The current bane of my digitally-connected lifestyle is my new Nokia N95 übergadgettelefunkenphone. It has a fabulous camera… that takes forever to turn on, features astonishing shutter lag, and insists on offering to upload each damned picture to some random piece of blogware I don’t use over a data tariff that borders on daylight robbery. It has GPS… which takes several minutes to lock up to the satellites and then drains the battery while it fails to download the bit of map it thinks I’m on. It has a battery… which lasts a little under a day. It has a a slide design that automatically locks the keypad… then unslides itself in your pocket and manages to dial out anyway. It has 3G data… but refuses to pipe anything out over Bluetooth. And so on.
Anyway, it’s also quite the most hilariously unstable phone I’ve ever used. Yesterday it didn’t crash at all, but on Saturday it crashed four times in the same phone call. Flossie was not amused.
Now, I happen to know that there’s a software update for the thing. I can go to Nokia’s website, fumble with their web form, hoik out the phone’s battery (getting good at that now – when the phone warm-boots after a crash the microphone is disabled, requiring another power cycle to get it working again. Yanking the battery saves about a minute of waiting for it to draw cutesy animations that are, I must admit, wearing a little thin), and bash in the multi-digit ID number. At which point Nokia’s website proudly informs me that my phone’s an N95, which I can read in neat stenciled letters on the front of the thing, thanks.
Oh, and yes, offers the website, there is a software update. Download and install the Software Updater to download and install the software update. Umm… OK. My phone is usually hooked up to a Mac, but I’ll fire up the PC if that’s what it wants.
…and the Nokia Software Updater, of course, assures me there’s no such thing as a software update. 10.0.018 is, I’m told, as recent as it gets. Anything I may have heard about 11.0.026 and its ‘general stability enhancements’ is, evidently, a lie. Let alone 12.0.013, which I must have made up.
It turns out – according to discussions on Nokia’s own support site – that Orange’s locked N95s don’t play ball with the updates. So Nokia blame Orange, and Orange doubtless blame Nokia, and…
Apple, save me from this nonsense. Please!