A friend of mine reported this when he bought the E71 with the factory firmware. He sets his wake-up alarm based on a 6 work day week and while the alarm works, his calendar fails to turn over midnight Sunday. What this means is once every week, his phone is slow by a day. The new firmware has not fixed this anomaly. Either Nokia had not considered that there are people who work 6 days maybe even 7 days a week or a bug has been overlooked. He’s had other Nokia models that did not exhibit such problem.

“DON’T PANIC!” After a number of failed attempts trying to download the latest firmware for my Nokia E71, I finally had the entire 109.3MB of codes downloaded to my PC. Firmware updates are generally straightforward but they can go horribly wrong. I once rendered an entire PC useless when a firmware update got corrupted. It wasn’t so much the memory of a botched update that bothered me but the failed attempts had more to do with our poor broadband connection that timed out so much I lost count.

News of the E71 firmware had surfaced across blogs and mobile forums alike and I didn’t think I would jump onto the update bandwagon considering the new features do not actually contain ground breaking “stuff” to be excited about. Yet I succumbed to the temptation just as I would with my PC’s new fixes and the update proceeded smoothly. At time of this writing, the firmware is not yet available from Nokia Asia Pacific sites (I tried to check for updates via Singapore’s site and nothing) but it’s actually available from Nokia Europe. Follow the link to download and install the 22MB Nokia Software Updater, follow the instructions carefully (no step-by-step instructions here). The actual phone update is a two-part process, first of which is straightforward but the second part are the screen shots you see below.

BEFORE you actually attempt this update, please be sure you have made a backup of the entire phone’s content using NOKIA PC SUITE software. I actually experienced errors with the backup and had to repeat the procedure a few times and on separate days to make sure that gets done. You should also copy your contacts onto the flash card for peace of mind. Unlike a factory reset, FIRMWARE UPDATES wipes out everything you have installed or configured.

WHAT’S NEW IN FIRMWARE 110.07.127

– Nokia Email client for Nokia Email service in user disk
– Mail for Exchange 2.5.5
– New Maps 2.0 release
– New Voip release
– New Switch release
– New Download! Release
– Y-drive for WMDRM protected files

Changes/improvements made to MCU SW version 110.07.127:
– Email set-up improvements
– Maps 2.0 improvements
– Music library refresh function performance improvement
– Browser improvements
– Bluetooth improvements
– Camera improvements

What does all this mean? Probably not much if you’re me. I don’t use MAPS, hardly touch the web browser or bluetooth or its camera. I have, however, found the phone to be a lot more responsive. The lag between selecting items in the menu has virtually disappeared and the Address Book is quicker to launch. Even my Gmail launches quicker too as do most things you have to click for.

After upgrading to the above new firmware, I lost my WLAN connections, cannot even connect via my 3G connections. Lost my Nokia Email client too. Anyone who have yet to upgrade, DO NOT UPGRADE THIS NEW FIRMWARE!

If anyone who has and solved the problems above, kindly share your experience. Presently looking for a solution or else, reset phone back to original firmware. — Symbian World

I was originally concerned when I came across this comment by “Anti-Nokia User”. I suspect he (assuming it’s a he) failed to appreciate the risks of upgrading firmware (as opposed to a factory reset) and hadn’t  followed the Backup/Restore procedure using Nokia PC Suite.

If you’re visiting this blog for the first time and landed on this post, be sure to check out my NOKIA E71 review. Also if you have time to spare, feel free to review this blog and select a rating. Thank you.