Nokia N78 Gets First OTA Update
Wow, the Nokia N78 sure is getting alot of attention from the mothership. The candybar handset only just started shipping in the U.S. yesterday and has been in other countries only for a short time. Today, Nokia has announced that a firmware update for the N78 has been pushed out, though not in the conventional way.
It seems that Nokia is taking the first step to making firmware updates truly cross-platform by removing the platform alltogether - using Over-The-Air updates! N78 firmware v11.043 is now available to owners by going to Menu - Tools - Utilities - Device Manager - Options - Check for Updates. Using either cellular or WiFi connections, users can then download the 2MB (!!) file and apply the update to their handset.
The update provides improved Bluetooth and music player stability, in addition to camera optimizations and Naviscroll sensitivity updates. The official announcement does not mention whether or not the N78 features UDP (User Data Preservation), so you may want to back up your important personal information before applying the update, just in case.
Unfortunately, we don’t have an N78 here at Symbian-Guru.com quite yet (though Rita played with one), so if you manage to find the update and perform it, please do let us know the product code and any notes from the experience.
Update: Reports are coming in now from several users who have successfully completed the update. Zach at SymbianInMotion (from whom I stole the updated photo) says it went off without a hitch, and Matthew Miller, from ZDnet, says that using EDGE, the update process only took 5-8min and that everything on the phone was left as it was before the update. Bravo, Nokia. Bravo.
WOW! This is big and long awaited news. I was ready to think that Nokia had dropped the OTA update idea due to complexities. But now I realise it must be/is likely to do with FP2 instead. My guess is FP2 devices will start having these OTAs as the standard.
Nice. I just updated and wondered what were included with the update. These are my 2 cents:
- Music player stability is really an awaited item: at least my phone needed to be rebooted _by_removing_the_battery_ because of the crashed music player several times a week!
- I must say naviwheel sensitivity was hardly improved. It used to be easy to navigate through most menus with it. Now it is either too sluggish to use in anywhere but photos and music player.
- Can’t see any difference with the camera application.
- One thing not mentioned in official announcement is current consumption. Before the update, Nokia energy profiler show consumption of around 100mA when idling with background lights on. After the update it consumes only 50mA which is nice.
I heard updating through NSU also leaves the content of the phone intact, is this true?
cnet has mentioned that the call quality on the n78 is “spotty” how true is this?
Jun 26th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
[…] Info about this update available on Symbian-Guru […]
Jul 21st, 2008 at 5:00 am
[…] every crowd out there, including those crazy Mac fans! First up is the Nokia N78, which has gotten yet another OTA firmware update already! There’s no full changelog available yet, but just like the first, this update can be […]