Great, just as I am getting ready to leave town for over a week on a cruise with my wonderful wife of 17 years Nokia goes and decides to release the N900 version 1.2 firmware update. The update is rolling out in the UK today and starts globally tomorrow. Unfortunately, I will not be able to provide you all with an in-depth walk through the update until after I return next week. In the meantime, let’s take a look at what you can expect.
New games will be released, including Jurassic 3D, Rollercoaster, Angry Birds level pack, and more. These games will show up in the Ovi Store after Thursday, 27 May.
You will also see some improvements in the communication systems. You will be able to accept or decline meeting invitations. Facebook IM chat will be included, alogn with some kind of video calling capability (not sure what client is being used here) via Skype as Jason tested out and confirmed. Portrait web browsing is included. There is also an Ovi Maps update and I sure hope it gives us a MUCH improved experience because it is quite lame at the moment.
Thankfully, you will also find the ability to customize the first level of the menu system icons.
Several of these updates are things we have been able to do with kludgy fixes so it is nice to see a single update incorporate these capabilities.
Here is my list of things I want to see improved in the N900 and I have no idea if this update will address any of them as details still are not fully revealed:
- Improved email client that more closely matches other smartphones
- Ability to send text messages in portrait mode with the on-screen keyboard
- Ability to organize application icons/shortcuts into folders
Are you happy to see this update? What is the biggest feature you were looking forward to? What else would you like to see before Nokia abandons Maemo and switches to Meego?
View full post on Nokia Experts
It’s far to little and far to late. The Maps app still doesn’t have turn by turn navigation and recalculation, no bluetooth PBAP profile and no MeeGo.
Which commercial developer will support Maemo when N900 is the only phone running it? If I was a developer my focus would have been Android, iPhone and possibly MeeGo when there are a couple of devices running it.
N900 was my last Nokia phone…
Try this for portrait SMS.
http://maemocentral.com/2010/05/04/portrait-sms-comes-to-the-n900/
Too little, too late.
The announcement also stated no meego on N900, that means we need to purchase a new device to stay current. Another slap in the face from Nokia so I am ordering my new device today. Its going to be Android though.
Nokia really did snatch failure from the gaping jaws of success.
-Better email
-better media player
-proper google maps app that I miss from my past symbian phones ;(
-flash 10.1
You have pointed the most important (IMHO) weaks of the Maemo 5 PR1.2. The lack of portrait mode on-screen keyboard and push mail are my wishes for PR1.3. I would also like to browse bluetooth and samba folders through the files admin. Support for webm/VP8 would be good and HTML5 video/audio playback for the browser through gstreamer would be superb (AFAIK it is using ffmpeg for now which doesn’t use DSP). And last but not least, flash 10.1