Nokia has recently announced that all Nokia Maps, now known as Ovi Maps will include free navigation to all capable handsets. This shook the navigation world and blew the Garmin model out of the water, forever changing mobile mapping technology. This move was no surprise to some as it became more and more evident that unless other mapping platforms followed suit, Google Maps were set to landslide the industry with yet another disruptive technology offered as a free service.

Anyway, I now enjoy Ovi Maps 3.0 on my Nokia N97 with free navigation.

I have however been invited to a very intriguing Nokia Navigation event. It started, when I accepted an invitation to attend and was swiftly followed with a small gift box arriving in the mail.

With no explanation, the tag on the gift box read, ” Thank you for accepting Nokia’s invitation. Here is a small taste of what you will experience. Looking forward to seeing you in Cape Town.”

Inside the box, I found

1. A Luggage Tag,
2. EverySun AquaSport Lip Balm,
3. Smarties Mini Eggs,
4. Pyatt’s Mini Cheddars
5. Maynards Mini Ice Cream Mallow Gums
6. and a pack of South African Playing Cards

I have no idea what Nokia and Ovi have up their sleeves with this gift pack and what it means, but if this teaser photo that has just been released by the NokiaOvi team which are busy setting up the event in Cape Town is anything to go by, I’d say that tomorrow’s announcement and demo is going to be REALLY cool.

I have just received my Nokia N900 and I am totally excited. My first impressions are that its bigger, but sturdier than the Nokia N97, the UI is amazing and the touch screen responsiveness has improved drastically from its predecessor as Nokia’s flagship, the Nokia N97.

The Nokia N900 runs on a different operating system to all other Nokia devices and this is the Finnish companies first Maemo powered device. Over the next few days, I will post my opinions on the phone and also do a bit of benchmarking against some other mobile devices.

Here are a few pictures of the unboxing:

The device ships with few accessories:

• Mini-USB charger
• AVI cable
• USB to Mini-USB cable
• Screen cloth
• Headset
• A stylus pen

This accessory list has become the Nokia standard and is expected to ship with all their devices and I feel that perhaps they could have gone the extra mile with the accessory list and included a pouch, as with the Nokia E-Series and a few spare stylus pens. these are items that come to mind immediately, but I am sure that this list will grow as I use the device. You may think that I am being fussy about this, but please keep in mind that this is the flagship device and will ship at a premium price in any case.

Some more first impression pictures:

I have spent a few minutes setting up the phone so far and just getting used to the device and so far I am truly impressed and would go as far as saying that this is the best UI on any Nokia to date. The user experience is well thought out and logical. Transitions are smooth, are not over done and just generally slick to look at.

Watch out for my thought in the coming days…

Being such a huge Nokia N97 fan, I am often asked how to hard reset a Nokia N97 and thought that it would be best to post this on my blog.

Performing a hard reset on your Nokia N97 will essentially wipe all the data on the phone memory  and return all the settings back to default, which is the equivalent of performing a format on your Nokia N97 phone memory. Please also note that the mass memory is left untouched during this process and retain your data (as per my experiments)

It is highly recommended that you backup your data from your Nokia N97 using the backup utility within the Ovi Desktop client before performing a hard reset.

Performing this is at your own risk!

After backing up your phone, switch it off.

Then hold Caps/Shift, Delete and Space Bar. While holding these 3 buttons, press the power key and hold, until you hear the Nokia welcome tone. This process takes a few seconds and you have to hold all four buttons down during this process.

Image original: MyNokiaBlog

Remember that you always have the option of a soft reset, which will in essence reset the phones settings back to default without changing any data. To do this, simply go to Settings > Phone > Phone Management > Factory Settings.

So after a few weeks of anticipation of the latest firmware for the Nokia N97, it is now available as v21.0.045 which includes better call handling, improved scrolling, video and photo stability enhancements and better browsing.

Heres a screenshot of OVI with details on the Nokia N97 firmware v21:

Once that is done, I highly recommend that you update Ovi Maps to 3.0.3 which includes lifetime free access to voice navigation and lifecasting. Details on how to install Ovi Maps can be found on my previous blog post.

Nokia has recently announced that it will give away Ovi Maps with turn by turn voice navigation free to all of its devices enabled with GPS units. Sadly, it could launch the Ovi Maps 3.0.3 for the Nokia N97 when it launched it for the rest of the mobile giant’s lineup due to memory space issues on the C:/.

A Nokia representative then announced on the forum that the Ovi Maps Free versions will be available to Nokia N97 and N97 Mini users after the release of the latest firmware for v21. After much anticipation for the latest firmware which was expected today, Nokia has made available Ovi Maps for the N97 and subsequently delayed the release if the new firmware. #uncool, but honestly, it doesn’t matter because now all 79 countries maps are available to me free of charge on my Nokia N97.

Follow these instructions to install Ovi Maps 3.0.3 for the Nokia N97:

Select Applications from the Main Menu

Select SW Update

Ovi Maps – with free navigation will be in the menu list

Select Options > Download

Upon completion of installation, I recommend that you restart the phone.

Nokia Messaging for Social Networks is the latest release of Nokia Messaging which is available for the Nokia N97, N97 mini and the 5800, which in short means, all Symbian S60 Version 5 devices within the Nokia stable.

I have been a fan of the Nokia Messaging application and even went as far as rating it as a Nokia N97 application worth using!

What’s even cooler about this release, is that I have a short feature in the launch video. Watch it and look out for my Twitter account as the first tweet!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-VvM6Xwscw&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

I feature from 41 seconds to about 54 seconds. If you don’t follow me on Twitter already, you probably missing out. I go as @DChetty, so check it out!

