Apparently, whac-a-mole seems to be a very popular game not only with Palm OS folks, but recently also with Nokia. My Nokia N71(which is NOT synced with a PC) is stuck with a very old firmware revision - and Nokia’s european firmware update page offers only the Nokia Software Updater for PC’s. Even after searching all across the Nokia web site, I did not find a way to download a file that lets me update my Nokia N71 without the help of a PC/workstation’s USB port.
This is problematic for a variety of reasons - first of all, Nokia’s update spoftware is compatible only with Windows NT systems - Mac and Linux folks are left running to a Nokia Care point(official quote from Nokia):
Microsoft Windows 2000 (SP4 or later), Microsoft Windows XP (SP1 or SP2) or Microsoft Windows Vista (Home, Professional and 64bit) are supported.
Nokia Software Updater is not compatible with Windows Media Center, Mac, or Linux operating systems.
The next problematic point is that many users do not have USB data cables. From my point of view, S60 smartphones are not as closely-connected to their “home PC” as other devices are. For example, Palm’s Treos live off syncing often and make the process easy - they even bug users repeatedly to sync them after a hardreset(!!!). Series 60 phones, on the other hand, seem to be used as “island systems” by most people - and some carriers even leave out the USB cables from the packages.
Of course, users can always run to the next service point - but is this really what you expect from a next-generation smartphone vendor? IMHO, a company as big as Nokia must be able to offer its customers a possibility to update their phone’s firmware in an over-the-air fashion. Palm can do it for their Treos…so why can’t Nokia do it, too?
Related posts:
