Nokia N93 firmware update

Dusan Belic

Dusan has been using smartphones since their introduction and is now following the latest trends in the industry. The "convergence" is what he's most excited about, and writing about it is the next logical thing to do. He thinks that using a smartphone is what everyone who cares about their time should do. In addition to his interests in mobile phones, Dusan also loves to experiment with the latest web and mobile 2.0 services. The idea of accessing and managing your information from any device no matter where you are simply amazes him. Whether it's an online to-do list, note taking service or a video sharing social network, he's there to try it out. He admits though, he's still searching for the ultimate web-based organizational tool, which "sings" perfectly with the mobile PIM application. Dusan used to run SymbianWatch.com which later became part of IntoMobile. He lives in Serbia, South-East Europe, from where he edits the site on a daily basis.

• Bloody N93

  N93 owners are a bunch of loosers.
  We have bought products that don’t work and Nokia want us to fix them ourselves. Would you accept it if your TV, DVD player, camcorder, or digital camera was full of bugs and the manufacturer gave you a link to download a fix as a solution.
  It’s about time we told Nokia that selling products with bugs in them is not acceptable. If it dosn’t work properly demand your money back.
  I have lost time, money and enjoyment by buing a N93. There are so many anoying bugs in it I don’t use it anymore and have replaced it with a new 6230i. I am such a looser.

• dusanb

  Well, I don’t agree with you. Smartphones ARE mobile computers and of course that they should be updated from time to time. Every operating system today requires updates – at least for the new drivers.
  However, I do agree that the just bought device shouldn’t contain as much bugs as N93 have.
  But… I still love Nokia.

• eugs

  “We have bought products that don’t work and Nokia want us to fix them ourselves.”

  Say the saem to microsoft, lammo.

• John

  I disagree with dusand. I have an N93 and the software I am STILL waiting for has nothing to do with enhancement; the phone simply does NOT perform in the manner it is decribed in all the marketing material. In short, whilst it may be hard to make it stick legally, Nokia sold me this phone by creating the impression that it was something it isn’t.

  Assuming this elusive software update actually fixes anything, it is an essential requirement to make the phone perform in accordance with Nokia’s claims.

  ‘Bloody 93′ is spot on. This phone is faulty as it stands and Nokia have a damned cheek putting it on the market, making false claims and making an awful lot of money from loyal customers who make the mistake of trusting this awful company.

  Nokia deserves to fold and I wish them nothing less. I have been ripped off. Now that this nasty company has my money, I don’t matter anymore. Their staff don’t even have the manners to reply to any of my e-mails asking for assistance.

  I’m frightened of posting my phone to them for repair. I might get nothing back or they might just send it back without any repair. I’d have more confidence in dealing with some shady market stall dealer.

• smiler

  Hello, I only got my phone the other day, yeah it has lots of glitches, i put in the code *#0000# and I get this.

  v 03.0.085
  02-05-06
  rm-55
  n93 (01.01)

  All this talk about a new firmware 11, I must be way out then??

  Ill be checking this site by the looks of it I need a new firmware.

  Shocking!!!
  Smiler

• Jay

  Nokia’s software updater finally has the new firmware for N93.

  V 11.0.034
  17-08-06
  RM-55
  N93 (60.01)

  I’ve updated my phone and at first the phone became really slow, the gallery wasn’t opening properly and it was just generally slow.

  Before I blew a fuse, I shut off the phone & turned it back on. Right away I noticed it operating at normal speed and its fixed a glitch I had when playing videos. ‘General Error, Out of memory..’

  The new update is a must. Make sure all you N93 owners download this using the Nokia Software Updater.

• jon

  just updated my n93 – previously freezing and lagging- firmware update seems to have fixed the problems upto now- only time will tell

• vishal

  i have firmware version 10 etc, if i update it to version 20 etc will i still get the improvements from version 11?

• adam

  I think its great that phone manufacturers allow and actually develop firmware upgrades for phones and are so easilly accessible..there was a time when upgrades to firmware were not possible without sending to service center…

• Holyboy27

  my n93 is at version 11 but i cant find update for version 20! where do i get it?

