VIDEO: Nokia N97 v2.0 firmware nears release

Promises considerable improvements for the device

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2 October 2009 14:55 GMT / By Duncan Geere

Nokia's N97 handset had a difficult birth, with reviewers criticising the phone for failing to adapt Symbian to a touchscreen, and a lack of flair in general when it came to software on the handset. However, Pocket-lint has learnt that Nokia is now weeks away from delivering a software update to rectify the issues.

The v2.0 firmware is slated to arrive in mid-to-late October and includes a number of updates that should make the phone considerably more usable. The headline addition is that of kinetic scrolling, which allows the user to stroke down a list to view more options, rather than resorting to a fiddly scroll bar at the edge.

There's plenty of performance improvements promised, as well as more widgets, bug fixes and the ability to make alternate keyboard characters available with a long press of the appropriate key. Impressively, Nokia has managed to do all that and leave more memory available than previously, which does make you wonder how bad the coding was on release.

The update will be going live within the next few weeks. We're pressing Nokia for a more specific date and will update this post when that arrives.

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Comments

  • I cant wait to buy this updated Nokia N97! Im so excited! Posted by 007, usa
  • I just hope that this update does what v1.1 should have done. I was looking forward to getting this phone for months and in the 3 months I've had it, it has been the worst handset I've ever had. It should be brilliant but it's slow when negotiating the menus, it crashes when I try to update my emails half the time, the gps is miles away from where I am, the sw update application doesn't work, the browser crashes.

    It should be genious but it is riddled with issues. Nokia, next time, delay the release. You should know this from launching the N95
    Posted by Darren Donald, UK
  • Is someone know when is the update release date ? Posted by Costi, Romania
  • Maybe October 2010.. Posted by Chouter, Malaysia
  • end of october 2009 as a matter of fact... Posted by marco, south africa
  • hey Darren,

    Sounds like your phone is dodgy man. I had the same problems and I took it back to shop. They replaced it and its been good since then. I have read some blogs that there was a dodgy batch on the loose and I suspect I had one of the them. Sorry that this may come to late for you but I would check with Nokia for sure.

    Posted by mightym, uk
  • the phone is so heavy Posted by daniel, cameroon
  • Just updated from v11 to v20. Kinetic scrolling is good, bug with music player corrupting playlists and unable to view music by album or artist is fixed. C: is still chock full with only 6.1mb available. This is after deleting as many unused apps a possible and re-installing those I like on E: drive. Therefore I can't update Maps to latest at 5.5mb or N-gage at 6.1Mb. Could just about squeeze in Nokia messaging update at 2.4mb or OVI contacts at 2.2mb. This is so very bad it is a disaster. Nokia you have let me down badly. Posted by Digitalink, UK

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