In my ongoing saga on my excellent, unbranded Nokia N95 smartphone yet another upgrade report:When trying the (not so impressive) Nokia Ovi Suite instead of the reliable Nokia PC Suite, I was given a notice that there is an upgrade available. Using the PC Suite’s Nokia Software Updater (NSU) it was easy to upgrade.

Of course, I took a full backup with Content Copier before making the upgrade. Because I am still using the Best Safe application (because there is still now built-in Wallet application), I took this time care to export all its data into a CVS file on the memory card before upgrade. Otherwise there is no way to restore your secret cards after the reinstallation.

After the reboot of the system, *#0000# gives now

v30.0.015
15-07-08
RM-159
Nokia N95 (01.01)

After playing a few days around with the new firmware, I can say that there is probably no absolute need to upgrade the excellent 20.0.015 firmware. But if you do, this is what you get:

  • Slightly improved startup times both for the cold boot and for the camera startup (but 20.0.015 was already a very fast starter)
  • Automatically flipping screen!
    Really great improvement that finally put in use the built-in accelerometer.
    Tools -> Settings -> General -> Personalisation -> Display -> Rotate Screen (Automatic)
  • You cannot maybe call this as an improvement, but it is a fact that the N-Gage on-line try-n-buy application comes preinstalled. Watch out, if you have some 20.0.015 games installed they may not appear anymore and you may want to uninstall them using the Application Manager.
  • RealPlayer (s60.30.45.01 M) and FlashPlayer (3.0) look like the same to me as with 20.0.015
  • Integrated Search proposes Google as the first alternative under the Search Internet tab (previously it was Yahoo). The overall speed of the the search on the local drives looks somewhat slower to me (or maybe there is some indexing that takes place over the time?)
  • Play video as ringing tone
  • New “N96″ black theme (number five)

… And I realized that all the DRM protected music that I have downloaded from Nokia Music Store have now invalid license key on the phone (= they won’t play)! AAC-format music (majority in my case) plays fine.

I tried to download new titles but they failed the same way (= they play on the PC but not on the phone).

Obviously my Content Copier backup with Nokia PC Suite did not copy some obscure Microsoft license keys. I learned from this Nokia Support Discussion post that actually you need Nokia N-Series Suite’s Content Copier to copy your music’s license information. Of course, that is not mentioned anywhere, even when the Content Copier is making its “Phone model specific backup”.

The only remedy for the DRM blues was to remove all the applications, pictures, videos and songs from the memory card and then format it under 30.0.015. Refilling the music with Nokia Music player (beta) with the USB connection establisehd in Media Player mode restored the DRM on the phone and protected songs are playing again. I reckon that the problem is not actually related to the Content Copy version but rather to the fact that in my phone the 2GB Flash disk is removable. Of course, the mighty Microsoft has thought about the horrific possibility that I can actually pop out the memory card and put it on my friend’s phone. What a loss of business and lack of moral!

DRM really sucks. Unprotected music files are so much more consumer friendly. People don’t want annoyances like this. That’s why iPhone and iTunes are selling so well, people can accept DRM should it never cause them any worries. Nokia fails to deliver the worry free user experience. That is why they should stick with unprotected music and to MP3 and AAC formats.

Yet another annoyance: RealPlayer stopped working over the air. Somehow it got settings saying that it should proxy with a crazy address of 192.168.10.100 ? Removed that and it started working again.

(Some searches were made with version number 30.0.0.15 instead of 30.0.015)

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)