[General Topics] Menneisyys:
Finally, the question of call (auto)recording – compared to Windows Mobile: In this area, the N95 is orders of magnitude better than most (but not all!) Windows Mobile handsets because 1, it does allow for recording the other party 2, while it does beep every 15 seconds (as opposed to what the manual states, that is, 5 seconds), this is only heard by the local party, not the remote one. The remote party doesn’t hear a thing – not even the initial beep about 2 seconds after starting the recording. This also means you do NOT need to use any beep filter applications (BeepOff, which, currently, doesn’t have an S60 3rd-compatible version AFAIK or the beep filter function of Ultimate Voice Recorder itself) and you can even use the built-in Recorder app (in the Office suite) to (manually) record your conversations. No beeps will be heard on the other end of the line.

I’ve played a lot with the call recording facilities and thoroughly tested the already-mentioned built-in Recorder app (which needs to be manually started and lacks memory-saving output formats), VITO AudioNotes for Nokia S60 3rd ed 1.31 and the well-known Ultimate Voice Recorder (UVR) 4.01.

I’ve created a chart of these apps:

You’re supposed to directly compare the contents of this chart to that of my Windows Mobile VITO AudioNotes review. Note that, in the meantime, Resco Audio Recorder has also received MS Smartphone support. A quick, textual comparison & explanation follows:

Records to the card: of course, all of them do. In here, I’ve listed the directories they record to. As can clearly be seen, VITO AudioNotes uses exactly the same directory structure than under Windows Mobile, clearly separating incoming and outgoing calls. This is certainly good news – as we’ll later see, the other two solutions don’t store the direction of the call.

Format: in here, I’ve listed the output file format. As can clearly be seen, the built-in Recorder produces very large (one megabyte / minute) files unless you do know the call will take less than a minute OR are ready to always begin a new recording when the first times out; in this case, you can also use the most memory-effective MMS (physically, AMR) output format. The two other apps are far better in this respect, particularly UVR, which also allows for recording directly into AMR, unlike VITO’s app.

Distinction between incoming and outgoing calls?: as has already been mentioned, only VITO’s app supports this. However, I still don’t consider this to be a stumbling block with UVR as it’s, in general, very easy to decide who was the caller, particularly if you follow my advice below on trying to defer speaking with some 1-2 seconds.

Boot-time loading?: on Windows Mobile, both Resco and VITO automatically start themselves. With PMRecorder, you can easily do the same by creating a shortcut to its main EXE file (and, then, just minimizing PMRecorder’s main window upon restarting your handset). On Symbian S60 3rd ed, only UVR is able to auto-start itself, VITO isn’t. That is, you will always need to start the latter manually.

Shut down by the OS?: as with Windows Mobile, Symbian also shuts down background tasks when the memory starts to run out. This happens on the memory-constrained N95(-1) (NOT the 128M RAM-equipped N95-3 or the N95 8GB!) a lot of times.

Under previous S60 editions, there were call recorder apps that registered themselves (and, therefore, run) as services, not as high-level applications prone to be shut down. UVR has also followed this line. Unfortunately, that’s no longer the case – UVR will be shut down on the N95 too pretty early. Fortunately, this can be very easily spotted if you let it display its icon at the bottom of the screen – if it’s hidden, then, you know it needs to be restarted.

VITO’s app, on the other hand, was a VERY nice surprise: it isn’t shut down and keeps recording flawlessly. I’ve done some VERY serious tests mass program starting tests, spanning some 15-20 minutes, to be absolutely sure this is the case. VITO was never shut down. That is, if you don’t want to continuously restart UVR, go for VITO – it will surely be in the memory, ready for recording. A big thumbs up for the VITO folks!

Caller ID (or, if it lacks, phone number, including the case of unknown other parties) in the filename?: a decent call recorder app (as all the three recommended Windows Mobile call recorders) should make a Contacts database lookup, based on the caller / callee’s phone number, in order to insert her or his name in the file name, instead of the phone number. Both specialized apps support this.

Results of problematic chars in the contact name?: just like on Windows Mobile, Symbian apps refuse to record calls where the other party can be found in your local Contacts database and her or his name contain invalid characters like slashes (/).

As can clearly be seen, neither UVR nor VITO’s app knows how to deal with these cases – they simply won’t record anything. With UVR, this is particularly painful, as it DOES show it’s recording the conversation.

Results of beep elimination?: UVR (as opposed to the, in this regard, weaker VITO app) offers beep elimination, which is highly useful on (some) other models, where the other party does hear the beeps denoting being recorded. As, on the N95, beeps aren’t transmitted to the other party, the need for such an app isn’t so important on the N95. Therefore, you can safely turn off UVR’s beep elimination functionality (set Options / Settings / Warning beep to On; it’s Off by default) if you can put up with the beeps every 15 seconds. Note that I didn’t find this necessary: while some people complain of UVR’s beep elimination making the conversations a little bit stutter upon beeps, I haven’t run into this situation on the N95. Both parties were absolutely OK and pause-less with beep elimination on; so was the recording.

Visual feedback when (in)active?: UVR displays an icon at the bottom of the screen (this can be disabled); VITO doesn’t. With UVR, this is of particular importance because you’ll see at once if UVR gets shut down.

Lagging at start: along with the following, this row explains whether the recording starts at once, or, there is some kind of a lag, making the first (few) seconds unrecorded. While VITO’s app excels at this (no lagging at all), UVR has lost this test: it starts recording some 1.5-2.5 seconds after the call has been answered.

Note that you can’t fix this problem with URL by, for example, making it record to the internal memory (as opposed to the card) or disabling the beep elimination functionality.

Cutting at end: the situation is the reverse when the opposite case (“does the recorder app finish recording prematurely; that is, (long) before the call is hung?”). VITO’s app, unfortunately, doesn’t record the last 1.5 - 2 seconds. Make sure you keep this in mind when you want to be absolutely sure everything is recorded – try to insert a pause if you are to hang up the call and not the other party!

Other goodies: just like the built-in Recording, UVR is also able to password protect recordings and is able to do some similar niceties. VITO’s only real advantage is its ability to append a new recording to existing ones (both MP3’s and WAV’s). Of course, I haven’t listed essential functionality like playing back recordings.

Verdict: if you do need call recording, N95 supports it almost flawlessly. As neither UVR nor VITO AudioNotes are perfect, you will want to carefully compare their (dis)advantages and your needs to pick the one that better suits your needs.