[Robbo77]

Hi all, ive just been reading through the forums and noticed the latest on the v2 firmware for the n97 so i thought i would do my own review :-) i myself live in the uk and got the n97 black on vodafone, but as i couldnt be bothered for vodafone to catch up with customer demand i decided to change the product code on the phone to get the latest firmware as i was about sick off the v11 crashing n messing about - ok, so i now have v2, it still has bugs, BUT on the good side it has the kinetic scrolling (which in my opinion should have been on the phones first release as iphones came out well before the n97, and the n97 are suppose to be its rival!!) the only bad thing about the kinetic scroling is on the ovi store, it likes to select rather then scroll, which i believe is just a corruption of 2 memory demanding features put together and they cant cope AT FIRST, cos once the page fully loads then its usually ok. ok now to the photo gallery, The photos load alot quicker and do not take ages to focus like they did before, and it doesnt freeze when one is selected, another cool thing i noticed is if you have a lot of pictures like me, when you scroll down it comes up and tells you which month they were taken, rather then have them in catorgorys like before. All in all the phone seems better, but there are still things that need fixing, SPECIALLY - NOTE TO NOKIA - THE PHONE RANDOMLY VIBRATES which is VERY annoying, it never did it on v.11 firmware, but now, the phone can be in my pocket with NO applications at all running, the keyboard is locked and the phone is in silent mode - and it will randomly just vibrate on its own, which is frustrating as you think the phone is ringing of you have a message, when its just nothing - the phone doesnt even light up when it does this. Another bad thing is - when you switch the phone on and start trying to do something straight away, it crashes, the screen goes multi coloured and resets - but it only does this if the phone has been switched off, the battery taken out, then battery back in and then switch it on. The v2 is better, infact it has stopped my n97 being chucked at a wall, because thats were it was going to go very shortly, i can live with the few minor bugs there currently is because i hope nokia will one day make a bug free n97. Oh, one more thing NOKIA, plz sort the touch out on messages and on calls - because if i open my call log, i cannot touch the missed call icon to take me to my missed call log, i have to open the keyboard and press left/right to switch through the logs, same goes for my messages, i used to be able to touch sent, receieved or drafts WHILE on my inbox, but now i cant, i have to go back to the menu and then select which one i want, come on nokia, sort urselfs out, employ 10 chinese people for a day to test your phones out before you sell them........ Any questions? feel free to ask. Robbo

[Robbo77]

all the talk about the v2 and not 1 question? lol

[zitseng]

V20 has been quite a joy for me. The touchscreen picks up presses more reliably, and the whole user interface is quicker and more responsive. The kinetic scrolling is really nice, and personally I feel it is not just eye candy, it actually makes navigating the user interface easier. The photo browser, too, seems quicker letting me scroll through my photos. Overall, the V20 update lends itself to a more positive user experience. 

[gallimar]

after 4 firmware updates for the n97 i have concluded it to be like selling a car with engine troubles. its fine in the show room, but when in the real world, it breaks down and even the doors fall off. The code has memory leaks that doesnt give back the RAM to the phone, also the photo browser doesnt display all the pictures you take until you extract them from the mass storage.

The flash is situated to close to the lens, so in smokey night clubs you get a massive white blur in your pictures

the kinetic scrolling is not smooth, its just kinetic, thats all, on a touch screen phone that crashes when taking phone calls and randomly defaults to the nokia tune ring tone. Its basically s60v3 with enough touch screen bolt ons to break its stability. 

plugging the usb in mass storage mode defaults the message settings from E:\ to C:\ without the users knowledge

I can not recommend this phone to anyone. If you pay 500 pounds for a phone and it matters to you what it can and cant do, you will discover that the n97 can actually do alot, but not well at all, it crashes, freezes and even defaults its ring tone. it fails on the basics, which is surely 10 steps backwards.