• harrier_mk2

  you cant get ti yet, and yea its a good idea except with the n93 as the v20 is out but you cant download it?! wats the point of this needed fix if you have 2 lose your fone for a cuple of days a a service center that isnot logicaly visitiable due to my location…iv lost faith in nokia because of this fon.. its sad really my nex fone wint b nokia

• it sucked

  i have a n90 and a n93 . i sent my n 90 to get repaird because it didnt want start and it kept on jumping into diffrent window. i sent it to get fixed. they told me 10 to 15 days. its been two months and no phone. i called and they told me its going to get replaced . yet no phone. anybody want to buy a n93 i only had it for 5 months. Dont like it anymore. i want to change phones. ask me for a price i might sell it for cheap.

• Denmark

  Got the latest firmware and it solved the performance glitches on my N93. Anyway, guys, everything that is up for sale always has glitches or issues or whatever you would like to call them. What differentiates a great product from a mediocre one is the support/customer service that you get for it. As long as Nokia churns out firmware updates like this, it tells me that they are aware of the issues and cares enough to fix them. Unlike Apple that tells you that an iPod is a disposable device; no chance of getting it repaired if it breaks – just buy a new one. Now, that’s an example of a mediocre product for me.

• Dharminder

  Hi, i just bought the n93, thinking it was a very hot phone. it is… dont get me wrong…. ive had this phone for about umm 3 days now… and i could NOT record a single video, because the phone keeps on freezing. at times, it will display a error msg saying that my SIM registration failed. i am very annoyed with this phone right now. anyone help? And is updating the software on it; is it really gonna fix the problems with this phone? I bought this phone brand new on ebay, and i am about to get a refund. Should i keep the phone, or sell it back.

  Problems that I personally have with it:

  1. Wifi, cannot program it
  2. Cannot take a single video because it keeps freezing
  3. It freezes sometimes when i twist the screen.
  4. Wallpaper is very small, is there any way, i can get a wallpaper that will cover the whole screen? thank you very much, and i will def appreciate the help.

  Thank You

• Chan

  N93 is the crappiest phone ever, lost my faith in Nokia.. moving on the something better next time

• Amadeus90

  Hey, bloody N93… Well based on what u said.. I’m the other way round of your situation. Before this I owned a Nokia 6230i. Then I bought a second-handed N93. It was great until I upgraded it to the international version. At first,i thought it was a good thing until I realized that it does not support chinese. Basically i’m a chinese guy from Malaysia so I need chinese to send messeges. I regretted what i’ve done. Pls anyone can tell me how to reverse back my firmware to the original one?? I need your help. If you guys do have solutions pls add nidhiki5287@hotmail.com in your msn messenger and tell me. I’m desperate in getting the original firmware. Plsssss!!!!!

• Rilhas

  I’ve been a NOKIA user for a very long time now, and I like it. Overall I’ve always considered NOKIA to be the best option.

  I’ve used the 6600, 6630, N70, N73, and, recently, I’ve acquired an N93. I write this to point out what I consider to be significant flaws in the agenda operation, to the point where I characterize them as malfunctions. I was hoping that these faulty functions (or bad design options) would have been corrected in such a high-end model as the N93, but I was disappointed to note that this was not the case. I updated the firmware (it was already up to date, but… one never knows!!) and all I achieved was a significant T9 dictionary degradation. And, so, I write to ask when will a repair (or repairs) be available. I’ll explain what I mean.

