N95 Review

[+LuckDogsCrew]

N95 Review - Geocaching

 

Having purchased an N95 as a mobile phone, that could also have Wifi for web browsing and email. it was a secondary thought that it would be useful to do some geocaching when travelling or without the normal GPS handheld. After have tried this and requests from a number of people for a review here is my initial oppinions

 

GPS Unit

----------

The gps unit is a little slow to establish a position (Similar to the cheaper Garmin units) but it holds position very well. The intigration with the Map is useful and the maps for Australia, Hong Kong and Paris are very good (Have not tried any others).

 

The problem with the GPS unit is its coordinate system, and the accuracy you can get with it. The coordinates are in DD.DDDD, rather than the more accurate DD MM.MMM, This means that rather than haveing an area of 1.8mx1.4m to search you have an area of 9mx7m to search. Of course there is accuracy of the satellite positions to consider as well, so this is not as huge a limitation as first thought. I have not had any problems find the cache's that i have looked for with it so far.

 

The problem with entering coordinates from the geocaching website or Ebook produced by Pocket Query's was a problem, as such I wrote a little HTML converter which runs on the phone and does the job of conversion well. I can send this to anybody who wants a copy.

 

The GPS navigation has a annoyance that when you are within 10m it switches to arrived and gives you no more help, you need to change to the position screen and work on the Lat, Long Values. Otherwise its pretty easy to follow the direction towards the cache. The compass only has N, S, E, W indicators, so its a little hard to follow a NE etc course.

 

Web Browsing

---------------

I find the web browser very good, its easy to navigate most sites, I have only had trouble with one that used Flash which the browser would not show. Most flash however does work well. The problem is with entering large amount of text, as you only have the standard mobile phone keyboard and big logs could be a little long to write. Having said that we are all getting good at using predictive text on our phones, so emails and logs are not too difficult.

 

The web browser allows you to simply store pages locally for reviewing offline if you want to, and this works very well.

 

Waypoints, LandMarks

-----------------------

This is a problem, but not an impossible one. There is no application that I can find to get LOC or GPX files into the LandMarks database. What I have found however is that I can export from GSAK into Tom Tom Format and then import into Landmarks the Tom Tom file using POIXpress. This is not an ideal situation but works well.

 

I now have all caches I have not found in Melbourne in the landmarks, and they appear on the Map's when displayed, meaning I can look at anytime and see if there is a cache near by that I have not done.

 

Cache Page's

--------------

For Cache page viewing I have used 2 methods, I have loaded the 100 closest to my work and 200 closest to home into ebooks (From pocket Queries) and display these on MobReader, This works very well and I am very pleased with this. The only thing missing is a searh in the reader which would be handy.

 

For quick caches, FTF efforts etc. I simply view Geocaching website on the browser and save the page. I can then view the page offline later. This also works very well.

 

Cache Logs

------------

Unfortunatly There appears to be no Cache specific software for the Symbian S60 3rd edition, so the best you can do for storing logs, information is the Notes application. However this works well, and I have used it to store details about logs etc.

 

You can of course use the web browser to enter your log at anytime as well.

 

Calculator

---------

It has one, and it works, enough said, but a handy tool for those calculation on multi's.

 

Email

------

Email is easy to set up and is easy to use. The OuickOffice tool allows you to view Microsoft Doc, Xcell and Powerpoint files with no problems (Although large documents can be a little slow). The answering of emails is good, but again limited to the Mobile Phone keyboard, although you can get a nokia keyboard which will work with it.

I have successfully sete up email accounts for my internet provider (Telstra), Att global and Gmail with no problems and all work well.

 

Route Planning

--------------

The maps for Melbourne, Hong kong and Paris were good for the area's close to the centre of the cities, The amount of detail reduces to major roads pretty quickly after you are about 10km from the city centre. Good for travelling (my main purpose), but maybe not great for caching as these are regularly not close to the CBD.

The ability to pick 2 points, or your current position and a landmark (Geocache) is easy and you willl get a route which you can display on the screen and follow to the destination.

To get navigation, ie. Turn left etc. You need to pay for this (About $130 or 3 years), However I found that following the displayed route was easy when walking. Maybe if you intend to use it for car navigation then this would be required.

 

Wifi

-----

The Wifi is easy to set up and works very well. Have had no problems and it easily set up for my home security encoded wifi.

 

Skype -- Internet Phone

------------------------

Not something that I bought the phone thinking about, but it includes an internet phone over the wifi link, Its not a common internet phone system however. But you can download a problem calling Fring which alllows Skype internet phone calls (which are free between skype uses). This is a handy tool for myself as I use Skype to communicate when travelling overseas, It allows me to make free phone calls in airport lounges with out having to carry a laptop.

