Software Edition 2007 version 4.2007.26-8 for Nokia N800 is official.
Time to fire up those firmware updaters.
Executive summary:
THE GOOD LIST
- Skype included!
- SDHC support, up to 8GB!
- Better Flash performance
- Tableteer applet
- Lots of developer tools and new docs
- Better (as yet unmeasured) battery performance
- Better touch screen sensitivity
- More little bits (see below.)
Some browser rendering issuesFixed. See comments.- Flash is still not perfect - Laggy while downloading video
- No Bluetooth PAN support yet
- No Bluetooth A2DP support yet
The following is the log of the live blog, including a video. New features in red.
- 11:12 PM Arizona time - 2 min, 2 sec left to download
- 11:16 PM first boot completed and local settings set
- Ignoring backup for now
- 11:18 PM Skype is there!
- Bare applets
Bad picture: Skype a default app:
- Rhapsody pre-installed too
- 11:23 PM - Running that restore now too. Looking for a changelog.
- 11:25 PM - Restore complete. Reb0oting.
- 11:27 PM - Applets came back on restore - Skype and Rhapsody moved to Extras
- On click, Skype loads application manager and installs. Apparently it's not bundled. 4.59 megs
- 11:36 PM Skype installed. Creating video. Doing a test call with Steve from UMPCPortal
- 11:39 PM Video done - Preparing footage in Final Cut
- Thumbboard appears to be less sensitive. Requires a good mash to launch. Investigating.
- Thumboard pressure adjustable in Control Panel -> Text Input Settings -> Scroll to the right!
- Paired with my Jabra BT8010 headset, but no sound sent through it.
- Paired with my phone. Supports DUN, FTP, OPP, SPP but not PAN
- Web, Contact, Utilities, Games, Tools menus all the same. Control Panel unchanged.
- 11:55 PM - Est. 35 minutes until Final Cut finishes rendering. Connected over Verizon EVDO now. Going to do another Skype test call.
- Also installing Camera, Canola, and more.
- Testing YouTube with one of my videos that has a fast-action intro and a low-action content. - At first, the frame rate was comparable to what it was before - no apparent improvement. After video stopped downloading and just played, there were no sound stutters and a higher framerate.
- 12:04 AM - Damn Final Cut says 40 minutes now.
- Odd - some browser rendering errors. YouTube had bits on the edges of the browser and Orb's login page doesn't show the input fields.
- Got Orb to log in - the fields weren't shown but they were there.
- Orb video looks FLAWLESS now. Something got beefed up in the media player.
- Two new buttons on the media player too. Looks like "Library" and "Now Playing" tabs.
- 12:16 AM: Nokia announces this finally! Official changes:
- Skype Client
- Adobe Flash 9 browser plug-in
- Up to 8GB Memory Card support. Over 2GB Must be SDHC
- Better battery life management
- Now Playing and Library buttons on Media Player mentioned above.
- Touch screen sensitiveness improved through software
- Nokia Call Invitation Beta removed entirely
- Tableteer info applet
- Updated internet radio channels
- Rhapsody
- Piquant new web sites.
- Video done! Starting YouTube upload.
- The Tableteer Info applet is a Web Shortcut like the original Web Shortcut except dedicated to Tableteer.
- VIDEO IS HERE
- Steve Paine and I just did another Skype call - this time his Vodaphone 3G connection to my Verizon EV-DO connection. It cut out a couple times, but was still usable!
- Tried YouTube again - this time closing Skype first for more open memory. Identical - Video was a little jerky in frame rate (no stutters in sound) during the loading of the video, but once the download was complete it played MUCH better than the N800 did in the past. The YouTube mobile site still returns "File Format Not Supported" in the Media Player. No big loss.
- Quim Gil announced maemo 3.2 Bora to the announcement list. The updated maemo development tools are as follows:
- bluez-hcidump - reads raw HCI data to and from a Bluetooth device and prints it on screen in human readable form.
- htop - interactive process viewer.
- nano - a lightweight editor.
- netcat - TCP/IP swiss army knife, which can read and write data across network connections.
- sysstat - system performance tools.
- tcpdump - dump traffic on a network.
- wireless-tools - tools for manipulating linux Wireless Extensions.
- x-debug-tools - debug utilities for debugging X server and clients.
- xresponse - measures UI response times.
- xrestop - provides statistics for each connected X11 client's server-side resource usage.
My Non-SDHC 4GB Transcend brand SD card still retains all of the data it had, but is reporting as 1.98 GB in the Details of the card. Odd.Whoops my bad. It read it properly: 1.98 GB IN USE. 1.84 GB available. Apparently it does support non-SDHC 4GB cards.- 12:56 AM - Minor delay in blogging as I break the tip right off my N800 charger! Good thing I have a spare from my 770!
- 1:24 AM - Charging again. Installed the following with no compatibility issues:
- Camera
- Canola
- VNC Viewer
- GAIM with Oscar protocol
- X Terminal (though becomeroot didn't work)
A couple pictures of the page rendering issue. Click for bigger:
HomestarRunner.com, Flash heavy, renders perfectly.
