Firmware Frenzy

OK, I must confess it: I reflashed the firmware on my Nokia E61 a couple of days ago. Not that I actually needed it, mind you: most of the bugs corrected by this new firmware I had not encountered, or were not bothering me enough to entice me to upgrade the firmware despite the inherent risks (failed or incomplete or corrupted reflash = unusable phone, after all), but since you read this blog entry, we probably share some geek genes amongst which the "I need to have the latest firmware at all cost" gene is prominent... ;-)

So, although I knew that this new firmware indroduces a nasty bug on the keyboard handling, I decided to upgrade anyway.

Bug? Did you say bug? What kind of bug?

To understand this new "bug", let's have a look first at how things use to work with the old firmware: the E61 is one of the few Symbian smartphones featuring a full QWERTY (or in my case on the French version, a full AZERTY) keyboard. While this is great to type text, one drawback is that the key layout is rarely supported by Symbian application which are usualy designed for phones with only a numerical keyboard plus a couple of additional keys.

The result is that the non-numerical keys are rarely or never used, which is sad, but on the other hand, when one isn't busy editing text in a text box, the 12 "numerical" keys in the center of the E61 keyboard truly behave as if you pressed the corresponding digit or symbol (#, *) on a numerical keyboard, without you having to press the "blue arrow" key as you normally have to do when entering text.

Basically, this lets you use your E61 single-handely when using a program designed for generic phones, which happens to be the vast majority of the available applications...

Now with the new E61 firmware, unfortunately, you have to press the blue arrow key to be able to simulate the numerical keys even when you're not typing text in a text field, which results in the impossibility to use the E61 with a single hand in those 'not E61-optimized" apps (like the Calcium calculator). This is really annoying, and IMHO it's a shame that this wasn't noticed and fixed in the new firmware.

Apart from this bug, the new firmware is stable and works perfectly, but then I was quite happy with the previous one, so my personal advice to those hesitating to upgrade now would be: if the new firmware fixes a bug that's particularly bothering you, then go ahead and upgrade, otherwise if you're just looking for a general performance improvement or the joy of having the latest firmware, I'd recommend asking you first how often you use applications which require presses on the numerical keys (shortcuts, even in the builtin apps, work this way), and decide if the new behaviour isn't going to cause you more problems than the upgrade solves.

Also, consider that the lack of reliable backup/restore solution on the E61 (or more generally on S60 3rd Edition devices, I fear) will require that you reinstall (and re-type your registration codes when applicable) a few installes apps which won't be reinstalled when you restore. As for me, for instance, Opera Mobile or HeadLine, amongst other apps, were not restored despite having been installed in the phone memory before I backed everything up on the memory card. Go figure!