Products & Services
Service in the USA - Nokia Software Update
By James on 16 May 2008
USA - The original source of Amy Gahran’s problems stem from Nokia Software Update. The software responsible for ensuring the latest version of firmware is available on your device. In Amy’s case, updating the firmware on her new N95 turned the device into a brick, and resulted in her experiencing Nokia’s US customer service.
Although problems relating to NSU are covered under warranty (provided the device has a valid warranty), it doesn’t stop those issues from happening in the first place. The NSU team tell us that over 8 million devices have successfully been through the update process and the failure rate is “very low”.
Recently support for the NSU on Vista was removed due to a recent update of the operating system and the NSU team is working on a fix before its supported again. There isn’t a timeline available for when this will happen, but if you’re using Vista the team would really like to hear from you.
Ricky Cadden, AKA Symbian Guru raised a very valid point in his comment yesterday about why the N95-3 hasn’t had the same firmware updates as other N95 variants. I share his pain personally as I use an N95 on T-Mobile in the UK and it lags way behind non-operator models in firmware updates. Hugely frustrating when you know there’s firmware that makes your device perform and function better, but you can’t get
your hands on it.
And now we have some news - the N95-3 will be getting a firmware update next month (estimated). Yes, it’s real. You can read the full update here.
Related posts:
- Service in the USA - Update
- When things go wrong with updating your device software
- Service in the USA - repairs
Tags | Firmware, n95, N95-3, Nokia Software Update, service, Update, usa
May 16th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
Hi, James
It’s good to know that Nokia is issuing this firmware update, many N95 users have been waiting for it.
That said, Nokia’s current firmware update process is, as Beth Kanter posted earlier (http://urltea.com/37qd), pretty clunky and difficult. Is Nokia planning to make its firmware update process any easier for its customers?
Also, if your firmware update process indeed has a “very low” failure rate, why do Nokia’s own service reps discourage users from doing the update unless they’re experiencing dire functionality problems? (Beth Kanter captured that happening here: http://qik.com/video/58581)
Also: Currently N95-3 units in the US are being shipped with old firmware. ZDNet’s Matthew Miller recently wrote: “Every other Nokia N95 has received a firmware upgrade, except for the N95-3 North American version that actually came out before some other devices.”
Given that situation, and the difficulty of your firmware update process, can Nokia arrange to update the firmware on new units *before* they are shipped to customers? From the customer’s perspective, it’s extremely discouraging and annoying to receive a brand-new phone and immediately have to endure your currently cumbersome firmware update process. Your main competitor in the US high-end phone market (Apple) does not present consumers here with such obstacles.
Finally, does Nokia have any plans to release a Mac-friendly version of its firmware updater? Many N95 users are also Mac users, and it’s a major hassle to have to get access to a PC for this function.
Again, I’m *very* glad to hear that you’re issuing this update. That is progress. I’m hoping Nokia can address these other firmware-related concerns.
Thanks,
Amy Gahran
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May 17th, 2008 at 3:19 am
I would like to second the request for a Mac-friendly firmware upgrade option. Of course, the most ideal approach would be to do firmware over the air upgrades
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May 17th, 2008 at 7:40 am
Hello Amy,
If I recall correctly I believe the N95-3 Red version comes with the latest firmware available for the US. The Bronze and Black version still contain the oldest firmware.
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May 17th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
That’s an interesting tidbit, Robert. I didn’t know that. Yes, I had the black version.
From a consumer perspective, it seems really odd, though — why should a discrepancy like that be related to color? How would consumers know to make that choice?
- Amy Gahran
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May 18th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Robert is correct, the N95-3 Red did come with the latest firmware. That said, I too am glad to hear that finally it will be getting a firmware update.
Next up, an easy way to add Chinese fonts to the N95-3? Please? You’re a *global* company Nokia!
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May 19th, 2008 at 5:12 am
What version came with the Red N95-3?
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May 19th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
@Candido 11.2.009, which at time of writing remains the most current for the N95-3.
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May 20th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
That is so very odd!!! I’d hope that Nokia could correct this in the future so that all versions of the product have the latest firmware when shipped. From the customer’s perspective, you should *not* have to worry if your color choice affects your firmware version!
I’d love to know why this discrepancy happened.
- Amy Gahran
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May 21st, 2008 at 12:12 am
@Amy The red N95-3 was released, and possibly manufactured, after the black and bronze versions.
I’d imagine that any of the devices that were manufactured after the latest firmware release would have that firmware.
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May 21st, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Thanks, Marc. OK, that makes more sense from a mfr perspective — but it’s still whacked from a consumer perspective %-/
- Amy Gahran
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May 22nd, 2008 at 2:57 am
I’m not sure I understand the big deal behind a handset being sold with outdated firmware. There’s no way to control how long it has been sitting on a shelf before being sold, and on certain handsets, firmware can be outdated rather quickly. It would be a disgusting waste of resources if every unsold handset with outdated firmware had to be shipped back for updating before being sold, in my opinion.
When you buy a computer (a PC, anyways), the first thing you have to do is hook up to the internet and updated 80% of the software on that machine. It’s not a big deal, that I can see.
However, that being said, I *would* like to see more facilities in the U.S. providing firmware updates at the point of purchase, as a way to prevent this. Do the 2 Flagship stores offer this? What about authorised retailers such as MobileCityOnline or the BestBuyMobile stores?
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May 22nd, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Ricky, I’d agree with you that handsets need not come with the latest firmware IF Nokia’s firmware update process wasn’t PC-only and (in my experience) a nervewracking, risky nightmare to undertake. I understand some N95 users (including you, as you’ve said elsewhere) have had an easy time with it, others haven’t. It seems like the process has run very differently for different users, so I don’t know what’s up with that. Maybe it’s incompatibilities with various flavors of Windows, I dunno. But it’s definitely a problem.
Expecting a new customer to have to undergo such an ordeal immediately after purchase (as I did) simply to gain access to the functionality they *thought* they were buying is, IMHO, not reasonable. If you’re paying $600 or more for a phone, it should just work as promised when you get it and not put obstacles such as an obtuse, lengthy updating process in your path right from the start.
Point-of-sale updates would be great — but for most of the country (outside of NYC and Chicago, so far), the only way you can currently buy an N95 is through an online retailer like Amazon. Even Nokia (which charges the highest price of all to buy an N95 online) has outsourced its US sales to LetsTalk.com, which isn’t great at order fulfillment let alone service IME (I ordered my phone from Nokia/LetsTalk first, but got so disgusted by the pointless delays LetsTalk introduced into the process that I cancelled the order and bought from Amazon instead).
Online retailers generally are extremely unlikely to open a product, update it, and test that it’s working before shipping.
Basically, I don’t care *who* fixes this problem, but until it gets fixed (either by Nokia offering a more uniformly easy and reliable update process, including a Mac-friendly version, or by handsets getting updated before shipping) it’s going to make more and more US folks wary of buying a high-end Nokia phone.
IMHO, of course.
- Amy Gahran
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October 27th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Sir/Madem,
I am united citizen write now out of usa . i need my cell phone unlock .Where i have to contect .
I am in India .
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