The latest application now supports full Twitter and Facebook integration and allows simple, yet useful features like the ability to export Facebook events to the Nokia’s native calendar. The latest app supports full home-screen access and pulls data directly from your Facebook and Twitter accounts.

It’s very nifty and I recommend it as a potential Beta Labs winner!

I have been using the Nokia N97 for a few months now and being one of the world’s first 97 users of the flagship Nokia way back in June this year, does give me a slight advantage over the rest of N97 users who only have access to the device for a few weeks now.

I have collated a few things that I have picked up on while using the device that are not listed in the manuals.

TaskBar:

If you hold the menu button down for a short while, a taskbar will be displayed listing all open applications. By pressing on the icon of one of these applications for a second or two, you will open the option to exit the application or open the application directly from the taskbar without having to go into the application. This is very handy when your device becomes sluggish and you need to close apps quickly to free up resources.

Browser Launch:

By pressing the zero ‘0′ button on the QWERTY for a short while, the web browser is launched. I have tried to find the setting for this to see if I can change teh shortcut, but it seems that a user can only change shortcuts for the touchscreen interface.

Text Accents:

To access accents while typing any text, simply hold down the SYM button and press the character that requires the accent. By default this is limited to c, n, a, e, i, o and u, and these are the ony characters that require accents.

Voice Commands:

Press the green button or the shortcut key on the right from the homescreen for a short while (long press) to launch the voice commands feature. Simply say the name of a contact, a profile name or the name of an application. I must admit that I have not played with this much and don’t have a full understanding of all teh voice commands that can be used.

Activity Summary:

By touching the top right hand corner of the screen near the battery, a small summary with links to the relevant features are displayed. This will include all data connections, the time, unread messages or missed calls.

If you know of any that are not mentioned above, please feel free to list them in the comments!

If you haven’t updated the firmware in the last 3 of your Nokia N97, I highly recommend that you do. Simply plug it into your PC via the USB cable and use PC Suite Update to do the job. It’s a fairly big file, +120MB, but its very worth it.

Here is a list of items that have been updated:

- Fix for browser cache consuming more than specified in C drive
- Battery indictor showing wrong status (2-3bars) when charging completes
- Firmware over the air (FOTA) setting correction
- User interaction to device while FOTA may cause need for user to power on/off
- Fix for calendar entry lost
- Fix for mail that may get duplicated
- Fix to resolve GPRS access point selection even if WLAN access point is available
- Fix to not to ask user to do new profile while there is already one available
- Fix to display messaging application correctly when theme effect is set to ON
- Fix for Ovi store client may not properly installed if user has a client already installed earlier version
- Ovi store application is now updated

I’ve also noticed that the browser opens much faster now and application swopping has had a performance upgrade.

I have been using the Nokia N97 for a few months now and while I believe that the hardware spec is unbeaten yet by the other mobile giants, Nokia has always lagged behind in terms of cool app development. You can jump up and down all you want telling me about the Java revolution and millions of Jar file apps on the web, but here I will tell you that you simply don’t get better than the iPhone in this department. (For those who know me, you will understand that me admitting that the iPhone is better in ANY regard is no easy thing, I LOVE Nokia and will be a die-hard fan for life!)

Anyway, as a result of being one of the first 97 people globally to be touting a Nokia N97, I had the unfortunate experience of having to wait for all the good apps, but none-the-less, I have enjoyed my experience so far and I’m itching for more awesome apps to launch, so that I can use my phone to its full capacity.

This is a list of some of the Nokia N97 applications that I have used so far:

Nokia Messaging: A great application that consolidates up to 10 email accounts into a single manageable interface. Easy to install, easy to maintain, easy to use, runs in the background & intuitively designed!

Nimbuzz: An IM aggregating client that supports Skype, Facebook & Twitter in addition to the old faithful IM’s like Windows Live, GTalk, etc. Its a really great app that doesn’t kill the phones resources and is very intuitive to use. Of all the IM aggregators for mobile that are available, this is the one that I recommend whole-heartedly.

Gravity: My outright favourite! A Twitter application that is potentially the best out there for ANY device. It’s simple to use, simple to get up & running and a dream to keep running in the background without killing your battery. The usability is well thought out and everything on it makes sense. Newer versions also support Facebook. It is a paid for app, but give the trial a shot and I am sure that you will be able to justify the 10 Euro to buy it.

Worldmate: My weather update application that keeps me informed. The app is a bit tricky to set up the way you want it, but once its done, you will never need to adjust the settings again. Giving you voice directed prompts of the weather the day before and an update in the morning, the application also has a host of other features like foreign exchange rates, flight delay monitors, etc, etc, that I don’t use and doubt that I ever will.

Mail for Exchange: I loved this application on my Nokia E71. It was the greatest feature on that phone and it worked like a dream. I have to be honest here and say that I havn’t been able to get the damn thing to work on my N97. It doesn’t sync, or maintain connections to run without me having to restart the phone, while standing on 1 leg with my right arm on my left ear, and my tongue pointing south, singing the Barney song. A major disappointment for me!

AP News: I think that it stands for Associated Press. It is a news app with regular updates. It allows you to rate articles, share them via email, SMS or Twitter. The UI could use a few tweaks in terms of usability, but it does a good job of keeping things simple. (It doesn’t seem to available in Ovi anymore )

Drawing: A Windows “Paint” type application that is VERY handy when you are trying to explain something without a notepad and need to a solution design, scribble down a picture to explain your point, etc. It allows you to save the images, which is really great, though I would have liked it if the option to forward the image directly from the application was made available.(It comes pre-installed!

I have installed a few more, but don’t use them, so I can’t comment on them fairly.

If you have any applications that you recommend that I try out, please feel free to let me know, I will give it a shot and update this post accordingly.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X_IegIjUsg[/youtube]