  I’m a regular agenda user, both for professional and personal events. I memorize around 5 to 20 events every day, and so, on average, I get about 5 to 20 notifications every day. I only input events which are important enough so as for me to want to make sure I get reminded. So I want them all to generate a notification. These reminders include varied things from “remember to call Mr. X” 30 minutes from now up to “remember the IRS form” 1 year from now. Also, I input events for which I want to be notified a few days before their actual date. There are a lot of usage problems dealing with this broad range of events when using the most up to date implementations of the agenda software (in my brand new N93). I’ll try to summarize them:

  1) When an event alarms I have to deal with it right away. I don’t really have the option of ignoring it. Why? Because after a few alarms for the event (5 or 6) where I ask to repeat or where I ignore it then the system just stops giving me any option other than stop. If I miss the alarm when it reaches this “stop-only” state then the software just decides never to remind me again. And it doesn’t show any information on that decision, so I typically just don’t get reminded and forget about it just to be reminded by someone who I promised I would call and I didn’t, for example. Worse examples do happen, although not as bad as they might be, simply because I learned not to trust the agenda software that much.

  2) If 1) happens on entry A and the phone reaches the “stop-only” state then all events B, C, D, and so on will also only have the option of being stopped (eventually automatically, if I happen not to be near the phone when it alarms (or if I am in no position to deal with it at the moment). All those alarms are just missed. This happened on (the early days of) my 6630, and I didn’t test it again. However I got the impression that the N93 just loses A and not B, C, nor D. I have no confirmation because testing this is hard work (between all combinations of ignoring several simultaneous events and delaying them).

  3) In cases 1) and 2) a restart resumes the state of allowing options other than stop (the repeat and silence). This is a solution but not usable in many circumstances (like while in the middle of a call). This may have been some design option, I don’t know, but if it was then it was a bad option. The phone should do all that it needs to make sure I get notified. If this means repeating the alarms for days on end or until the battery is exhausted then so be it. The phone is supposed to be working for me, not the other way around. And I should be the one responsible for the decision making process, not the phone. The phone should never get bored of notifying me if I asked it to, and it should never decide to forget my requests. At least NOKIA should make it a configurable option.

  4) When alarms are missed or are stopped by the phone (by ignoring them or asking to repeat too many times) then I can always reactivate them by going to the agenda and setting a new alarm time for the already entered events. The problem is that some events are programmed to alarm a few days before the actual event, so I must, manually, and after stopping all events, try and find them one by one to re-arm them. For example, if one of the alarms was something like “remember to pay the car insurance this month” and set to alarm 10 days before the deadline, then I must manually find the day where the event was memorized in order to re-arm it (to the following 10 days) and I must remember that the anticipation of the notification was 10 days for this specific alarm. This cannot be done one by one if there are many event notifications programmed for the same time (I must stop all of them before re-arming each one). So, sometimes, it can happen that, while in the middle of some stressing situation, I just feel like throwing the device away, since it demands my undivided highly-prioritized attention (no matter what I’m doing or who I’m talking to at the time!!) to setup all alarms again right away before I forget any of them, making sure I’m not forgetting to re-arm any future events.

  5) If an alarm triggers I often decide to delay it for the 5 minutes (since I don’t have other delay options). It can happen that sometime during those 5 minutes I change my mind and decide to move the event to the next day or so, so I go to the agenda and change the alarm to the next day. When the 5 minutes are up then it alarms anyway. It is very confusing and distracting to decide what to do then, especially if other events are alarming at the same time. If I stop will it ring tomorrow as I wanted and already programmed? If I delay it then it just alarms back in 5 minutes ignoring the fact that I reprogrammed it to the next day.

  6) During all these situations I have very little time to decide what to do with the alarms. About 1 minute per alarm. That is very annoying, since whatever I may be doing that requires my attention elsewhere the phone considers to be less important than it, so it just decides for me… sometimes even deciding to not alarming an event anymore… forever!! This cannot be right, surely. This little time I have to decide what to do with alarms (or else pay the consequences!!) is very stressing an annoying if I’m in the middle of some important idea or conversation with someone when it alarms. What don’t I have more time to decide what to do with the notifications?