 

Conclusion

-----------

The phone is perfect for my usage, I would not recommend you buy one, just for geocaching, you would be better with a GPS Handheld. However if you want a tool to carry cache notes paperless, and allow you to do some caching at the drop of a hat or when travelling, without your usual GPS unit, its a great geocahing tool.

 

If you have any questions feel free to contact me.

[The Birches Head Hunters]

What an excellent review! Thanks for taking the time to write this.

[+IvorBigun]

I have the N95 and a GPSMAP 76CSX

 

I have the new Nokia software "Sports Tracker" from http://europe.nokia.com/A4323689

I did a cache site yesterday Tern About in Yorkshire UK

 

The N95 was running in my back pocket with sports tracker on while the 76CSX was in my other back pocket

 

I uploaded both results to Google Earth The garmin shows my exact track and almost straight lines where I walked

The N95 is all over the place zigzagging about and missed 2 of the roads I walked on and had me going over gardens and fields cutting the corners

 

The 76CSX managed the full 4.89 mile the N95 "crashed" at 3.9 mile and switched off Its good point was how ever on returning home when repowered it did say it had "crashed and had recovered the data"

 

My 1st impresion is it does do a track log but it is only a rough guide as to the journey you have taken and for some thing like a bike time trial it is no where near accurate enough to be able to tell if you have improved.

 

When using in sports tracker mode you are able to close the slide unlike when navigating and you need the slide open maybe thats why its not as accurate as it could be?

 

Sports tracker is fairly new and is still being developed and as yet there is not a map with it so the results have to be exported to a map ie Google Earth

 

You can overlay both tracks from the N95 and 76CSX in different colours I had yellow and red and compre the tracks side by side

[+bainsworld]

When using in sports tracker mode you are able to close the slide unlike when navigating and you need the slide open maybe thats why its not as accurate as it could be?

The GPS antenna is along the underside of the keypad and so reception and therefore accuracy is enhanced by having the slide open when using the GPS features. On my unit the positional accuracy worsens by 50m or more when operating the unit with the slide closed rather than open.

Edited September 25, 2007 by bainsworld

[+bainsworld]

The gps unit is a little slow to establish a position (Similar to the cheaper Garmin units)

I found the same thing until I upgraded to the v12 firmware and enabled "assisted GPS" which uses information from the cellular network to obtain its position. I now find the N95 locates its position within 20 seconds! There is a small data cost associated with this which I haven't seen the bill for but on a Vodafone capped plan it shouldn't be a problem (gulp).

 

This is a problem, but not an impossible one. There is no application that I can find to get LOC or GPX files into the LandMarks database. What I have found however is that I can export from GSAK into Tom Tom Format and then import into Landmarks the Tom Tom file using POIXpress. This is not an ideal situation but works well.

GSAK now have a macro which will export cache information into LMX format. You save this on the phone as an .xml file and you will be prompted to save the Landmarks when you open it from the File Manager.

 

One issue I have found is that the cache URL works from the Landmark application (opens the cache page) but in the Nokia Maps application a "//" gets prepended which results in "web page not found".

 

Still, we are getting there...

Edited September 25, 2007 by bainsworld

[Suscrofa]

"The problem with the GPS unit is its coordinate system, and the accuracy you can get with it. The coordinates are in DD.DDDD, rather than the more accurate DD MM.MMM, This means that rather than haveing an area of 1.8mx1.4m to search you have an area of 9mx7m to search. Of course there is accuracy of the satellite positions to consider as well, so this is not as huge a limitation as first thought. I have not had any problems find the cache's that i have looked for with it so far.

"

 

Accuracy has nothing to do with the way the data are represented !

Decimal format is the way ALL GPS operates internally for position (and in meter for heights and correction as the earth center is considered the reference ).

It just converts to different format or units for displays.

Current GPS inaccuracy is more than the 1.8mx1.4m you mention.

 

Besides if Nokia sets the trend toward decimalisation of coordinates, it is a good move, just consider all the people asking how to do basic arithmetic with non decimal data.

[oktexin]

N95 Review - Geocaching

 

Having purchased an N95 as a mobile phone, that could also have Wifi for web browsing and email. it was a secondary thought that it would be useful to do some geocaching when travelling or without the normal GPS handheld. After have tried this and requests from a number of people for a review here is my initial oppinions

 

GPS Unit

----------

The gps unit is a little slow to establish a position (Similar to the cheaper Garmin units) but it holds position very well. The intigration with the Map is useful and the maps for Australia, Hong Kong and Paris are very good (Have not tried any others).

