N97 Firmware: What Can Be Improved?

Admin Message: Please welcome Matt, the newest addition to the N97 Fanatics team.

We all know what a great device the N97 is. We all love certain features but what would we most like to see from future updates to really improve the overall package.

RAM & Memory

Firstly the most important thing is getting the RAM right. At the moment if you’re running too many apps then the phone just gives up, often needing a restart. I know that the recent firmware update has improved this however I feel Nokia still has work left to do here.

Secondly allow users to remove certain apps which are pre-installed on the phone such as Boingo. Surely as the owner of the handset it is my choice if I want this application taking up valuable memory space on my C: drive. Also it would be an improvement if all applications could be installed onto the mass memory rather than the C: drive like some such as quick office which eats up your memory.

User Interface & Transitions

The next thing which should be brought back is the cool transitions from the prototype models we all saw when the phone was being debuted at conferences around the world. I know that this is possible with certain hacks and so on but for the novice who doesn’t want to risk bricking their mobile this should be added back in.

Whilst on the subject of adding things to the phone which were removed prior to release, give us back the virtual qwerty keyboard. I know part of the appeal of the N97 is the flip out keyboard however sometimes to just tap out a quick message on screen with a full qwerty would be nice. I’m certain this one will never get back in but it would be on my wish list.

The option to change the folder icons in the menu to something other than generic folders would be nice. It is great that you can rearrange the menu screens and shuffle everything into the order that you want but this leaves you with a terribly boring screen showing several different yellow folders. I know it’s only cosmetics but this is a flagship device remember, I think my N95 8gb had better options for the screen icons then the N97 has on offer so far. Let’s see some movement when you select an icon or just allow us to download and add our own icons.

Hardly exciting

One of the coolest ways to improve the N97, which would almost render the above point useless is the use of multiple home screens. Nokia already did a great job here with Widgets and customization and so on. We all know that one quick swipe of the screen and the widgets are hidden. Why not take this a step further and offer other pages for widgets and so on. This would allow you to have all your apps set up on shortcuts on the home screen just one swipe and a tap away!

Multimedia

Multimedia wise the N97 is no slouch. I have several movies stored on my mass memory and the screen is great for viewing movies. However the phone should be able to play more codecs such as Divx and Avi. Most modern smart phones play most readily available video codecs. Nokia also claim that the phone supports H264 out of the box. I beg to differ when you actually try it the built in video player doesn’t like it. This is something that needs sorting and quickly. I don’t think you should have to pay for external players in order to use a feature that Nokia advertised as being something you could do out of the box.

Whilst we’re talking multimedia the music player is simple and easy to use. That being somewhat of the problem. The music player could do with an overhaul. It is simple and not very exciting. This could do with some more equaliser options and some other tweaks to breathe some fresh life into it.

Your Ideas

I’m sure there are lots more tweaks and improvements which would improve what is already a great device. Feel free to comment below with your own suggestions.

5800's virtual keyboard, would have been great addition to the N97

Article by Matt Towsey

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About: I'm married with 3 wonderful children. Spend most of my time playing with the kids. Big N97 fan. I'm from the UK, huge Liverpool FC fan. Work full time. I am on twitter and will probably post on their from time to time also.

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Tagged as: n97 improvements

Simon

Do not turn on the camera unless unlock is switch is used.

N97's camera cover slider is magnetic sensitive. If you have a leather case with megnet on it, it will turn the camera on even when it's locked. You won't even notice it until you take out the phone.

The megnet is also somehow affecting the phone picking up the call. I can take it out of the megnetic leather case without touching the screen or buttons and it will still pick up the phone before I look at it.

MajorDouble7

I have a few aethetic comments concerning my sweet-a$$ new N97...

Music Player:
Why not have Album Art displayed whilst scrolling through your music library? If not for the 'All Songs' list, then at least for the Albums list. Currently album art can only be seen while viewing 'Now Playing.'

Also, I would like to browse 'All Songs' by Artist or Album. Sure I can simply go to said Artist or Album folder, find the song and push play, but then when my selected song is finished, Music Player will only play the remainder of that Artist or Album...not my entire music library.

