Nokia N97 v20 Firmware: A Hands-On Experience

Video courtesy of The Nokia Blog

I had the privilege of getting a hands-on with a Nokia N97 running v20.0.005 firmware yesterday evening so that I could provide our faithful readers a preview of what to expect when the update is released any day now and to answer more than a few questions that you’ve sent into me over the course of the last week. Now right off the bat, I’m going to set everyone’s expectations. This update is not going to turn your N97 into an N900, nor is it supposed to. If that is what you’re expecting, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. However, if you want this update to turn this phone into what everyone thought it should have been when it launched in June though, it’s got what you’re looking for. NOTE: Let this serve as a disclaimer that I will not be commenting on any third-party apps or widgets that have been added. All I will say is that yes, there are new apps and yes, there are new widgets. Sorry if this upsets you but access comes with conditions.

Let’s start from the beginning and talk about the new firmware at startup. The device wasn’t any faster booting up than my N97 running v12 firmware, however the splash screen has changed slightly (No, we haven’t gotten the “fist pound” splash screen from that early LL Cool J-inspired N97 commercial) but Nokia added their ‘Connecting People’ slogan underneath their logo when the phone boots up. The phone starts up with ~45MB of free RAM and while this sounds very underwhelming and there are many of you who will say that they get more free RAM on boot than that on v12, most of the memory improvements are displayed after a few minutes of active use. Where free RAM would previously dip into the low teens or even single digits on previous firmwares after opening a few apps, the N97 is much more stable with the new firmware and free RAM stays consistently in the 30-35MB range while you’re actively using it. In fact, I never saw RAM dip below 20MB free even with resource hungry apps like Gravity, Photos, Music Player and the web browser running. In regards to free space on the C: drive, there were improvements to the free space but they did not make the total size of the drive any larger so I expect to still have to worry about free space on that drive going forward.

When you get to the homescreen you will find that they haven’t changed too much, there’s no second page for widgets, they haven’t added more than 2 shortcut/favorite contacts widgets and they haven’t made any changes to the existing widgets. There are 2 small additions that I’d like to highlight though. The first is that when you press on the name of the profile currently in use (which is next to the clock and underneath the date), you will see a new option there called ‘Edit active profile’. It’s pretty self-explanatory and not a jaw-dropping feature by any means but when you remember that it takes AT LEAST 6 keypresses to edit the active profile currently, it’s a nice addition. To the delight of many of our readers, I’m pleased to announce that this latest firmware has added letters to the dialpad on the homescreen. Run and tell a friend!

The “longpress for symbol” function of the keyboard has already been revealed and it works as advertised, this will definitely help my one-handed productivity. Theme Effects remain exactly the same and there haven’t been any added transitions, this is reason enough to leave them turned off because, as I learned last night, they severely slow down the phone. A lot of people were asking me if the new firmware adds the Email client that can be found on the N86 8MP and E75, I can say that it does not at this time (remember that this is a very early version of the firmware) but Ovi Contacts is now installed after updating. While the version number is the same as the one you can download right now from Nokia Beta Labs, they have added a homescreen notification (similar to the envelope that appears in the top right of your screen when you receive a text message) that makes the app a lot more useful and pleasant to use. Remember that Call Log bug that has been bitched about by S60 users since….well forever. That has also been fixed so when you open up the Log, you will see the icon corresponding to the detail of the number that you called/called you. Symbianites rejoice!

As for the existing apps on the phone, I can tell you that the Web browser got a small update from v7.1.13841 -> v7.1.17475, I assume that this was just a stability update because I didn’t notice anything different. The Camera app remains unchanged, no face detection, automatic red-eye removal or panoramic mode. It doesn’t load any faster but images processing is slightly faster. I didn’t have a laptop with me during the hands on so I couldn’t test quality improvements if any. No, there is still no Internet Radio app to be found on the N97 after the update to the new firmware. The Facebook app saw a small update as well but can’t comment on any changes. Skype hasn’t been added either but even if you have been itching for your SIP fix, this might not be the end of the world to you. We’ve all seen that they added Album Art throughout the Music Player but something else that they did that is crucial is add the Artist names to the list view when you’re scrolling through Albums in your Music Library. After you select an Album, the name of the Artist and Album remains at the top of the screen while you scroll through songs. Similar to the demo we’ve seen of the Contacts app where the letter you’re currently at pops up in the middle of the screen as you’re scrolling through them, this is also the case with scrolling through Artists or Albums in the Music Player.

Speaking of scrolling, I guess the addition of kinetic scrolling throughout the UI was the main focal point of this firmware update isn’t it? Well you’re going to fall in love, they added kinetic scrolling EVERYWHERE. Don’t believe me? Quick, go into Messaging, open a New Message and click Options. This menu now has kinetic scrolling. Now scroll down and go to Font size and open the submenu. Yup, this menu has kinetic scrolling too. Who cares if there are only 4 items in the list and there’s nowhere to scroll, there’s kinetic scrolling there now. EVERYWHERE. The scrolling is very smooth throughout the UI, you can actually scroll from A to Z in Contacts with one flick, regardless of how many contacts you have saved. Throughout the hands-on experience, this was my favorite feature. It wasn’t without its bugs though, particularly in the Ovi Store which already had kinetic scrolling but now when you flick the screen, it selects the item you happened to touch when you initiated the flick. I’m sure this will be fixed before the firmware becomes public.

Let me get to some other questions that I was asked. Are there battery life improvements? No, not really. It’s about the same. Are there stability improvements? Other than the kinetic scrolling, this was the main aim of the firmware update and I can safely say that this update brings the N97 up to par with the E71 in terms of stability. It’s not quite there in terms of speed though, although it is much much faster than the v12 firmware. In terms of which bugs have been fixed specifically, I already mentioned the Call log bug, but in addition to that, I was told that the phone no longer freezes during phone calls and your custom ringtone no longer randomly switches back to ‘Nokia Tune’. Any improvements to GPS stability? We did a quick test to see if there was any difference in both time it takes to get a GPS lock and how well that lock is held. We launched the camera app on both devices at the same time with geotagging enabled from inside the coffee shop where the meeting took place (we were sitting next to the window if it matters to you). The v20 firmware was able to get a GPS lock faster than the v12 firmware (which after 3 minutes, never actually got a lock) but it lost it within a minute. Google Maps was getting a GPS lock instantly on v20 from inside the coffee house however. Take that however you wish. Latest version of QuickOffice included in the firmware? No, there is a small update to the Quickoffice suite that’s on the phone but it’s still v4.2 and you still can’t edit documents without a license. Is Ovi Maps updated to the new Beta version? No, it’s updated to the latest version of v3.0 though. Anything else new? Well if you sync your N97 with Exchange, you’ll find that if you use Categories for your Contacts in Outlook, those Categories will be added to your phone as Groups in the Contacts app. It’s not perfect however, as it works a little too well and grabs sub-categories and creates multiple groups. For example, if you have your business category sorted by Company, then you’ll end up with a separate group for each company called ‘Business, Company A’, Business, Company B’ and so on. However, if you sort them by even more parameters than that, that’s where it gets messy. You may end up with 10 groups for the same company with 1 contact in each group because of the way the sync works.

That’s not it but that’s about it for me. I know that there will be a lot of questions about the things I didn’t cover here but that’s what the Comments section below is for right? Since Mark at http://www.thenokiablog.com takes such awesome video, here’s another one