Then why in the world was this release a complete piece of crap? Please answer that. IF they were doing like you claim, this release should not have broken anything that worked. This release should have been an improvment all around.

But it wasn't. This release should NEVER have seen the light of day. The facts support my argument, your's is based on wishful thinking. Yes it would be nice if Nokia had made this release better than the last one. But they didn't.

That action speaks volumns.

Well the European image is on their main server, the one that you get when you go to nokia.com. Which is where I usually go when looking for stuff for thier products. I didn't see any disclaimers or warnings stating 'dont use this if you're not in Europe'. And while I can see the phone thing being regional (though it shouldn't be in today's world with all the traveling everybody does), there isn't much of an excuse for the time issue.

As a QA manager, I compare this to all the other projects I've had to deal with over the years and the pattern is pretty apparent. Noika's response to my email to them about this was pretty much par for the course too. Sadly no one really cares about Quality software anymore, point to any product out there in the consumer market and they spent more money on it after it goes out the door in bug fixes than they did developing it.

The crap I'm seeing at my present job (A major corp you've all heard of, but I can't talk about it legally) has convinced me to quit the field for good this summer. Consumers don't mind buying crap so there is no reason for anyone to make a quality product anymore. Just look at all the excuses being made for this release. Yeah I hope the North America release is better, I really do.

But I shouldn't have to 'hope', I should be able to 'know'. Get my point?

Well a european user, with European N770, I have had no problems with this release. It installed first time, booted fine with no problems. It runs faster than the previous version, doesn;t crash as much as the previous version.

If you go to www.nokia.com then you start at a flash page where the very first question is "Choose your region". Following the prompts will take you to the nokiausa.com site and thats still got the old image on it.

I think Banner is really Mike Cane in disguise :-)

Maybe I'm off base, I am sometimes, but we're looking at this from an American running Euro software stand point. Yes things that we want to work and worked in the past no longer work. But what about the people in Europe? Other than time zone, what is broken for them? Remember they don't use the same phone systems (land line or cell) that we do.

Forgive my ignorance but whois Mike Cane?

Good grief - how quickly things change, and how quickly one can be forgotten!

(PS - I know this doesn't answer your question ;-))

OT:

Cane - just some guy who would hype a product months before it is released, then rant incessantly about it once he had one (usually because it didn't do something that only he wanted it to do, or because he didn't understand how to make it do what he wanted it to do - he isn't the sharpest tool in the techno toolbox). Mike rapdily moves on to hyping the next must-have gadget once he has lost interest in the current one, he's something of a gadget gadfly, someone who is not in this for the "long haul" and loses interest very rapidly. He likes the sound of his own voice - he has a blog in these parts which runs to 40+ pages but quite a few of us stopped reading it a long time before he disappeared to origami.com (or whatever new-gadget-site-with-a-forum took his fancy) - once he has lost interest in the current gadget he becomes very negative and very vocal... "constructive criticism" is not a term he is familiar with (if you're so inclined, search for some of his later rants against Nokia and the 770).

He's got something of a (bad) reputation on the gadget-related internet fora, particularly Palm where he appears to be universally derided. He was beginning to get the same reputation here, just as well he jumped ship.

Banner's rants are reminiscent of Cane... largely unfounded and serving no purpose. If I'd downloaded the US firmware to my Euro 770 I would only have myself to blame if it began having problems with Euro cell phones!

The clock problem is the only issue I've encountered on my 770 so far, everything else is working great, better in fact. Yes, it's a bad mistake for Nokia to have released this new firmware with the clock issue and should already have issued a refresh correcting the problem but hey... maybe Banner should contact Ari and see if he has any vacancies?

I don't normally follow the forums, especially gadet forums. The fact that I've been here a month and have over 100 posts is surprising and very scary. I hope some of those posts were at least helpful, I'd hate to think I was just a cheerleader making noise to hide the signal.

I don't remember this being a euro only release when it first came out, maybe I wan't paying attention. However now that we know, people having problems in the US should probably move back a revision and wait.

Thanks for taking time and enlightening me.

Note sure it was ever mentioned outright as such, but the Nokia site is regionalised so US users should get a US-centric version (unless they are fibbing!) and on the US site the current firmware is still 3.2005.51-13 (December 30, 2005), so Banner has downloaded non-US firmware to his US 770.

US firmware: 3.2005.51-13 (December 30, 2005)
Euro firmware: 5.2006.13-17 (April 18, 2006)

It states on the Euro download page "Product Support: Europe, Middle East, Africa". Maybe this is a case of Nokia being a European company and they are servicing the European market first? Since most technology is usually released to the US before Europe, perhaps this explains why Banner mistakenly assumed firmware on the European site would work in the US? In theory it should, but perhaps to save space Nokia are tailoring the firmware for it's intended market (ie. dropping US cell phone services etc.)

