E72: Compass Questions

Hi
Can someone explain to me what system is used with the compass' on the E72?
The GPS Data/Navigation compass requires you to be on the move for it to work. I'm assuming this means it's purely GPS based? And this would also mean it doesn't require calibration?
If that's the case, what is the situation with the compass found in Ovi Maps? This doesn't require you to be on the move and does require calibration. So does this mean that for THIS compass, some kind of gyroscope is installed? Just how does this one work?
Thanks,
Mark.

Philby wrote:
Can someone explain to me what system is used with the compass' on the E72?
The GPS Data/Navigation compass requires you to be on the move for it to work. I'm assuming this means it's purely GPS based? And this would also mean it doesn't require calibration?
This was always my understanding, but to be honest, I can't remember the last time I used the "GPS Data" app as a compass.  (I usually use it only to check the satellite status.)
Philby wrote:
If that's the case, what is the situation with the compass found in Ovi Maps? This doesn't require you to be on the move and does require calibration. So does this mean that for THIS compass, some kind of gyroscope is installed? Just how does this one work?
The Ovi Maps compass uses the phone's magnetometer chip.  You can check whether a particular phone has a magnetometer using Nokia's Device Specifications database at http://www.developer.nokia.com/Devices/Device_specifications/ .  I went looking for specific information on magnetometers...and just got confused.  But http://lwn.net/Articles/361743/ was submitted by a Nokia programmer (probably for Maemo development) and I doubt Nokia would switch hardware when the OS changes...so they probably use a AMI305 / AK8974 chip (or compatible) in their Symbian phones, too.
Incidentally, I recently found a free standalone magnetometer compass app at http://www.neuvex.com/products/northpole/ .  It works...but seems to be rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise, i.e. East is actually North?
Hope that helps.

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  • E72 - Honeymoon to Divorce.

