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.