EDIT: Upon reflection, the confusion about Euro firmware can probably be blamed on tech sites, including ITT. If you navigate to www.nokia.com, choose your region then to 770 support you will get the firmware relevant to your region, however ITT and other tech sites/newsgrups/blogs publicised the latest firmware with direct links to maemo.org and even Nokia Europe - perhaps in future they should point out that our US cousins may need to wait for the US-specific release. Then again, this hypothesis could all be cr*p and both the US and Euro versions turn out to be bit-identical in which case the firmware is crocked... :)

TBH, I think the "it's a Euro firmware - the USians only have themselves to blame" is potentially a red herring[1].

The release was announced internationally on maemo-announce and the other Maemo mailing lists and so far all the releases have (IIRC) been binary identical whether downloaded from the US or Europe.

Could it just be that the timezone problem is more annoying to people with a larger time difference; and that - as with all releases - different people see different problems depending on their use cases?

Cheers,

Andrew


[1] Like communism.

Banner: Actually, as a Canadian, I thought it was refreshing that www.nokia.com pointed to Europe. The update was nowhere to be found on www.nokia.us. :)

I also agree with aflegg to some degree, it's pretty much voodoo magic explaining the EU image issues by one's geographic location of North America. So far as the phones/wifi connectivity issues go, those are definately a possibility. The only standard in place worldwide is the headache you get trying to get them to talk with eachother.

(Also Banner, thanks for taking my original post as it was meant (ie not an attack)).

Still no problem with euro release
 

I am in the US, and knowingly downloaded it. Clock is off, but I just set it, and forget it. Everything else works fine, and at least seems faster. Just my 2¢.

You know, Banner, I don't want to gang up on you, but I really think you're out of line here. It seems to me like you didn't do any research on the 770 before buying one.
It's not a phone.

Can you point out a place in Nokia's marketing where they say the 770 will read MS documents? Did the update make the email app worse?

IMO, you should have been able to figure out it was the device for you either before you bought it or within a few hours of buying it. If it wasn't, you should have returned it then.

There appears to be one bug, that relating to time zones, and it has an easy fix. Since you've been in the software field for a while, I'm assuming you can follow the simple instructions to fix the problem. If you don't want to do that, wait for Nokia to come out with a fix, it shouldn't be long. Either way, your response is way over the top.

Sounds to me like you should be upset with yourself for not checking to make sure the device met your needs before buying it, and now you'd rather blame Nokia than take the responsibility yourself.

I don't think the 770 is perfect. Far from it. But I knew what I was getting when I bought it. You should have, too. If you didn't, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Wishful thinking, eh?

I'm sorry, which fact that I presented was wrong?

guys - common
 

are you all retarted? i already said ive confirmed this over the phone with nokia. the euro version will mess up a us tablet and wont run properly. remove it and wait 2 weeks for the new us version. for a bunch of computer geniuses you sure know how to ignore information and ask the same ****ing question 30 times.

Upgrade Thoughts
 

I installed this upgrade without knowing it was an Euro version and would have done it even if I had known that. I had been suffering from all the little bugs referred to in this forum, especially the email app and newsreader. This upgrade has fixed both apps and made the device much more reliable. This clock issue every one is posting about is a mystery to me I set mine to US Central after the upgrade and have never had a problem, before the upgrade the clock was always about 3 mins slow!! Now that drove me nuts. The only issue I have now is every time I launch the Email app it shows I have 1 item in the outbox, when I go to open the outbox it disappears. Certainly no big deal but very strange that no one else has seen it. I’m no software expert and don’t even play one on TV but one does begin to wonder, if we all installed the same version how can it be behaving so differently on what is identical hardware???

No, we're not ******ed, just that your original posting seemed so ill informed that I guess many of us chose to ignore it - here's your original post:

Why are you talking about a phone? What phone? Who's phone? The 770 is not a phone. Nokia support reps sadly know precious little about the 770 - ignore them, if they referred to the 770 as a phone then how much confidence do you really have in their advice? My answer: none. If they were referring to your cellular phone, there's no way the 770 upgrade could damage your cell phone.

i too have installed the euro-version and have had no problems whatsoever. i have however enabled the extrootfs wolfram made, so things may work out a little differently for me. I haven't had any issues here, and the system overall feels a little more responsive.

I installed the U.S. version and seems to have more freezes (or maybe I'm just too impatient). It does seem more responsive when the CPU's not busy though...

Ok... a.) The phone Banner was talking about was his cell phone which he can no longer pair with the 770. He's stuck with the phone. Which won't pair to his 770. All of you might not agree with him but I don't think he's still sitting there searching for the dialpad on his tablet.(make sense?)

b.) Given the nature of the 770, and that so far as we can tell both Euro/North American units were made in Estonia (as well as other places, yes, but all the NA ones I've heard of are Estonian), how the hell can a European software update make a difference? I understand that's what the rep told you, but we've heard reps say a lot of things. They probably just didn't want to troubleshoot anything.

