DG's Voice: N70 Music Edition Firmware Review

I just update my firmware again from the normal N70 firmware to real music edition firmware. Well, it has no significant difference between the standard v5.0638.3.0.1 with the music edition one.

Changes made
The first difference is that Music Edition fresh boot in the green theme which like what you've seen in all of the Music Edition adverts instead of the standard blue theme.

Of course, the media key now becomes the dedicated music keys. It is not customizable compared to the standard edition firmware. A short press would activate the music player and a long press would activate the radio.

Well, in standard edition, the long press of the # key would bring the line switch prompt which switch between line1 and line2. For me, I don't even need the line switching shortcut. In older N-Series firmware, a long press of # key would switch profiles between silent and general. This is more useful than line switching shortcut for most of us, I believe. Luckily in the Music Edition firmware, long press of # still switch between profiles instead of active line. :)

A long press of # key activates the Silent Profile in Music Edition

Music Player
This new firmware for both standard and music edition now supports the AD-41 music adapter flawlessly. I just simply love it. However the default music player has no improvement at all compared to the previous firmware. I don't understand the needs of scanning whole Memory Card to get all your MP3 into the list everytime you open the player. Not only this, when you access the playlist, it again read all the ID3 tags each time the playlist was accessed. I had around 150 mp3's in that playlist and everytime it took me nearly 1minute to get my playlist accessed. Is this a smart way of Nokia's Music Player managing the song information? Its forgiveable for the standard edition firmware music player to behave such way as it's not really tailored for music purposes.

Yet in Music Edition, no imporvement was made. The player is still same as the old N70 firmware. A music player which takes ages to load the playlist, no function to edit the ID3 tags, it does not store your previous configurations such as Shuffle and Repeat, it does not resume the songs which last played (A cheap china brand mp3 player also know to resume perfectly), and no equalizer. You call this a Music Player in a Music Edition phone?

Is sad to say Sony Ericsson Walkman series or even K-series which don't focus on music capability has the better player than this Music Edition series of Nokia.

Screenshots of N70 Music Edition interface

Nokia (The classic blue theme)