Mippin's Buzz widgets for N97 homescreen

[Rafe]

Mippin has released four news 'Buzz' widgets, optimised for the Nokia N97's homescreen, each covering a different area: general news, tech, gaming and gossip. On the N97's homescreen the widgets scroll through the latest news headlines, with the full story (in full screen mode) just a touch away. There's an offline mode (great for Tube journeys) and the refresh time and content areas of widgets can be customised.

Read on in the full article.

Hi.
I see you using roadsinc on your home screen. Do you have problem with that?
It always crashed when i open email, so I uninstalled.
Are you using the latest firmware?
Lengky

That background picture is ideal to make everything unreadable on the homescreen.

[Rafe]

Roadsync has been working fine for me. Though I've had a crash or two (I think it was RoadSync but can't be sure).

Screen is readable for me, bear in mind that screenshots often look different to the real thing in terms of visibility etc.

[mCrem]

not only do they work on the n97, but the work just fine on an i8910 as well! (minus the homescreen part)

A quick hands-on from Steve and then, nothing.... for a month.

Normally we'd have 3 or 4 by now.

So does this phone really suck, and you're just being polite?

[Rafe]

That's down to me I'm afraid. I should have written something by now, but have been occupied elsewhere. You can expect some additional N97 content very soon.

And no the phone doesn't suck, although it is a different beast to previous Nseries so its taking a bit longer to get my head around it (compared to the N86 which I was able to review quite quickly). Part of it is also knowing where to start (but mainly it's down to me procrastinating and having a lot of other things on my plate).

[slitchfield]

Fair comment from Rafe! 8-)

Although the fact that I was happy to pass the N97 on so quickly to another AAS teamster (Tzer2 and then Ewan for August) should tell the smartphone connoisseur something. The N97 has got lots of good points but the keyboard, quality of video recording and speakers were all big annoyances to me,

[nottmbantam]

Originally Posted by Rafe

That's down to me I'm afraid. I should have written something by now, but have been occupied elsewhere. You can expect some additional N97 content very soon.

And no the phone doesn't suck, although it is a different beast to previous Nseries so its taking a bit longer to get my head around it (compared to the N86 which I was able to review quite quickly). Part of it is also knowing where to start (but mainly it's down to me procrastinating and having a lot of other things on my plate).

I have the same opinion - I find it so different to my N95, that I was thinking maybe its just a new phone so takes some getting used to.

But after a couple of weeks with, I'm only just beginning to get comfortable with it. I don't think that's down to the phone having faults, it's probably got to do with that the phone has so much to offer at times I don't think it's that easy to decide what to do with it next!

Bit of a waffly response....

[Rafe]

Not waffly - confirms what I was thinking.

I will say the N97 isn't the uber device that some people were expecting, and it does have a bit of a jack of all trades master of none feel, but that doesn't mean its a bad device.

With review I ike to give a well rounded opinion and I'll certainly try and include some responses to some of the widely voiced issues / good things / bad things. For example I've found the keyboard decent (not oustanding sure, but not even close to putting me off).

[Arthur]

Rafe - let's be honest here. You're waiting for the new firmware to come out, aren't you? Hence the delay in writing the review.

I should have written something by now, but have been occupied elsewhere.

Too busy for even one writer to cover Nokia's flagship device of 2009 in greater depth? Nothing for a month? The Nokia 5800 received five feature length stories within five weeks from the entire team!

To be fair having used one myself, I can see why a Symbian site would want to write about something else. Anything else.

Just tell Nokia you're washing your hair.

[theshocker]

I tried the Newsbuzz widget and it was pretty decent until I was in the subway (no connection) and tried to view some of the content, and a "no connection" error message kept popping up every 20 seconds, which was extremely annoying. What's the point of being able to read content offline when you keep getting interrupted by that stupid error message? If they can fix that then this would be a great widget.