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    Music player is 'functional' and did its duty without a hitch.
    One thing that worked particularly well was Skype. I do a lot of international calls and I think the Nokia implementation is the best around, hopefully they can make more of this feature as times goes by.
    Ovi/Nokia Maps. Where do I start with this? It's absolutely wonderful. I went a few trips to California, installed the map data on the device for California and Nevada and it worked perfectly. I bought a little car stand for $10 in Fry's electronics which worked for the trip and this just blew me away. Even with it's small screen, this has made me give away my Tom-Tom which I took with me on trips and never turned on once. Full marks.
    Battery life is incredible, for a device in this day and age to last 4 days on a single charge is simply stunning. I'll put up with the lack of a decent movie player any day if it means I get 4 days out of a single charge. Once again, Nokia should shout about how awesome this is to anyone that will listen. iPhone users get trained into worrying about battery life and turning things off where possible, not having to worry about battery life is an absolute blessing. Well done Nokia.
    To give an example, I drove from San Francisco to San Diego which takes 9 hours. I had the GPS running giving me directions, I had the Phone wired into AUX in the Car playing some Audio books for the entire duration and the battery life still had a good 2 days before needing a charge. The E72 battery life will forever go down in Legend as an 'I remember when' story.
    Not that this piece is about comparisons with other Phones, but coming from the UK it means heavy roaming charges if I use data. I took a similar business trip with a Nexus One and it was pretty much useless as their GPS mapping software is US only in features and, it can't work with offline maps and would have cost me a pretty penny to use on a roaming contract with all the Data it would download. The Nexus one is arrogantly setup to be of use to US consumers, overseas users get a half-glass feature set (no turn by turn / street-view etc..).
    The Divorce:
    There is a time in the daily life of using a Phone where the 'unique characteristics' of the Phone start to become tedious. This happens with all phones and gadgets, if it didn't we'd all still be using Videostar VHS recorders (does that give my age away?).
    After travelling up and down California, replying to a hundred or so emails over the course of a week, I noticed that I had just sent a handful of emails without being connected to Wifi. After examining a little further I worked out to my horror that the email client does not connect over Wifi - ever. It fails to work with Profiles, connection orders or anything remotely standard on almost any other Nokia/other device. Profiles for the uneducated should remain an unknown, it's a black art from a previous era that has no place in a modern day smartphone. Devices should simply connect over Wifi if connected, otherwise prompt the user if it's roaming - simple as that, no 'profile' needed. This is how all smartphones work, even the senile Blackberry OS does this out the box.
    I foolishly presumed that as the old mule E63 has worked over Wifi, the E72 being an 'evolved' device would also have this feature as standard. Nokia took it out.. what the $£%$£?
    I can only imagine at this point in time, Nokia deliberately engineered this deficiency to keep carriers happy. The E63 being 'consumer' can be used over wifi with a standard phone tariff, the E72 being a 'prosumer' device needs the user to buy a more expensive Smartphone tariff. I can't for the life of me work out why Nokia would remove a standard feature that was in all of their older phones.
    This little oversight of the Email client not connecting or alerting me that it was using a non-wifi connection actually cost me over 100 euros in data charges. This is simply not acceptable, no excuses, no patch-it at some point please. It's simply stupid. Yes, I've used Profimail etc.. but should I need to on a messaging device? I bought the phone for this feature, paying to replace it is simply counter-intuitive when so many other options exist without wrestling with work-arounds.
    Other than creating a hole in my wallet, I also through sheer paranoia removed all my Email accounts from Ovi and set them up as 'pull' accounts where I manually check my email. I need to do this simply as I travel so much and the roaming feature sometimes works - it's back to the holding on by your fingernails thing with this device, it should work but you're not quite sure.
    Running the much loved Maps application brings up a notice asking to connect to download data - even after saying NO, I still fail to have faith in the profiles working which removes the confidence you have in the device, It removed the feeling that you're in control and that really gets to you after a while. If Email has been engineered to ignore profiles, what else if going on under the surface, I should not have to read forums to gain confidence and if I was a typical consumer I wouldn't know where to start to find this out.
    Other problems starting to appear are that the E72 is starting to crash a few times every week, the dreaded space-bar problem has appeared, I can't upgrade the firmware for some reason even though I'm a few revisions behind (I bought it unlocked from Nokia), the back cover feels like it's starting to work loose and has fallen off a few times and the transition effects needed to be turned off (only half of them disappear). All of these things are in the forums here to some degree. Sometimes they annoy, sometimes not, but overall when you're having a tough day they all get to you.
    Summary:
    There's a scene in the Film "Flash Gordon" where a poor chap puts his hand in a tree trunk as a drunken game to see if the creature that lurks will bite him, he puts his hand in, smiles then slowly starts to pull his hand out before getting bitten just before he pulls his hand to safety - for some odd reason the E72 reminds me of that this. You approach with trepidation, become comfortable with the device then you get bitten just when you think all is well and you're about to make off with the cash.
    The E72 is the end of an era. You can tell by Nokia's responses to the problems on the E72 that their corporate focus is no longer on developing S60 but maintaining it with minimal effort.
    Their focus is now on Maemo and 300 other pressing priorities, their software engineers are stretched way too thin working on OviCloud services, Maemo and a multitude of new devices and holes/low quality are starting to become standard. This is starting to reflect on devices like the E72 which should be a flagship device but instead is not much more evolved than an 'old' E63 at half the price - which incidentally has an email client from the same codebase that can download over wifi. In many ways, plastic aside, I thought the E63 was better, more stable (for me) especially for the price.
    Nokia will obviously keep churning out yearly revisions to the S60 line (C6, E5 etc). But you know for a fact that they're pretty much the same devices with a cavalier attitude to improvements and the least engineering time to fix bugs/features as they can get away with. Arrogant yes, damage to the Nokia Brand by doing this? Absolutely. It will take me 5 years before I return to a new Nokia device after seeing the speed of progress and responses despite some great promise. Look how quickly Google turned around a Nexus One update with multi-touch after an outcry - it can be counted in days after launch, not 'devices' as seems to be the case here.
    The E72 device feels great, I love the form factor, the Keyboard is not the absolute best as that remains with Blackberry but it's certainly one of the very best. The phone functions are second to none.
    Ovi-Maps is just brilliant and the Battery life is as covered above is the stuff of legend.
    In many ways the E72 is the device I'm least able to move on from as there is so much to like and so much potential, but the amateur email implementation and creeping software problems makes this device seriously handicapped for anyone that travels or cares about the significant roaming fees that this device is designed to incur which is a genuine shame.
    Hopefully these things will get fixed in firmware upgrades, I'm sure some of them will but why should I wait? this is not the 1990's - this is mature technology and a (very) mature Operating system which should be solid as a rock.
    I like many on this forum would like to see Nokia do well but they've simply not stepped upto the plate by fixing basic feature holes nor have they communicated to the community that they're listening and will fix any of the problems. Instead they've announced new devices to replace the handsets that still have serious flaws. This is not the actions of a company that listens but a company that simply churns like a machine on a pre-set course with nobody at the wheel.
    Despite much to like about the E72, I for the single reason that Nokia seem to have no ears to hear and no fingers to type, am out until further notice.

