PR1.1 speculations over, here is the big change-log for Nokia N8

So friends, I am back to Delhi and so on my keyboard too. 🙂 Dammnn I missed you all so much. Let’s go through some of the important things that are buzz of town as of now.

Update: As I see many reporting that this update has not reached to them yet, I would like to mention that the official firmware 13.016 is already live on navifirm too as product external a.k.a. final release version. Size for Indian Dark Gray edition was around 154 mb. If can’t wait, then you can check out that directly (involves scary stuff like flashing etc).

Like I reported last time, PR1.1 indeed came to be not in January affair and not even an affair of February week one. While it was irritating to see that in the same manner as Swype first reached to Nokia C7, it was same story in case of PR1.1 too. Nokia C7 received it on February 3, while it took four days more to reach Nokia N8, when it happens to be almost the same update without any decent change in size. Reason was simple. C7 is a much smaller set of devices than Nokia N8 itself and it was better to settle the smaller set first.

Its been almost three month period between the old firmware and new firmware though most of the changes were under the hood and hard to spot except the ones mentioned by Nokia Conversations post, but still I managed to find a long list here.

The officially mentioned changes …

1. Meeting requests can be accepted directly from email invitations;
2. Maps integration in email, which means people can view the meeting location on the map when the address is mentioned in the location field in the invite.
3. For Nokia N8 users:
   1. New Quick Office 6.4 editor version, which offers editing possibilities and allows zooming in & out in Word documents. (Quick Office 6.4.166 and Adobe reader 2.5.653)
   2. Three high quality games will also be preloaded on new devices – Need for Speed Shift, Real Golf and Galaxy on Fire. (In some countries, Need for Speed is replaced with Asphalt 5). For current N8 users, these are available for free from Ovi Suite & Ovi Store.

The other changes noticed …

1. Landscape dialer is finally official without any mod.
2. RAM management is sure better though you are suggested to remove any of the management program like mGuard etc if installed. All the responsiveness in lock/menu/power off is due to this only.
3. Kinetic scroll improved a lot though I had it with last Mod v4 too, but better to get official one.
4. Vibration improved a little though again I had it with last Mod v4.
5. Change wallpaper option came out from edit home screen menu, directly available under options now.
6. Camera was already faster via last apps update but this time zoom got enhanced in Still Capture and Video Capture modes.
7. Web is updated to 7.2.8.10, though besides numbers I didn’t spotted any much significant change here.
8. As they mentioned in official note, Mail client seems to have gotten an update. You can notice the changed new icons for sync and sending mail on right top of mail widget.
9. Not sure about versions, but Photos application seems to have gotten an update. 3 column view than 4 column view now, moreover, its taking a bit longer time for clearing full zoom now, while faster than before for normal view. A design decision I guess that might be likeable by many who don’t zoom photos all the time.

There are some interesting things to note about the new PR1.1 update …

• What happened to that "We’re warned that the update may be quite a large download, especially for Nokia N8 users."? I think most of us got smaller size of updates due to the fact that everyone had those big games already installed in their phones. As reported by MNB, OTA update was 7 mb at largest and via Ovi Suit, it went as high as 178 mb.
• Contrary to comments flooding official posts, it came to my Nokia N8, just after the news broke in. Otherwise, I always found them treating India in second phase. Good sign that they are looking after the place, which is bringing most of sales to them.
• Though update for C7 came via SW updates and same was expected to be happen as per official comments, it made its way via device updates means *#0000#. Wondering why this miscommunication? Firmware updates always expected to come via Device updates only.
• There might be users, who had other than official version of Quick Office and such users wont see the new update as its built in Firmware now. Simple way is to go Application manager and uninstall the older version and you will get new version without doing anything like its hidden only.
• I tried hard to know that what was the Qt version that was updated with PR1.1, but still unknown. Mostly because of the fact that most of the users already got Qt 4.7.1 via Bubblelock, while earlier it was Qt 4.6.4

Some interesting signs after the update …

Many said this update was a bridge, but such words wont hold anything for a layman till it actually does something. It actually did. I received an Ovi Store update within hours and this time it didn’t failed (may be some Qt runtime play from backend). And while you know that Ovi Store now runs at around 70 fps, its good to see it improving day by day.

We already seen awesome Qt based apps like Lapsed, TwimGo, NewsFlow, BubbleLock, Flickr and now as Qt 4.7 available on Symbian^3 devices and Ovi Store supports the installation of Qt apps too, we should be ready for a burst of apps very soon.

And yes! we received Nokia Device Diagnosis released for Symbian^3 device finally.

A few things that frustrated me like hell …

Though I didn’t tried myself yet, but as per readers comments and experience, it seems that “Nokia N8 Hard Reset” Bug not fixed yet, neither the weird MMS bug. These were the annoyances that I was really hoping to get fixed by Nokia as it was seriously reported to them at multiple times. 

Well! as we just received an @aas post on the change log,  now I really confused if the above statement holds true. Read the same here, where he mentions that both of these bugs are fixed along with some other bugs. Tempted to try the same myself, but still scared to do the same as one of the reader commented on AAS post that its not resolved. Will wait and update the post accordingly.

Due to last failed update of Ovi Store and my dozens of attempts to install the same, I have already lost around 50-60 mb from phone memory of Nokia N8 and even after making several comments to Nokia, I only received one working answer that goes via the routes of Nokia Care Center. Not impressed.