Nokia N95 Firmware 20.0.015 Changes

Firmware 20.0.015 Available

This is the complete article, including the first part you already know. Yes, I am a little late to write about the new N95 firmware, because it is now available for nearly three weeks. But it took a while until my product code was set free and I finished this large article. For all those who can’t enjoy all the amazing improvements yet or are simply interested in reading about it, I will show every little detail of the firmware 20.0.015. I will only list the parts of the firmware which have been changed, so don’t marvel when you are missing some points: they have not been changed.

Standby Screen:

To the Active Standby has been added a little, but useful feature. You can find a shortcut leading to the new version of the “Search” application (about which I will go into detail later) above the calendar entries. Apart from that, the standy screen is the same as in the older firmware. Due to the littler screen in comparison with the N95 8Gb, there hasn’t been added an additional shortcut icon at the top.

Menus:
Main menu:

Already in the main menu, a large change leaps to the eye: the complete new layout of the menu.

The calendar and the office folder have been replaced by icons of the “Video centre” and a demo application showing the capabilities of the new N-Gage platform.Instead of just the music player, there is a whole folder of music applications about which I will tell you later.

Tools menu:

The applications in the tools menu are, similar to the other menus, ordered in additional subfolders which provides better clearness. More precisely, the folders “Connectivity” and “Utilities” have been added. A good thing is, that the icons for which you need quick acces are located in the main folder.Apart from that, there haven’t been any changes.

Application menu:

In the application menu, there have been added the new subfolder “Media” and two new applications. With “Online Share” you can quickly upload your photos and videos to Vox or Flickr. The other added application is “MyNokia” which service is unfortunaly not available in my country. The two from the main menu removed icons, the calendar and the office folder, are now also located under applications. Unfortunaly, the two games from the previous firmware, “Snakes” and “System Rush: Evolution” don’t exist anymore. I really don’t know why, I loved this games!

Music:

As I said, the music icon leads to a whole folder which contains the classic music player, the radio, the now preinstalled Nokia Podcasting tool and an icon of the Music Store.

Player:

The new version of the S60 music player you can also find on the N81, N95 8GB and the new coming device N82 is now also the N95’s one. The player differentiates between music and podcasts. First I show you the

Music player:

You don’t find any changes here, only the icons have been renewed.

Here you can see the new design of the player. It is actually nearly the same as in the previous firmware, but the Play/Stop/Forward/Rewind - buttons are new.

A new visualisation, the circles animation, has been added. It looks nice!

And finally a bug has been fixed and I didn’t guess Nokia would make that: The covers saved in the ID3 tag are displayed in full size. In the past I often deranged about the thing, that they were displayed too small.

Podcast Player:

Like in the music player, the podcasts can be ordered by different genres you can see in the screenshot.

First you must download a podcast with the Nokia Podcasting tool. You can directly launch it by pressing “Options” -> “Go to Podcasting”. There you can choose between differnent kinds of podcasts and download them. An alternative is to manually add ones by copying them into E:\Data\Podcasts. This would be all nice to seperate the two kinds of audio files. But the main reason is, that the podcast player remembers the position at which you stopped playing. I love that new feature and I am happy Nokia added the new version of the music player.

Gallery:

In the gallery, there aren’t a lot of changes, but some detail improvements. The volume keys can be used to zoom a picture. Press the key at the bottom and the picture will be zoomed in, press the upper key at it will zoom out again. A useful feature, because you needn’t acces the “Options” menu. Further more, you can rotate pictures directly from the gallery and need not to launch the application to edit pictures.

Maps:

As was expected, the new version of Nokia Maps is included into the new firmware.
The maps look better with the new version and a GPS fix is made quicker. Unfortunaly, the mode which follows the GPS signal after calculating a route is gone. In contrast to that, you can trial the navigation upgrade of Nokia Maps for three days before purchasing it.

Video centre:

Not a lot of changes here. The icons in the main view have been redesigned. Additionally, the control has been modified. When playing a video, there isn’t an “Options” menu anymore. The video centre changes to full screen mode automatically after a few seconds. I prefered the old kind of controlling videos, but that isn’t really a fatal imperfection. Unfortunaly, you won’t find any new feed content.

Search:

The new version of “Search” is also implemented. I didn’t like the old version, but the new version is really useful. You can search the Internet or the files on your mobile phone.
Offline, you can discover files stored in categories like “Images”, “Music”, “Notes” and “Messages”, but also extraordinary ones like “Landmarks”. You can see the whole list in the screenshots. Search works quite satisfying. It found every file I wanted, even the content of a note is browsed through and displayed if it contains the searched word. There is also an online service using Yahoo to search the Internet. You can find good results, but I prefer to search with Google.

Camera:

The camera has also been improved again. As you can see, a viewfinder grid has been added to capture photos even more precisely.

Also a little information when the captured photo is processing data is displayed now. I am also of the opinion, that the quality of the photos has even been improved a little bit. Especially those taken with the flash light look better. Due to the larger free RAM (as you can read below), photos are being processed much faster than before.

N-Gage:

A preview application of the new N-Gage platform containing two demos, FIFA 07 and Asphalt 3, is also preinstalled in the new firmware. With the application, you can either learn more about the N-Gage arena, play the demos or check, whether it is available.

Above you can see some screenshots about FIFA 07. I really love this game. Good graphics, although the game looks a bit strange in close up view, because there are too little polygons. Asphalt 3 is also a lot of fun. Unfortunaly, I couldn’t make any screenshots, because this function wasn’t supported. All in all, I am looking forward to the N-Gage launch, although both games could do much better in the matter of graphics. Both don’t use the 3D chip of the N95.

Battery life:

Due to DVFS, the battery life has increased a lot. I would go as far to say my N95 keeps up a third longer. This is simply unbelievable and my largest point of criticism has vanished.

RAM:

Due to the new RAM managment, Demand Paging, you have twice the free Ram in comparison with the old firmware.

In the first screenshot, you can see my blog opened in the N95 browser. In the oden days, that would have never been possible. The browser closed after a few loaded pictures, because the page was simply to large.

The second screenhot shows the point of time, when I opened one application from every menu point. With the 12.0.013 firmware never possible! All in all, I can say, that the new firmware is simply great. It is more than just a firmware which fixes some bugs. It is an upgrade to a even better device. Thanks Nokia, for supporting devices being already longer time on the market in such an impressive way!