SMS
> alerts, as long as you have an unlimited data plan.
> 
> I guess my big question is whether this is what the dbus stuff
(that
> Openmoko are developing) is all about? A mail program needs to be  
> able to check to see if any usable wifi networks are available and
to
> wake GPRS (and tell it to dial) if not. Obviously if one has to
call
> `modprobe` and `iwscan` then the process is a bit non-portable -
this
> is the one software feature that I really want Openmoko to provide
> 
> I'm sorry if I'm "not with it", but I've never had a mobile phone  
> that will properly alert me the moment a new email comes in and  
> (especially since vgetty on my home Linux box will answer the phone
&
> email an MP3 of an answerphone message to me) it is quite a killer  
> feature for me.
> 
> Stroller.

I'm a N95 user and other than the above mentioned(btw getting rid of
the
branded software needs for one to rebrand the phone as generic) the
one
thing
I actually like about my phone is that it's a phone... it has a
keypad I
can quickly enter data with without needing to look at it. I love the
slider design. So what I would like to see is a N95 sized or maybe a
bit
bigger
slider phone with a proper keypad but running Openmoko on it...


--
Andraž "ruskie" Levstik
Source Mage GNU/Linux Games grimoire guru
Geek/Hacker/Tinker

Be sure brain is in gear before engaging mouth.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodies.
Ryle hira.

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