Nokia N810 - OS2008

December 24, 2007

I received an e-mail from my contact at Nokia letting me know that the official “OS2008″ system update for the N810 had been released. I proceeded to boot my Mac to Windows XP via Bootcamp and ran Nokia’s own updater program first on my N800 figuring if it got bricked, I’d still have my new N810. Usually the updater finds and downloads the newest system firmware package automatically and performs the whole upgrade fairly smoothly in about 20-25 minutes (including download time).

However, this time, the updater program didn’t find the update, which I knew was there, so I had to go download it myself… along with what I’m guessing were a few thousand other people. The result was lots of time-outs and broken downloads. Nokia’s servers weren’t up to the traffic for whatever reason. So, I bailed and the following day was able to pull down the files, flash the N800 and N810, no problem.

Except at first the N810 was much more sluggish. The browser slowed down considerably and I couldn’t get Gmail to load (except in html format) and now all of a sudden there was no Map/GPS functionality. WTF?

In my frustration over trying to download OS2008 from Nokia’s server, I instead found a mirror someone was hosting with the same file. However, it wasn’t the same file, though it had the same name. I hit Nokia’s server at 6:30 a.m. and got the real version, re-flashed the N810 and voila!

I have to say that the browser is MUCH better now than it was when I got my N810 a few weeks ago. And now I’m able to begin scrolling before everything loads, something that was extremely frustrating before.

So, I can tell you now, with the new official version of OS2008, Nokia has made the web experience better than before, and yes, the GPS works (though I still have to try it out more before I pass judgement on it) and yes, the on-screen thumb keyboard still works great.

Over the next few days I’m going to install Canola, a third-party media player and let you know what I think, but for now a thumbs-up for the new OS2008.

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Posted in Blog, Nokia