 

The problem with the GPS unit is its coordinate system, and the accuracy you can get with it. The coordinates are in DD.DDDD, rather than the more accurate DD MM.MMM, This means that rather than haveing an area of 1.8mx1.4m to search you have an area of 9mx7m to search. Of course there is accuracy of the satellite positions to consider as well, so this is not as huge a limitation as first thought. I have not had any problems find the cache's that i have looked for with it so far.

 

The problem with entering coordinates from the geocaching website or Ebook produced by Pocket Query's was a problem, as such I wrote a little HTML converter which runs on the phone and does the job of conversion well. I can send this to anybody who wants a copy.

 

The GPS navigation has a annoyance that when you are within 10m it switches to arrived and gives you no more help, you need to change to the position screen and work on the Lat, Long Values. Otherwise its pretty easy to follow the direction towards the cache. The compass only has N, S, E, W indicators, so its a little hard to follow a NE etc course.

 

Web Browsing

---------------

I find the web browser very good, its easy to navigate most sites, I have only had trouble with one that used Flash which the browser would not show. Most flash however does work well. The problem is with entering large amount of text, as you only have the standard mobile phone keyboard and big logs could be a little long to write. Having said that we are all getting good at using predictive text on our phones, so emails and logs are not too difficult.

 

The web browser allows you to simply store pages locally for reviewing offline if you want to, and this works very well.

 

Waypoints, LandMarks

-----------------------

This is a problem, but not an impossible one. There is no application that I can find to get LOC or GPX files into the LandMarks database. What I have found however is that I can export from GSAK into Tom Tom Format and then import into Landmarks the Tom Tom file using POIXpress. This is not an ideal situation but works well.

 

I now have all caches I have not found in Melbourne in the landmarks, and they appear on the Map's when displayed, meaning I can look at anytime and see if there is a cache near by that I have not done.

 

Cache Page's

--------------

For Cache page viewing I have used 2 methods, I have loaded the 100 closest to my work and 200 closest to home into ebooks (From pocket Queries) and display these on MobReader, This works very well and I am very pleased with this. The only thing missing is a searh in the reader which would be handy.

 

For quick caches, FTF efforts etc. I simply view Geocaching website on the browser and save the page. I can then view the page offline later. This also works very well.

 

Cache Logs

------------

Unfortunatly There appears to be no Cache specific software for the Symbian S60 3rd edition, so the best you can do for storing logs, information is the Notes application. However this works well, and I have used it to store details about logs etc.

 

You can of course use the web browser to enter your log at anytime as well.

 

Calculator

---------

It has one, and it works, enough said, but a handy tool for those calculation on multi's.

 

Email

------

Email is easy to set up and is easy to use. The OuickOffice tool allows you to view Microsoft Doc, Xcell and Powerpoint files with no problems (Although large documents can be a little slow). The answering of emails is good, but again limited to the Mobile Phone keyboard, although you can get a nokia keyboard which will work with it.

I have successfully sete up email accounts for my internet provider (Telstra), Att global and Gmail with no problems and all work well.

 

Route Planning

--------------

The maps for Melbourne, Hong kong and Paris were good for the area's close to the centre of the cities, The amount of detail reduces to major roads pretty quickly after you are about 10km from the city centre. Good for travelling (my main purpose), but maybe not great for caching as these are regularly not close to the CBD.

The ability to pick 2 points, or your current position and a landmark (Geocache) is easy and you willl get a route which you can display on the screen and follow to the destination.

To get navigation, ie. Turn left etc. You need to pay for this (About $130 or 3 years), However I found that following the displayed route was easy when walking. Maybe if you intend to use it for car navigation then this would be required.

 

Wifi

-----

The Wifi is easy to set up and works very well. Have had no problems and it easily set up for my home security encoded wifi.

 

Skype -- Internet Phone

------------------------

Not something that I bought the phone thinking about, but it includes an internet phone over the wifi link, Its not a common internet phone system however. But you can download a problem calling Fring which alllows Skype internet phone calls (which are free between skype uses). This is a handy tool for myself as I use Skype to communicate when travelling overseas, It allows me to make free phone calls in airport lounges with out having to carry a laptop.

 

Conclusion

-----------

The phone is perfect for my usage, I would not recommend you buy one, just for geocaching, you would be better with a GPS Handheld. However if you want a tool to carry cache notes paperless, and allow you to do some caching at the drop of a hat or when travelling, without your usual GPS unit, its a great geocahing tool.

 

If you have any questions feel free to contact me.

[sanooj]

i was out geocaching with a friend of mine. since we were looking for a multi-cache, we has to enter new coordinates to my friend´s n95... but when i saw the coordinate system it was using (dd.dddd) i was like "what the...???"

we did find the cache, using a map, but now i get to my question: how can i get dd mm.mmm or dd mm ss.s coordinates from the dd.dddd system the n95 uses?