My review: N95 Firmware v20, one day old!

Question

Well - I have flashed the firmware and been using my "new" (for it certainly seems like a new phone) N95 all day now. It has only crashed once (curiously enough clicking on the top right link on the http://mosh.nokia.com page, a small green right-facing arrow). I certainly can't claim that level of stability with my desktop PC... so my one crash is par for the course, and very impressive indeed!
As many people have mentioned, there is a lot more free RAM now. Exactly how much is really immaterial as it is the enhanced capability of the phone which has resulted from this boost that matters. As a pretty exhaustive test I did the following:
Whilst on speaker phone to my business partner he sent me an email to my Hotmail account.
I opened up the messaging app and went to my Windows Live mail box.
I opened the email and downloaded an 85k Word document attachment on it.
The QuickOffice viewer opened the Word file.
Within the Word file was a web link - I needed to look at this and so copied it to the clipboard.
Returning to the menu I opened the browser and navigated to the link from the clipboard. The page was laden with graphics and a tonne of text. I zoomed to 50% and scanned through to read the information I needed.
Leaving the browser open, and just for the hell of it, I went to the menu and launched Widsets which duly connected to my WLAN and loaded up my widgets. I scrolled to the Darla Mack Mobile blog widget and opened it up, selecting the first story within (about the v20 firmware, of course!). This news post had a 70% of screen sized image on the page too.
Throughout all of this I changed screen orientation a number of times using both the slider and the option in the browser's menu. I also had a call blacklist application, as well as the excellent MobiGenie voicemail application running in the background at all times.
Before I closed everything down, I loaded Y-Task's memory module to see how much RAM was free - 6.7M of free RAM!!! Now that's what I'm talking about!!!!
I'd just like to say to anyone anywhere who has ever harboured or proffered the opinion that "it's a phone, it's not meant to do all that" or some variant thereof - what absolute rubbish! This new firmware has made the phone multi-taskable to such an extent that at last, the N95's slogan "it's what computers have become" can at last ring true!!
As for battery usage improvements, the fullness of time will reveal whether it really makes an impact. In the mean time, today, I have tested it as follows:
I have performed a firmware upgrade(!)
I took three backups on PC Suite via content copier
Used USB Mass transfer to copy 370MB of data from my memory card, via the phone
Installed 30 applications to the phone
Restored data to the phone (and subsequently reformatted the phone!) 3 times
Played with the web browser for 50+ mins on WiFi.
Chatted on MSN Messenger for around 30 minutes
Took 8 photos at 5MP each, most with flash
Played around in general with the phone for about 3 hours, on and off
Performed the aforementioned uber-test on the phone
Spoken in total for (according to my log) 2h09m
Sent 9 text messages
Watched one streaming video from my gallery, lasting 6 mins
My battery has JUST, after all of that, hit the low battery warning. I think that you'll agree that's an impressive performance for the N95. This is all with the phone set to lowest brightness, non 3G mode etc. to conserve maximum power of course, so that extra jolt of power that the N95 8Gb batteries have would still not go amiss... I suspect that I'd have been able to do a lot less if I was using high speed mobile networks for the data tasks I listed above.
The camera is also very much improved, about 3-4 times faster overall. It seems to produce better quality images with finer resolution of individual pixels. I think (?) they have increased focal length on macro shots from 10-40cm to 60cm (I could be wrong there). The update massively reduced shot-to-shot time and the simple addition of the processing image message really improves the process no end, curiously enough! Also, there is funny gray line grid mode (er, what's this acutally for??).
There are numerous tweaks here and there, like new sub-folders in the menus (very handy indeed) and new versions of some apps.
There are some rather glaring omissions however:
Nothing has been done with the accelerometer functions, no auto-rotate or tilt-navigation (a la RotateMe / Nokmote).
Videos and photos are still grouped together in the gallery and the 'albums' feature feels a bit like an afterthought (at the very least I would expect folders or album icon or something to show up in the photo/video stream).
There is still no control over compression of JPEG images from the camera (although this will probably be a minor issue to many).
The slider menu (which Darla Mack quite rightly commented on) from the N81 which allows you to set up how the slider action causes your phone to behave - where is it? This is such an obvious requirement for the N95 and has been the frequent cause of complaints on many forums since the N95's launch
There are a number of applications / software features, for example the multimedia menu, which are already present on other phones which have not been included here. Indeed I believe that some of the core apps from the N95 8GB are more advanced still... given the mess Nokia made of the N95-1 it would seem only courteous to have provided a full set of the latest core apps and menus
There are many other niggles, but I'm going to leave those ones down to personal tastes. That and the fact that I'm a software designer myself, so I'm always likely to think I can see a better way to do it!
To sum up, this firmware update was very much needed and overdue. Nokia's handling of this issue and of it's customers has been appalling. Making people wait for 5 months without word, having superceded a very flawed and expensive phone was not, under any stretch of the imagination, a good way to go about things.
Now that it v20 is here, the N95 flies! It is suddenly reborn and I'm so glad I own it now. It works beautifully and is so stable... it really is a pleasure to use now. I'm glad of my memory card slot and camera lens cover - I wouldn't trade this up for an N95 8gb or anything else I've seen on the market now! (yes that includes you iPhone!! ;P )
My final thought on all of this? Thank Jebus they fixed the infernal keypress bug!!! XD

Answer 1

To be fair, this update addresses nearly all of the concerns that we've had. It specifically addresses the top 2 concerns - memory handling and the poor performance of the camera application, slow load times and processing times.
There are a bunch of other updates as well which are just icing on the cake.
I think through 3rd party programs you can achieve most of what you are trying to do. I'm sure the n95 will recieve yet another update. The attention they have put into updating the phone to support the music store and ngage means that it will recieve additional bug fixes, especially once they begin to get a revenue stream from these new services being launched in december.
I think the n95 if anything has been shown to be a winning device. I believe it will continue to have Nokia's support due to the fact that it is one of the most capable devices in the lineup. I believe the 5 month development time since the last update is due to how comprehensive the overhaul of the firmware has been. Now that version 20 is out, we will see smaller incremental updates. The tough part (overhauling the memory system and operating system, better battery management etc) is over.
I'm really enjoying my device now.