Contact List:
Am I the only one? I have selected 8 *favorites*, all of which I display on my homescreen...then when I click on Contacts, the first thing I see is the 8 favorite contacts that I could have accessed from the homescreen...why would I want my whole screen taken up by contacts that I wouldn't be accessing from that location? Does what I'm saying make sense? In any case, I can see how that would be useful for some, so I propose at the very least an option to re-arrange the way contacts are listed (apart from first name, last name).

MInor issues, I know, but still important ones for usability and aesthetics. It's completely possible that I'm incorrect about these, in which case I can only suggest that you offer your solution.

Thanks,

MD 7

yitwave

In addition to your points:

UI Scrolling & Clicking - You left out one of the most obvious problem! Kinetic scrolling across the UI & confusing double / single click of lists and icons. Both should be changed to kinetic (apparently coming in Sept firmware), and consistent single / double clicking..

Overclock the CPU - like they did with the 5800. The latest Nokias are 600mhz, why can't they clock the N97 to 600 as well?

Full screen - A second factor is full-screen mode, it would be great apps can opt to go full screen Automatically. Ie similar to the web browser.

talv

over clocking the CPU is a great idea i had no idea they did that with the 5800!! we should all make a request for noika to do that!!!

drblind

The lack of physical scandic keys could be mitigated by having a lonc press of L to produce ä and so on

Omnifather

1. Scrolling track title and artist name on the home screen will be nice.
2. Ability to add tracks or albums to the now playing list will also be most welcome.
3.A fully customizable RSS feed widget that scrolls items on the home screen.
4. Transitions for wallpapers on the home screen, and more complex and interesting ones than what is available on the photo browsers.

talv

i got my n97 a coupe days ago and got an avi video bluetooth'd to me whats frustrating is that when i try to open the message i just get "messaging unknown file format", and i cant really do anything else with it, however when i copy the file over manually from my pc i can open the file in a third party viewer (SmartMovie - although with no sound). The transitions id love to have in, and id love for the homescreen widgets to be able to occupy more than one slot of the space is free. Id also want that annoying bug where it asks if its okay to access the internet and update the homescreen widgets all the time!!! also does anyone know if theres a way that i can make the phone use WIFI preferably instead of my data allowance even when im connected to an access point i see it using my 3g signal :(

xello

Codec support could improve but i really recommend you guys to convert your videos using Super to 640x360 so that they play natively on the n97's screen. This is vital for me because the vast majority of my movies are 1920x1080, so i'd have to be converting anyway.

Matt Towsey

I use Videora N97 converter. Works well for me and it is freeware.

jambot

1.) Memory. It's not slow but it does lock up from time to time.
2.) Video should actually play video -- so how about different Codec Support.
3.) Stop using Real Player. NO BODY uses Real Player --- because it sucks.
4.) Fix the touch screen -- so that I don't have to press the same button 4 times, in order to get it to work once.
5.) Fix that useless OVI Store. When I send something to the phone, that doesn't me OPEN the browser, and make me look for it AGAIN. It means -- I want to download the software to the phone. This is a NO BRAINIER.
6.) Fix that useless OVI Software. Make it work seamlessly, and not like it is now, which is completely schizophrenic, and annoying.

Breathless

Nice points there...though, I'm a bit afraid of multiple pages of widgets. I mean, the device is suffering from low RAM out of the box as it is, even with v12 firmware, so I'm not sure all the more widgets would do it any good, unless they can REALLY optimize RAM usage.

And something for the music player: what's with the title and artist being aligned to the left in such miniature font size too? Move it to the left and increase the size, maybe even bold fonts would be good too - remember the N95 anyone? Also, I'd be happy to see ALBUM ARTIST and DISC NUMBER id tag support already. T_T Oh and please optimize loading times, 32GB is a snap, but if it takes forever to load the list of music you have on the device, it sorta kills the mood, y'know.

Totally supporting DivX/XviD and H264 support too.