Available for many generic product codes (with other operator specific codes apparently to follow in the next few weeks), Nokia have this week released the v20 firmware for the Nokia N97, which is heading towards providing the software the phone should have shipped with when first launched.  There are a couple of rumours that Nokia has pulled this update, but either way, the firmware update should be available to all over the next few weeks.

The new features include:

Usability Improvement

• Kinetic Scrolling: Allowing kinetic scrolling in the menu, contacts, and other applications with long lists
• More Space: The new memory allocation brings around 20-30MB more space for applications and themes
• Visually enhanced Music Player and Photo Menu
• Improved accessibility to Symbols and Numbers: Holding a key for 1 seconds will activate the alternative character, no need to press the blue key first
• Improved memory and battery performance
• Improved image and video stability

New Experiences

• New Homescreen Widgets: CNN, MySpace, ESPN, Elle and more have now been added
• Newer Version of Ovi Maps: More features and a new service menu
• Voice UI Improvements: Support for Voice over IP

Now, despite the Nokia N97 having User Data Preservation (UDP), it appears a number of early adopters have found a range of problems with the new firmware, and the only solution was a hard reset (and then only restoring data, not a full restore of all data and applications); this doesn’t bode well for Nokia; neither Apple nor Android devices seem to suffer from these types of problems after upgrade problems, and Nokia really need to resolve them on their flagship devices.

Changelog details courtesy of Symbian World.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 29th, 2009 at 9:28 am and is filed under Gadgets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.