Here’s an interesting question; should you debrand your Nokia phone, to allow you access to newer firmwares? Does it make a difference which operator you are with?

Well, here at UK Gadgeteer, we’ve done some research with two of the most popular Nokia phones over the last couple of years, the Nokia N95 and the Nokia N95 8GB. Both these phones have been out for while, and both have had multiple firmware updates this year alone. So, which operators have kept their branded firmwares up to the same level, and which ones are lagging behind.

Let’s start with the Nokia N95. It shipped from most networks around v10 or v11, with one network holding back until v12 came out. A lot of people wanted v12 (which added A-GPS), and choose to debrand their phones to achieve it. Looking back, did they need to?

Firstly, we have to state there are plenty of stories of networks (and sometimes Nokia) rejecting warranty repairs for debranded phones (which only removes the operator-specific themes, look and feel, application choices, and has no effect on whether the hardware itself is SIM-locked to the network), and hence any decision to debrand your phone should be taken only after careful research, and it is not something that UK Gadgeteer is supporting with this article.

Interestingly, we planned to first run this article about 6 months ago, when at least one network had never released any firmware updates on the Nokia N95, leaving you stuck with v10 or v11, but it appears even they have released an update:

Operator	Latest Version
Generic unbranded device	v30.0.015
3 UK	v20.0.15
O2	v21.0.016
Orange	v13.0.003
T-Mobile	v14.0.001
Vodafone	v21.0.016

So, this is interesting; all operators have released new firmwares from the versions the devices originally shipped with, yet some (eg Orange and T-Mobile) have still not released the v20 firmware, which greatly improved the device. Equally, none of the operators have yet to release v30, although as it was only released just over a month ago, this may well come at some point.

So, for the Nokia N95, it would appear devices from 3UK, O2 and Vodafone would be pretty much up to date even if they remained branded.

Now, let’s look at the Nokia N95 8GB…

Operator	Latest Version
Generic unbranded device	v30.0.018
3 UK	v20.0.016
O2	v20.0.016
Orange	v20.0.016
T-Mobile	No data available
Vodafone	v20.0.016

Please note the lack of T-Mobile data is based around not having easy access to a T-Mobile Nokia N95 8GB to determine the Product Code.

In this case, all operators have provided v20, which although it came out around April 2008 was the last firmware update before v30, which is a good start, and it will be interesting to see which release v30, and how quickly…

This was an interesting piece of work, and shows that in many cases, the operators do eventually keep up, and there is no harm in keeping the branding; in fact, in certain cases, eg Orange’s Line 2 (ALS) support, this is not included in the generic firmware (despite being included in the generic manual) and hence you may need to stick with the branding for full functionality. If you want to be leading edge, then chances are you are buying unlocked, unbranded phones as soon as they are released, and will not be affected by what the operators do anyway. Overall, in many cases, there is no advantage in debranding the phone *just* to gain access to the latest firmware, unless it’s clear that your operator is well behind in releasing firmwares.

Update: As Dave has stated (see Comments) this article does not allow for how slow operators are to release new firmwares; for example, 3UK took “months” to release the v20…  At UK Gadgeteer we have decided to run a series of these articles over time, to look at how the operators handle newer firmwares.  To begin with, we’ll keep an eye on how quickly the operators release the v30 firmwares for both the Nokia N95 and the Nokia N95 8GB, and will welcome any comments from users to alert us to when the updates come out.

We’ll also start monitoring a few other Nokia phones, in the immediate future, we’ll look at the Nokia E71 (for a firmware is rumoured to be out soon for this, and with it’s popularity we’ll study the impact of the operators not providing this update), and we’ll also monitor the Nokia N96 (which has already had two firmware updates, and is only just available to purchase.

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