In hindsight - perfectly good hardware ruined by rubbish software - like vista

flagship? i think not.... maybe in hardware, but the software is far far from flagship even in its v2.0 stage. People need to stop praising the kinetic scrolling, it should have been there upon release, its not an upgrade, its a catchup on a alpha product sold to use for 500 quid

[psychomania]

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zitseng wrote:

V20 has been quite a joy for me. The touchscreen picks up presses more reliably, and the whole user interface is quicker and more responsive. The kinetic scrolling is really nice, and personally I feel it is not just eye candy, it actually makes navigating the user interface easier. The photo browser, too, seems quicker letting me scroll through my photos. Overall, the V20 update lends itself to a more positive user experience. 

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I feel the same way overall although i'm not that bothered about the kinetic scrolling.   I've not had any major issues or any of the defects.  Never had a single crash when answering or ending a call on any firmware version either.

 

At the moment i'm finding the N97 to be fast, stable, reliable and i'm still very happy with the build quality. Not a single hairline scratch to be found, not unlike my previous phones after 3 months (5800 & N96).

 

My only gripe at the moment are the pre-installed apps that cannot be removed.  They should have been on the mass memory or not included at all. 

[gallimar]

Had many crashes in general, not just answering a phone call? What happens when you take round 25 pictures one after the other? do you find it doesnt give the RAM back? stable and reliable it is not. Are you a heavy user psycho?

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psychomania wrote:

 At the moment i'm finding the N97 to be fast, stable, reliable

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[psychomania]

I'm a variable user, some days heavy, other days light, most days somewhere in between. 

I took around 50-75pics in one day (whilst out on a walk in the country) just after v20 and I can't say that I noticed any drop in performance.  One thing that I do not do is check figures such as available ram.  I base my opinions on how a phone feels and to me it still felt the same before and after the pics.

In general i've had very few crashes and only one since updating to v20.  That is probably why my opinions differ greatly to yours and many others here.

For your call crash issue I recommend you consider other causes other than just buggy firmware.  You are highly likely to be disappointed if you continue to believe the next update will fix it. The most commons cause of that kind of issue is an old or faulty sim card.  I had issues like you on the E65 and solved it with a new sim.  Other causes are network conditions and how they handle the phone, 3rd party software, warranty voiding modifications and often hardware problems.

[gallimar]

understood and agree with what your saying, but i had the call crash issue out of the box with a brand new sim card before i got a chance to install anything! its remained ever since, and other people report the same thing.

[psychomania]

Chances are then it's hardware or network if it's happened since v10.

Is your phone unlocked?  Can you try a sim from a different network in the phone to rule in or out the hardware? Back in the E65 early days many people on O2 had issues with this phone some like me solved it by changing sims, others had to disable 3G.  People on other networks didn't seem to suffer.

I'm happy to try to get to the bottom of this issue as long as it remains constructive. 

[gallimar]

yea sure ill give it a go, cant rule out the firmware being buggy tho

i dont think the sim has any control over the ring tones and the fact that pluging in a usb via mass storage mode changes your message settings from e:\ to c:\ seems pretty strong evidence the firmware has issues

just a pointer, if you did monitor your ram, you would notice that it never quite gives it all back to the phone even after using an application and closing it back down again - indicating that the code as leaks

Message Edited by gallimar on 17-Nov-2009 01:23 PM

[psychomania]

What has ringtones got to do with the call dropping bug?  I accept that is a firmware bug (and no way related to the sim) that effects some users as I had that bug on the N96 but not on the N97.

I give up  

[gallimar]

oh im going to change the sim to try fix the call drop still, will get back to ya with results - i just mentioned the other stuff as swapping the sim surely wont resolve all those issues meaning that my review isnt unfair towards the software letting down a potentially great product

i used to be a bug tester for software so i kind of know the process - its hard replicating some of the n97 bugs, as you gotta sit there ringing yourself 50 times till it happens again - i dont know the s60v5 codes well enough to explain which handles and exceptions trigger the bugs themselves, all i know at this stage is, i can replicate

Message Edited by gallimar on 17-Nov-2009 02:08 PM