It's a tablet. What's different about locale? If I take my NA imaged 770 to Paris will it suddenly go nuts? Doubt it.

If this forum is living proof of regional differences in attitude, the North American version will most likely be the same thing with a bunch of fixes for the bugs discovered by our cooler-headed european buddies.

1) its a challange to get it to work.
2) we know better to trust what people say over the phone.
3) unlike cell phones, the tablet is based on computer hardware and the last I checked, that knew no borders.

Just a thought - I've no idea how much space the Mobile Phone Wizard consumes, but I really don't care to have valuable ROM space taken up with details for phone services in continents I'll never visit! While I'm sure the jet-setters among us will find it handy to have details of every mobile service provider on the planet pre-installed, is the modularisation of such services on a regional basis an unreasonable/far fetched idea? I wouldn't object too strongly if the Euro version contained only Euro service providers, longer term perhaps additional continents (even individual carriers) could be added as a package install?

That strange, are we speaking about That version we loaded week ago?
Bought it in Compusa /U.S. Loaded from Europe site...
I don't have any problem (well, clock settings :))

a) Problems in phone/770 connection might be earlier bluetooth pairing in the phone. If it is not removed, phone might not accept new pairing.

b) Only thing I can imagine is WLAN channels, wich might be different. Maybe used channels are coded in the software. At least that was reason for different firmawares between EU an US images in my linksys WLAN-box. That would explain some problems in WLAN connections some users are having outside Europe with EU firmware.

These are only my guesses so please don't blame me if it's not the case here. :)

Newbie over here... I didn't even know that there are different firmware versions. No problems (aside from my router) so far... well, the clock. :)

perhaps i overreacted. i apologize. anyway, you may be right about the phone reps but this one seemed to know what he was talking about. in fact, if anyone here has a 770 that ISN'T made in estonia please let us know where its made and where you bought it. maybe we'll find an answer.

Other than the clock, it's never ran better after I installed the latest firmware.

When I last checked a map Estonia was still part of Europe so it would make sense for it to have a Eurocentric software update.

If they've saved ROM space by dropping the international time data it would seem more than likely they would save further space by dropping the international Mobile Phone Wizard / Service Provider data as Milhouse suggested. Indeed, there's probably some sort of link between the two that resulted in the time data being dropped by mistake.

The international time data was almost certainly not dropped intentionally, almost certainly. Unless everyone in Europe is now in Helsinki ;-)

YES! It proved by Clock settings

Global Timezone data is critical when you consider there is a world map app, so I don't think the Timezone data was dropped intentionaly - I'm not really sure what's going on with the Mobile Phone Wizard and only suggested data had been dropped as US mobile phone users seem to be experiencing issues. I think the link is that it's a QA c*ckup! :)

Actually the point I was getting at was that Europeans were probably going to be a lot more accepting and react more mildly to bugs than North American customers. *whistles innocently*

Well sue me for mispeaking. BTW, nokia's website lists it as a phone, so does their tech support. And I did my research.

Their email app is buggy. I didn't try it in the new one, because I CAN'T USE THE NEW FLASH! Got it? Won't set up with the phone, so I can't use it. I didn't expect the original email app to bre so buggy, email is like a simple task to implement. I also expected them to be able to view MS word documents, seeing as how it is the most popular document format and everyone else supports it.

Umm, no it doesn't have an easy fix. Apparently you have to root your Nokia, something I have no desire to do. Besides, I expect something I pay that much money for to be fixed by the VENDOR, not ME. IT's called service. We sort of demand that here in the US. Apparently you don't. And I already said, there isn't one bug, there are two that I know if so far.

I expected the email feature to work, but it has a terrible problem of hiding all your mail from you. And that's not even getting into the two new bugs (phone and time) that I discovered within ten minutes of flashing. If I find 2 that quickly, I'm sure there are dozens more to be found as well. I never thought it was perfect either. But I did expect it to do the things it was supposed to do well. And I didn't expect the update to break things. Being unhappy with that isnt' unrealistic.

That they're turning out a quality product.

I have an impression that you don't feel that the Nokia 770 is a quality product. So why hang around here?

So much hostility in this thread...

P.S. My Nokia 770 is working great with no problems. Though some may find a few bugs, my 770 is a quality product. :-)

Something seems wrong here... Let's see if we can correct this statement:
Ah, much better.
That's what I find, too -- my 770 is meeting my needs and expectations very well. I've encountered some problems and there are things that I think could work better, but I'm not surprised by the performance of this device. Indeed, I'm very pleased with how it fills particular functions in my day-to-day life.

I can fully understand Banner's position, in particular it's well known that the Email program (osso-email) is a joke and not worth the bytes worth shipping.

Fortunately, even Nokia recognise this and there are other open source replacements in the works, such as:

• libtinymail
• Sylpheed
• Pine
• Polymer

HTH,

Andrew