Nokia N9 mega review part 2

Note: This is a three page review and links to second and third pages are below ‘share to’ and ‘Related Posts’ area. If you have missed the first part, check here. In the first part, we focused on areas like Design, User Interface, contacts and call management, in this part we check how N9 performs at multimedia tasks, how the navigation is and how the other generic applications are. Before you start reading this part, have a look at this amazing “N9 Introductory Video”.

Music Player

The Good:

• Visual and aural treat, featural disappointment
• Superb audio quality with neutral sound signature
• Fluid UI
• Music Player generates album art using album name (for albums without album art).
• Music playback screen is interesting.
• Audio files can be copied to phone using drag-drop or copy-paste. No need for a sync client.

The Bad:

• No settings at all
• No equalizers
• No separate entry for podcasts
• No cover-flow
• No landscape mode

While the Music player UI is superb and fluid, feature wise, there is nothing. There are songs, there is album art, there are options to shuffle and repeat and that is it! Nothing. This is the music home. To add songs to music library, you can either download from Ovi Music store (if you have pass) or you can copy using USB (drag and drop) and when you start the music player, it will refresh the music catalog. If you are one of those who like to have clean unmodified audio output and depend on quality headphones/earphones and/or external amplifiers to enhance audio quality, N9 is one of the very few that will fit your need. Audio quality is superb, output is loud and there is just enough bass. Good thing is that everything is balanced and none of the frequencies is overpowering. And if you are one of those who prefer playing with equalizers, muddle with audio (using those 3D blah blah filters), you will be utterly disappointed. The top half displays most played albums while the bottom half shows the classic music menu that is found on every damn music player. If your region has Ovi Music and if you have subscription to Ovi Music, you can access and download songs from the music player. Tap on most played albums will start playback of songs in the album. Below three images show Album/Artists and Songs lists:                       An interesting thing here is that the album art acts as playback control. swipe left on album art for next song, tap to pause, tap again to continue play, swipe right to replay the track or to play previous track. Or you can use the traditional controls listed below album art. The sequence is

• Album Art
• Song name, number, album name and an icon (oval shaped white icon with three horizontal dots on the right side), clicking on which gives song description.
• Playback controls
• Slider
• Bottom bar with back, favorite, shuffle, repeat and options keys.

This is how song properties look like: You can head to Ovi Music Store from this screen to find and download more songs from this artist or songs that are recommended based on the current song. Similar to Contacts application, scroll along the right edge for letter-by-letter fast scroll. Opening an album gives a list of songs in the album as shown below That’s all about the music player. Yes, that is all. PR 1.2 update adds support for Podcasts and Audiobooks (will be covered later).

Video Player

Similar to music player, video player is extremely simple with not many settings. Following image shows the home of Video Player Videos are played in landscape mode and at the playback screen, you have options to share, delete and rename video. When you look for video description, preloaded youtube plugin searches and displays related videos. Similar, to music player, that is all there is for Video player. Do note that this will play DivX and Xvid videos out of the box.

Navigation

The Good:

• Offline navigation
• Superb voice guidance
• Public transport detail (route numbers in Bangalore is just ….)
• 3D landmarks

The Bad:

• Very slow and erroneous GPS lock if not in open area. (more due to A-GPS, will explain)
• Could’ve come preloaded with at least one voice pack (English UK or USA)
• Detail outside major cities needs lot of work.

There is no doubt that Nokia navigation is the best preloaded navigation software available on phones. And it keeps on improving. The best feature about this is the offline navigation. It will take a while to get a lock if you are not using Internet but hey, its better than not getting a lock at all when there is no Internet connectivity and unlike Google Maps and Bing maps, these maps can be downloaded (from map for a single state to full country maps to every damn map available on Nokia servers). There have been numerous reviews on Nokia Maps and you can use them online from a PC browser (Nokia Maps). You will not get a voice guided navigation etc that is available on Nokia phones but you will get to know how good they are. Navigation is divided into two apps.

• Maps : plain maps where you can search for a place, get a route from one place to another, find places around your current location etc
• Drive : this application is purely for guided navigation. Fire it up, give destination and start your drive as the navigator guides you

From the home screen, you can search for a place, check maps, look for nearby places, set route and access maps options. As you can see from above images, navigation gives a 3D view of the map (you can also use birds eye view layout), gives you more detail like your current speed, distance remaining. Before every turn, there is voice response asking you take turn (take a xyz turn after xyz metres) blah blah. There are many options for the voice. You can pick male or female voice and pick from a variety of languages. There was a surprise for me when I was testing this app. When I clicked on ‘nearby’ places, this is what I found d Look below ‘See More’. Public Transport. It is a known feature but take a look at the bus names. That did surprise me and here is a more detailed view that shows nearby bus stops, bus numbers (though not a complete list, it should do), how far the bus stop is. And this is how ‘nearby’ places list look like From the maps menu, you can setup various options, download maps and voice files to use for navigation. There is one thing more that I was surprised to see. Google maps giving more detail than Nokia maps. Yes. Look at the below images. First one is screenshot from Nokia Maps and the second one is from Google Maps.

See the amount of detail that is present in Google Maps outside Hyderabad city. This is after I downloaded Nokia Maps for Andhra Pradesh. Thing is that there is a very famous temple in this area and going there for the first time without navigation is extremely difficult and we had to rely on friend’s Android and just look at the amount of detail on zooming in at the area Another problem I faced with Nokia navigation is w.r.t GPS lock. This is the same issue that I faced on N900. Even when there is Internet connectivity, sometimes getting a lock can be extremely painful if one is not having a open contact with satellite. I resolved this issue by changing location server name to ‘supl.google.com’ from ‘supl.nokia.com’ and what used to take couple of minutes or forever takes few seconds. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find this setting in MeeGo which means that I had to run for clear sky to get a GPS lock. If Google gets offline navigation and voice guided navigation working in Indian region, it can be trouble for Nokia navigation. Continue to the next page