To whom is Hong Kong, Taiwan, China user, other chinese input will not be update until these country release device

wtf? So it would only be updated probably some time in Q1
Well, I hope they announce the release in Asian market in the upcoming MWC then.

After yesterdays update, do others suffer from really long gallery application startup time? Mine takes forever to load

nope. my gallery starts up just fine.

It might be slow in the beginning. But that should improve.
I don't think it's related to the update. I had the same issue with 1.0.2.5 after inserting a SD card with lots of photos and some movies.

In the article about Jolla on NYTimes mentioned in another thread there is this interesting bit:
So... after all Jolla is still targeting China.

After my first days with Jolla I felt kinda annoyed and sceptical - I had bigger expectations, was hoping that the product will be more polished, was "angry" that some really basic functionality is missing or the implementation is crappy and unreliable. After a week with 1.0.3.8 update I feel NOW I have a phone I can use daily, leaving my N9 in my backpack. Battery live now is great on Jolla(better than N900 and N9), I am not experiencing lock screen freezes any more, there is landscape in browser(eagerly waiting for it in messages/email!), everything just got substantially better. And that is only in the span of 2 (short)months! The pace Jolla crew is moving is simply amazing!
I just had a chance to take a look at Jolla's OS update close future roadmap - in 2-3 months we will have an OS that is on par with Android and iOS(if they manage to keep the pace)! Now I feel a lot more optimistic for the future of Jolla!
Thank you sailors!

Why resetting a Jolla removes my installed latest firmwares? Do they need us to do all this again after reset?

I too agree that daily use of the Jolla is becoming more comfortable and is now my preferred phone.

Trouble is I will need to buy a second phone to have a spare one to hack around

Richard

Suppose you get a botched firmware upgrade. Considering that we didn't get (yet) a tool to 'flash' the firmware, I think it's good that we have a possibility to start from a really clean slate and retry it again (or do the upgrade differently).
Also, it actually takes the 'factory reset' more to the letter

Anyway, you can e.g. open a proposal on Together and ask to have e.g. two levels of reset (if that's possible, as it works with btrfs snapshots), one that wipes only users settings and another one that brings the device back to original f/w.