epigrafe: Nokia, you are full of surprises...
This story is a bit technical, a bit global market related and a lot of personal feelings expressed.
In a galaxy far... no, actually in Finland (or in China?), well somewhere there was my Nokia E60 born. A year or maybe two years ago it was. Great device loaded with great OS. At that time it was versioned 1.x.
First of all, I've bought it from an Italian site bow.it that sold it €100 less than the same one but marked "Italian". I have carefully checked the possible (published) disadvantages of this saving, did not find any and bought it.
I was using it for a few months collecting good and bad expressions, pros and cons, bugs and features, installing software and changing settings when firmware updates started to pop out from Nokia. First the E61 (basically E60 and E61 are the same devices with keyboard/screen only difference) as it seems now to be more successful(popular?) product gained his v2 update and then also E60. I did not find any changes for the things that really bothered me. Later last year Nokia has released v3 update for E61 and that was something I wanted badly because of some annoyances getting fixed there.
And here the story begins.
First surprise, I have found out that I can't update the firmware OTA (over the air) and I need to buy an USB cable, ok, searching, found a great C-70 cable (data/usb charge) for just €2,90 plus delivery from Germany, also added an "original" Nokia stereo headset HS-23 for €3,90 to the cart, paid the total of €16,70 through the bank transfer and started waiting.
The package was sent with regular German mail so it took 3 weeks to arrive to Italy and it has happened yesterday. Happy-happy, joy-joy, me is running home, connecting the cables, running vmware, downloading nokia software updater... to find out that it offers me to upgrade to v2 only. That is the surprise number two. But OK, there is a logical explanation, maybe I should upgrade in a sequence, v1->v2->v3? OK, downloading some bloody 50M of update (so much? yeah, so much!) and the great NSU (nokia software updater) starts loading it into the phone. All went good and after a cup of coffee and two cigarettes (the progress bar made me nervous) I have rebooted the phone into shiny new v2 Symbian OS. Loosing all the setting and contacts. But I have followed the guide and did a backup first, so I am restoring it. Another 10 minutes, another progress bar cigarette (they should really make a version for smokers without a progress bar if they care about our health) and all the setting came back including my favorite theme. But wait, no contacts? And no applications? Bum, surprise number three.
OK, anyway I was smarter than their Joe and did also a sync just before this upgrade so I did have the contacts all over the internet SyncML servers and also my Kontact can be synced with e60 over bluetooth, so no problem and I have synced them back, certainly loosing all the smart stuff like pictures groups and speed dials. But enough, did I tell you that I wanted v3?
Starting NSU again, nextnextnext, bum, surprise number four! I can't have v3, only v2 is available! But Nokia, how come? it's been a few months you have released this update and people all over the world have installed it!!! I felt doomed at that point, so disappointed that I had to smoke another cigarette.
Anyway, it is clear that some junk software will not stop me even if it runs under junk OS.
Going to Nokia forums and looking for a clue. Bum! Fifth surprise! Apart the IMEI, Serial Number, HW release, SW version, UI ID and other dozen of magic numbers, Nokia also has some "product code" they use to identify for which (or in which) region the phone was sold. And when Nokia releases software updates they mark them with this "code" and when NSU check available software it looks only for the ones marked with this "code". Great, what is the difference between them? Default locale settings and language packs embedded. That is all the difference!
Being all-time-English phoner, I don't care about other langs, may be Cyrillic input would do some good, but it is not a must. Looking at my phone's sticker I see that I have some "Turkish" product code. Obviously NSU can't read from sticker, and obviously this code cannot be hard-coded in the device, so I am bravely googling around for a flashing software that can read/write this code and find one called NSS. Running it. Bum! Surprise number six! The code inside the phone differs from the code on the sticker!
And that is quite correct, Turkish Nokia clients are selling their phones to EU because Nokia has lower prices in their homeland, but who wants to buy a phone with Turkish but without Italian (me does not count) in Italy? So what do they do? Right, the write an Italian code into it and run NSU ;)
OK, so far so good, started to brute-force the code, one... another... nothing worked until I wrote there the one from the sticker and NSU shows v3 available for me! It could be much easier if the Turkish would flash the correct Italian product code.
So I am starting another update, another progress bar for another 50M bundle. And, oh my god, it fails! The phone? Are you alive? Thank god you are OK! Rerunning it.. Bum, surprise seven! NSU thinks my Nokia E60 (RM-49 in lower level names) is E61 (RM-89)!! and offers me to flash it with v3 for E61! Nokia, will it also stretch the screen and add keys on the keyboard? nah...
OK, again code brute forcing here and there, read and write... no hope, always this fat E61 on the screen.
Last hope, *#7370#, Locking code (12345 seems to work always for me, isn't it idiotic to ask for the lock code when it is set to default and was never changed?), hardware reset helped. Burning my Turkish code into it, running NSU and TA-DA! recognized and v3 is offered. nextnextnext update has started, another cigarette and I have v3 firmware with Turkish lang on it! Coooool!
So at the end I am a happy Nokia fan, but Nokia could make my life much easier if they would have supported n'Average Joes too.
Keywords: firmware, nokia, s60, software, symbian, update, fun
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