23 April 2007

It's not necessary 2B perfect 2B famous!

So, as you should know by now, Nokia N95 runs Symbian OS v9.2 and S60 platform of third generation with addition of Feature Pack 1. Phone is up to date speaking of software although new OS version (9.5) and FP 2 have been announced already but that’s reserved for the upcoming phones that will come next year so don’t worry about.

Feature Pack 1 offers new functions that enrich the platform and user experience with browsing, location capabilities and device management functions. Platform now supports resolutions up to VGA (480x640) which is definitely step in the right direction and probably first sign that we can expect phones with high-resolution screens soon. Furthermore there is native support for hardware 3D graphics accelerators as well as support for faster processors! Bluetooth is also upgraded to version 2.0 and even more important, it includes all of the optional EDR features to give higher speed data transfer and lower power consumption. With EDR, Bluetooth speeds go up more than double, and could be three times as quick.

Theoretically, maximum useful data transfer is 2.1 Megabits per second (Mbps) compared to the current 721 Kilobits per second (kbps) for standard rate Bluetooth. This is the "payload" speed, not the basic signalling rate, which moves up from 1 megabit to about 3 megabits. Apart from the faster transfer it also has a few more profiles like A2DP and AVRCP for streaming music wirelessly and control it remotely as it is already mentioned in the music part.

FlashLite is also upgraded from version 1.1 to version 2.0 and it supports more flash content with closer cooperation with web browser. UI' is enhanced as well. Now it supports animated menus, dynamic backgrounds, 3D transitions, pop-up windows, graphic notification about active applications and completely rearranged theme and settings submenu. A lot of confusing technical information, I know that, and most of you are probably curious what is hidden behind that and how it looks like in practice. Nothing especially new at first sight I would like to say, but after deep testing, FP1 brings a whole lot of differences and welcome improvements.

First of all, I have to say that my opinion about 3rd edition, caged directories and various limitations that it brings is very well known and already discussed numerous times at forum section so I’ll not repeat it once gain and I’ll try to focus on improvements only.

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I’ll start with the most important improvement, the Safari based web browser which is one of the major selling points and one of the reasons why 2nd edition users think about switching to 3rd edition. Web Browser for S60 is based on WebCore and JavaScriptCore open source components that are used by Apple's Safari Internet browser. These components are based on KDE's Konqueror open source project. So considering it is based on the same open source components used by desktop browsers, it brings desktop-like web browsing experience to mobile devices. The new Safari is improved a lot and brings some innovations and now supports both full web and mobile based content so it eliminates need for multiple web browsers on a device that caused lot of confusion among users. Actually it supports all common standards like: W3C's HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, CSS 1, 2, 3 (partially), DOM 1, 2, SVG-Tiny, and Web standards such as, ECMAScript, Netscape style plug-ins such as Flash Lite and audio.

PLEASE don’t be hesitate to ask anything

Browsing is made more compelling with a variety of features, such as auto complete, password manager and a floating toolbar that gives quick and easy access to the most-used features. All these features make browsing even more desktop-like than before.

Viewing Web Feeds is also much improved. Feed reader now supports the Atom format (in addition to RSS) and the browser renders feeds in HTML. Previously, feeds could only be viewed as short text summaries, but with the new version, thumbnail images, full text and links are all rendered but the main layout isn’t as good as it should be.

Nokia settings vs. Freaking settings
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Text size is simply too large what makes feed really hard to use and not eye friendly. Even worse, feed reader isn’t affected by the font settings in the browser itself and there is no way to change the font size just like that. Of course, as a real freak I have already found solution and right settings and it now looks much better but I doubt that average S60 user will know how to do it and how to change the html template. Reader also allows you to set automatic update time, from every 15 minutes till once per week.

Nice floating toolbar is the most welcome feature and it allows extremely fast access to most used functions. During the browsing you can simply activate this menu by clicking on any point on the screen. Once activated it offers 4 function represented by corresponding icons. The first one is the frequently used links function that shows list of recent links but not only links from the current session, it automatically keeps track about your activity over all.

The next one is mini map, nothing important to say about as it is very well known and extremely handy feature from the older browser that now can be activated by this menu instead of using shortcut “8” or fast scrolling as the switch.

The 3rd icon is Reload and it does what the name says, just like on any other browser.

