V12 Firmware finally available to UK users
Well Nokia, or whichever third party they have in the UK for distributing firmware updates, have finally pulled their finger out and released V12, only 6 weeks after world+dog got it.
Still no news from Nokia about why there is such a delay for UK phones.
I would like to claim some personal responsibility for it finally being release. 48 hours before it became available I got fed up and changed the model number of my UK CV (country variant) N97 to that of a generic Euro model. I then used NSU to check the firmware, it told me V12 was available, and installed it. Therefore I think I can claim under the ground of sods law!
What does V12 give us, ummmm, well nothing really. It is supposed to help with main memory use by the browser, but I haven’t seen much improvement. There are many reports of V12 updates corrupting existing wifi connection configurations, and worse preventing correction or creation of new ones. This bug was reported by world+dog when they got V12 six weeks ago, so it’s pretty obvious that the delay for UK users wasn’t caused by Nokia fixing anything!
One of the regular readers of this blog experienced this problem, he kindly detailed the steps he took to get things working again. Have a read here if you are experiencing problems.
None of the annoying bugs I have experienced with V11 have been resolved. The automatic screen pin lock (if you use it), sometime has the keypad in alphabetic mode when you try to unlock. Which means you have to have your wits about you when you unlock, otherwise you end up entering a string of letters instead of numbers and having your code rejected.
The browser still has my favourite “did they ever test this?” bug…
If you want to experience it yourself, got to a webpage with a text entry box, something like the comment box on this site for example. Now with the phone closed (so you get predictive text), start writing a new, unknown word (preferably one you won’t mind having added to the dictionary, as I don’t know how to remove custom words!
Eventually the predictive text will give up and give you the option to spell the word manually. Do it, and when you confirm you will be back to the web page text box with your new word shown. Unfortunately right after the new word will be the last word/letter combination the predictive text tried before giving you the spell option! Genius!
So if you have V11, and your phone is working, just leave it! Skip V12, too many headaches and risks, and no real fixes for issues. Wait for V20 which is due in October.
Not long… Well not for me anyway, I don’t have a UK model phone now… I also have a voided warranty! Who knows how long UK phones will have to wait. Maybe Nokia might have taken notice of the campaign for UK firmware equality. You have signed it haven’t you?
Hopefully V20 will be the firmware the N97 was supposed to have at launch. I get the feeling the N97 was rushed out to preempt the iPhone 3GS, V11 and V12 firmware releases have just been firefighting and bug fixes, and not very good ones at that.