    Gentlemen,
    Thank you for your kind words and replies to my experiences with the E72. Since writing the original post my Firmware has been updated not once, but twice no less.
    As I bought the device 'vanilla' style from Nokia online, I have no idea why I was unable to use PCSuite to upgrade my firmware despite my E72 being clearly a few revisions behind, I also tried upgrading from the device itself and it gave me a firm but fair 'No'; one day after hammering the server for a few minutes with constant requests, Nokia's servers finally rolled over and let me download an upgraded firmware directly onto the device. I can only presume it was a load-balance issue with their servers although open to being educated otherwise, I have no idea why PCsuite/Ovi Suite failed to upgrade the E72 despite downloading the new firmware every time I checked for an upgrade. Not to worry, these things happen.
    The new firmware (031.023) has some new features with a few new icons added and many bugs fixed. If I were to relate it to my original 'Honeymoon to Divorce' post, it's a bit like the Wife has put on some heels and lipstick and has lost a bit of weight in an attempt to win my affections (sorry female readers, I know it's unforgivably sexist).
    In that spirit, and considering the Nexus One that I moved back to using is a poor quality phone (remember that function?) I thought I'd give the E72 another spin to see if it fixed my original problems. I reset the device, cleared the SD card and set the device up from what should be a clean and sparkly install.
    You'll all be glad to hear I wont go into another vast post as most of my thoughts still stand, however:
    Email:
    The new email revision does fix some of the Wifi connection issues I was having. I'm glad to say it's faster and does indeed work over Wifi although it seems very slow when updating itself. Other phones seem to download a full header+message infinitely quicker that the E72. As I've been using the new firmware for a week solid, I'm increasingly annoyed that I need to download the HTML versions of email manually which takes terra-years; I believe the E71 email client can be configured to download HTML versions automatically as can my old E63 so why not the E72? Did someone 'merge' the old email source-code into Nokia messaging when they made the E72 client?
    A new bug has appeared that seems to lock into a constantly 'downloading' logo loop - where it never completes the email download. I need to click 'cancel' manually then the email appears as if by magic. There are other niggles that have seemingly crept in such as when using the E72 without a SIM card, the email client will work for a few hours then simply stop connecting manually or automatically, needing a reset to come to life again. **Geek alert on** As an old games programmer, this looks to me like a memory leak problem that could be easily found (or a thread that's gone haywire) - especially considering good debug tools have been around since it's Psion Series 5 roots. **Geek alert off**.
    I'm sure your mileage - or bugs - will be different from my own depending on your own unique circumstances but it's another of those two steps forward, one step back things which Nokia seem to do with the E-series.
    What's frustrating is the phone part of the E72 is world-class which when coupled with a bottom of class email client it defeats the reason to have a QWERTY in the first place. I'd trade the Phone stability for a best of breed email client on this device in a heartbeat. I've not tested the Gmail client as RistotheGreat did (above) so this may solve the email conundrum for some.
    Memory:
    As Beowulfpt above originally questioned, Ram is becoming as scarce as the Yeti. Before the firmware update I had plenty of spare RAM, after the firmware update I get low-RAM notifications every few days and I'm running the exact same email accounts without running ANY 3rd party software whatsoever.
    Stability:
    Overall crashes of the device are now far and few. It seems to be a step forward. Well done Nokia.
    Other:
    It's worth mentioning (thanks DeadKenny) that you can now sign in once to Ovi services and it's supposed to work across the Ovi suite of apps. I've not checked this personally as I'm using the device without adding extra apps at present but there was a note in the firmware note when upgrading.
    Internet Radio has now been added back to the Radio client - no need to go hunting for external versions of this anymore. This, as before, works pretty well.
    To close, it's interesting to read others frustrations (above) with this device, there are many good things about E72 and I can live with compromises in a device if it does other things well. In the case of the E72 it's a great phone but it's an incredibly poorly implemented email client, too poor if you ask me. If Nokia added a half stable email client with HTML (as they had many years back in other similar devices) then I'd put up with the tedious old-school 'profiles' and an old-school approach to connectivity and other such compromises. As it stands I can't in all honesty make this my main device when it's fails to offer a usable email client that I can use without frustration on a daily basis despite the new lipstick.
    As Nokia are so close to making this device 'ok', should I go back to the Nexus and put up with the lack of a keyboard and poor phone functionality, but excellent mail client - waiting for one more Firmware revision from Nokia? How long did you good E71 owners need to wait until Nokia fixed the problems for you? I really want to like this device despite my sheer frustration at it's implementation.
    Note: Despite the E72 still sitting on my desk and not on Ebay, my original post conclusions about Nokia's tardiness in selling half-finished devices still stands. I'd find it incredibly difficult to justify buying a new Nokia device for a number of years. This is a real shame when they have so many voiceless employees within their organisation that if given half a management-vote could turn this cheap strategy around.

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