N96 Not Compatible: are Betalabs explanations correct??

Discussion for Nokia Photo Browser

16-04-2009 04:55

Is this Q&A the right explanation?:

'....6. N96 takes forever to load images
We've been reported by some patient users that only a few images are loaded after 20 minutes. Unfortunately, we cannot solve this problem as this is most likely because of the hardware N96 has. N96 has ARM9 264MHz. This is rather limited compared to other devices having ARM11 300 - 600MHz.

We very much appreciate your feedbacks on how it works with the individual product. But please also understand that we cannot provide good support for every device model here in the Beta labs....'

I have made several tests and concluded that is not a matter of slow cpu but there might be some compatibility problems. Maybe the different hardware doesn't follow the instructions given to process the compressed photos..

In fact some researches I made in the web shows that the processor of N96 should be this: STMicroelectronics Nomandik STn8815A12

and the clock speed is

ARM926EJ

Comments

Submitted by nkaneko on 16-04-2009 06:06.

Thanks, it seems you had put some solid time on this problem for us. You may be right.

Honestly speaking, N96 is one of the devices that we have smaller knowledge about. And I just shouldn't have written such "most likely" statement based on the unconfirmed assumption. Yet unfortunately, we cannot use capacity to further investigate the problem. But at least I've edit the answer to reflect the situation better.

About the chipset, we cannot really comment on that. When I wrote the answer, I was looking at the public information available at the Forum Nokia.

Submitted by mrria on 16-04-2009 07:04.

Thank you Nkaneko!

Submitted by ericldn on 16-04-2009 14:54.

...I mean, it could be, but from the behaviour of this app that I have experienced, it seems likely that it could be something else alltogether. On my N96, I found that the first time I started Photo Browswer, I had about 5 thumbnailled photos coming up, all other 30 or so pictures I had, came as grey boxes. No amount of waiting would bring any more thumbnails. I found however that by accessing the first grey box following the last thumbnailed picture would actually show me the photo. Restarting the app at this point would bring this thumbnail up. I repeated this manually for all subsequent grey boxes, one by one, and eventually got all my photos thumbnailed. What transpires from this is that the thumbnailing process does work, but inexplicably seems to stop/lock up after one photo is thumbnailed. More details in this other thread: http://betalabs.nokia.com/forum/topic/1745

Submitted by mrria on 16-04-2009 16:59.

Here is my opinion:

99% of Nokia phones have a different platform from the Nomadik (N96) and most of the N and E Series come with a TI (Texas Instruments) OMAP platform. Of course not all OMAP cpus are the same.

N96 has a different platform due to the chip DVB-H (TV) that was not compatible with all other platforms known and used by Nokia.

To make it easy and brief the developing team who designed or is designing this software of course though first of the majority of Nokias sold wordwide.

Of course the 'code' that has been written for this software can also be read by Nomadik platforms but is somehow read as crooked and slow, so this is the result.

At this point I think that developers know much more than I do and I think this is an interesting issue only for few. Results and walkarounds are well known by readers of your interesting post and of course users.

Submitted by ericldn on 16-04-2009 17:13.

...with you. I mean, there's barely 2 or 3 threads related to the N96 and one could also argue that this app is meant and primarily designed for - I believe- touch screen devices. So, of course many comments have very little value in themselves. The developpers however, unlike other forums, do seem to read them and go through them. While the problem with the N96 may be too complicated or not worth dealing with, posting stories related to the experience we have with it, and workaround or behavioural issues we find can sometime help in trouble-shooting the problem in the first place: on occasion, it may help pointing to a solution that may not be too much trouble resolving: you just never know. So I think these threads can help.
By the way, do you own an N96 yourself and do you have the same problem with the thumbnails/photos not loading?

Submitted by mrria on 16-04-2009 17:43.

Yes I do have an N96 and I do have all your trouble and I have more than 1950 photos in my mass memory. Today I simply disinstalled application.

And I do agree that this interesting app will be implemented on next touch screen devices. Rumors say that many new touch devices will come out in the next future.
That's why I believe 5800 is the fastest handling even though it doesn't has the fastest platform. In fact I believe (but I might be wrong) that cpu is not the key, at least not the main issue.

I also believe that the team who develops the firmware for N96 might know the right things to implement but sometimes, specially in big firms, the right hand doesn't know what is the left doing..