PLEASE don’t be hesitate to ask anything

Last one is the Find/Search feature that also can be activated by pressing the shortcut “2” on the numeric keypad. Functionality of the search feature that helps you find whatever it is that you’re looking for no matter are you looking for a word or specific phrase within a page. Feature works similar to the find command in the FireFox browser. Actually it is classic find as you type feature, a fast way of finding links or text in a web page without the need of displaying complex search. With this feature you can simply begin typing a word while viewing a web page and tool will automatically search for it and highlight the first instance found, as you type more of the word browser refines its search and offers new result. The more search results are available over the left soft key that offers Find Next and Find Previous command.

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That’s not all; I have accidentally found that this menu is extended with one more icon in some situations. The 5th icon that appears only if page that has valid RSS feed allows fast subscription to the feed of the site that you are currently viewing. I’m really happy to see that this menu can be changed depending on the situation and I would like to see more functionality. For example, it would be nice to see some image related, example if we are over the image we can activate menu that allows fast image overview and saving.

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Speaking of images, another welcome addition is the Image sub menu that finally allows getting and saving specific image. Actually it loads some kind of the download manager which is pretty smart by the way as it extracts only images near the cursor and show them as a list of thumbnails, then its easily to view each image separately, zoom it and save it if it is necessary as well.

Tools menu besides the mentioned View Image feature has another interesting function. Browser is capable to save web pages for off-line browsing, saving is extremely fast, but also in a way buggy because it doesn’t save all images, just partially, or maybe it doesn’t save images at all and loads them from cache, I am not sure really but result can be a little tricky and it is different from page to page. Also, if you attempt to save complex page with a lot of photos you can expect that browser will crash instantly. Again, this is another RAM related problem.

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There is also support for Flash Lite 2 within the browser which basically means that browser is capable to show flash elements straight from browser but unfortunately basically it supports only ugly banners, better flash content and flash based video players are still invisible for this browser.

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Bookmarks manager is also improved, nothing radically by the way, one small but very nice and handy feature, the addition for support of favicons, now it doesn’t just save the web address as bookmark but saves it with its icon for easy identification.

I will continue with new features with an automatic form fill assistant, really handy feature that helps with the common and repetitive task of filling out forms on the web by 'remembering' and applying previously entered data.

Password manager is another feature when we are speaking about forms and various similar pages. Its really handy feature, especially if you have problems with all passwords that you are using on various forums. It saves login/password and fills-in automatically next time when you access page that requires login.

On of the most important features that I have missed on older version is the real support for tabbed browsing, which allows users to open multiple pages in the same window. This feature is available on the older version but unfortunately without ability to open link in new window “manually”, it works only with links that have “blank” html attribute and forces opening link in new window.

The new browser version is supposed to have Open the link in new window feature, it is even listed in the manual: “To open a link in a new window, select Options > Window > Link in new window.” But unfortunately the version that is preinstalled on the Nokia N95 hasn’t got this ability! Can you believe it!?

The window has only option to Allow or Block-Up the Pop-ups, there is no option to open link in new window and I think I know why?!!

Nokia knows that browser requires a lot of RAM especially for tabbed browsing and they know that they screwed-up situation with RAM on N95 and therefore they have excluded the ability to open link in new window.

Anyway, multi-page browsing is still possible if the page forces opening link in new window just like with older version. You can easily switch to the tabbed view by shortcut “5”. Phone will show tabs with mini-map preview and you can select the right one. Great feature, great implementation, but completely useless on N95, shame on you Nokia :[

Main menu is richer with another feature; screen rotating that allows changing between Portrait and Landscape mode independent of the actual form factor. Nice feature if you need an access to numeric keypad in the landscape mode factor. Of course, same as all other applications, browser supports switching display orientation mode by sliding phone into right form factor.

The settings menu is also improved/rearranged and it brings one feature hidden under page settings. You see, it is not possible to change the text size, beside the normal we can choose two smaller and two larger font sizes. Nice improvement but not on the right place, it should be under the tools menu or something like that, font size could be different from page to page and therefore this feature should be easy accessible and allows font changing on the fly just like the zooming.

That’s all about improvements I think, sorry if I forgot to mention something. Ah, one more thing, nothing especially but has to be mentioned if we want to be detailed. It’s link interpretation, now while the cursor goes over the text or image that contains link, browser will show bounding frame around which makes link locating pretty easy.

.:[ Nokia N95 - Technical Specifications ]:.