Orb login page: Does not show fields or checkboxes, but they exist.
Any old YouTube pageNotice echos of the top of the page on the bottom. Doesn't belong there.
I'll call that a successful late-night introduction of the N800's new firmware and features. See the top of this page for an executive summary and I'm headed to bed.
Coming this Saturday: Full Skype review!
30 comments:
I'm watching..
I know it's early, but I have a few questions:
1) Does it have A2DP support?
2) Native SDHC support?
3) Updated Flash?
Thx!
Not bad, we got two out of the three features I was asking about in the post above :-)
Does anyone know if it will be possible to install skype on a 770?
Host-mode USB support?
Digg Labs finally works thanks to the Flash 9 update!
Been waiting for this for a long time.
JX
Nicely done, Dan.
Some input textfields dosent show up for me either. Hope they fix that asap.
Great job on the early posts.
Had the problem with scrollbars and input fields too. Try rebooting the device then changing to any other theme, then change back again and hey presto normal service should be resumed.
Is the device lock (security code) reset after an upgrade?
I've locked my n800 by accident and it would be nice if i can get past this by just upgrading the firmware.
Can anyone check this?
Does skype use the built-in video camera?
I installed the upgrade - without a hitch. Skype does not have video support it seems. Another I noticed is that the videos which looked great in MPLAYER now have a green line at the bottom... not sure what to do about that one.
How exciting.
And...then to experience the same thing hours later. ALLRIGHT!!!
The first thing I noticed is that sound on my internet stations sounds better.
This all shows one thing: MAKE A TELEPHONE WITH ALL THIS...AND THE SCREEN SIZE.... It's vaguely silly to have all this in a unit that is non-functional out of Wifi range. I know this is heresy (I have a 770 and 800), but after several weeks on Sprint's Power Vision network with a Treo 700p, I say..give us all that on a telephone with a big screen that still fits in your pocket and THAT'S what it's all about.
So let's hope that the NEXT FIRMWARE has full cell-phone functionality! Now THAT would be something...
But...anyway...THANKS TO NOKIA for a fine job.
Al
Santa Monica
OH YES...
THANKS to THOUGHTFIX for a great scoop and very useful comments. GOOD WORK!
Seems like there are quite a substantial amount of changes in this new firmware, thanks for the scoop on this one, as well as the embedded videos.
the latest minimo browser 0.2 does not work with the firmware update
I updated mine and everything went fine. I click on Skype and it goes to the Application manager and starts to download a 1 KB file. It just hangs everytime. What do I need to do?
Greetings:
Seems there are some issues with the new firmware.
Hours after I upgraded:
- HTTPS websites hangs in Opera
- new Firmware does not show my backup files of the old firmware.
Regards Robert
Installed last night right along with you, ThoughtFix.
Great post. You are invaluable to this community.
I connect to my phone (vx9800) via bluetooth then to the internet using 1x. How do I connect via EVDO? All the forum posts I read said 1x only. Can you point me in the right direction??
yeah - having https issues as well BUT not on https://gmail.google.com
flash is MUCH nicer - and since it plays better once the file is fully downloaded I think there is some improvement that can be done to get it to play just as good while the file is finishing a download.
Pandora now works well! And as a bonus, it doesn't pause the audio when you open a new web window, switch to a different app, or even lock the screen! That means that flashplayer is working in the background. Yippie!
Anon with the VX9800: to connect via EVDO I'm pretty sure you have to have "BroadbandAccess Connect" added to your contract (I assume you're using Verizon since they're the only ones that sell the VX9800).
It could also be you don't have EVDO service in your area. Check www.evdomaps.com for your address to see reports on EVDO Rev 0 and Rev A service from both Sprint & VZW.
Albert: Sorry to disappoint, but no firmware for the 770 or N800 will ever deliver cellphone functionality - the required hardware simply doesn't exist inside the machine, and no amount of fancy programming can make up for that. We can only hope that Nokia will see the N800 as a starting platform for the future iPhone-killer "N1000."
sebu: A firmware reflash should indeed clear the passcode, but I suspect restoring any backups after reflashing will also restore the passcode setting.
Loaded new firmware. Now I cannot access the Internet!!!!!!
Skype works but very little else!
How does one revert to previous version???
I need help on flashing my device. Do I do that by going to the website and downloading that stuff from the device or do I hook it up to my computer and flash it that way?
Still no OPML, I have to manually re-enter all my RSS feeds. And yeah, the backup from the old firmware disappeared ... arghhh
Application Manager doesn't seem to work, which means, I can't install xterm, gainroot, enable red pill, install skype, etc.
Not sure where to go from here other than to flash back to the previous OS version.
The Application Manager log shows:-
osso-application-installer 4.46, UI version 2
E: Unable to parse package file /var/lib/dpkg/status (1)
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.
(it repeats the above two lines three times).
Any ideas anyone please? Many thanks!
Can the N800 now stream live videos from websites such as Gamespot??
Please tell use some real world battery life improvement after firmware upgrade.
Thank you very much. Battery life is always my big concern.
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