  7) If I turn off the phone and some event is programmed to alarm while the phone is off, then I’m not notified when I turn the phone back on. For example, I might program an anniversary a few months before the actual date. I might set an arbitrary alarm time like 10AM. A few months later, on the anniversary date, I may happen to turn on the phone only at 11AM. If I do so I do not get notified (the alarm does not ring). Other cases occur often. For example, I may program something like “call sister to know how interview went” a few days before her interview, and set the alarm (now) to an arbitrary reasonable time like 9PM at the (future) date of the interview. Note: I program it now, but I enter the information to the interview date. If at that day and time I happen to be watching a movie in a movie theatre with the phone turned off then the alarm is missed and I am not notified at all. Many real-world cases can suffer from the fact that alarms are just lost while the phone is off.

  At some point during the various firmware upgrades I performed on my NOKIA 6630 the alarms began to flash the screen, which was a very bad idea. The problem is that the flashing is all about turning on the screen light for about 1 second, then turning it off for about another second, and repeating the cycle. The N70 and N93 inherited this same behavior. If an alarm happens to occur in the dark (for example while driving at night) it is very distracting and possibly dangerous. I only enter events in the agenda which are important, so when an alarm comes up I will know that I have to pay attention. Also, I know that I have to pay attention right away because the phone may decide to forget the alarm if I am wrong in the “mental count” I keep of the number of times the alarm has triggered (so as to know if I am reaching the cosmic limit of 5 repetitions). So I am forced to look at the event at least once to know what it is about before deciding how to go from there. Remember I may be driving at night, so the screen light may be too intense (it usually is). When my eyes become adapted to the light and become capable of identifying the location of the text that I should read then the flash turns off the light. I wait one second (looking at the phone so as not to lose focus of where is what I should read when the light comes back on again) and when it comes back on it is possible that I still couldn’t read all of it (especially if I wrote it in an abbreviated form). This cycle repeats every 2 seconds or so, so a single retry will result in me keeping my eyes of the road for 4 seconds (or more). If I look at the road while the light is off (which is the only responsible option), then I can take as much as 20 seconds to determine what the alarm is all about, and during this time my attention on the road was probably not what it should have been. And, again, it adds to the feeling of being annoyed. And who decided that flashing from 0% to 100% was a good idea?? Why didn’t anyone remember a “dark room” situation when designing it? To top it all I now have only about 40 seconds left to decide what to do with the event, which is, again, stressing. To avoid this stress I usually try to determine, first, if the event is under the risk of entering the “stop-only” state by looking at the soft button options. If the silence option is missing I should attend to it right away. If not then it depends on the length of my journey… if it takes more than 25 minutes (about 5 retries) then I will have to, eventually, read it while driving. A better option would have been to flash the screen between 100% and 50% light intensity (for example), instead of 100% and 0%.

  9) The software should give me the option of delaying an alarm according to my wishes, not only in 5-minute periods. My old 8210 and 6310i allow me to press the repeat button many times to delay a notification for different periods. In the N93 I would prefer a more flexible approach… why not show a menu with various delay times from 5 minutes up to 5 days? I would like that! To make the interface practical, I imagine the current “stop” and “silence” options, and if I select “silence” then a menu of delay options is shown (possibly defaulting to 5 minutes, while the “stop” still remains available). This could make it easy to avoid stressing and annoying circumstances, and also help while driving (there may be many alarms in a 3 hour car trip!!) since I could delay an alarm without looking at the screen (after I get used to it).

  10) If I have, say, 5 events alarming at the same time and I ignore the first, then after the 1 minute timeout the second event starts alarming. If I ignore that then after another minute the 3rd alarms. And so on. After ignoring a few alarms I end up in a situation where alarms programmed to notify me at the same time actually end up generating an interruption every minute, since the individual event notification retry delay intervals acquire an offset corresponding to the number of 1-minute timeouts that the individual events suffered. I can assure you that this can be extremely annoying. And I remind you that if I’m not there then each alarm rings for 1 minute and then passes the task to the next alarm, actually resulting in a constant ringing for about 35 minutes (other people in the room just want to shoot me when I come back!). It is easier to understand my frustration if you remember that I don’t live for the phone, I am most often than not doing something that I consider important, or I am talking to someone which deserves to be considered more important than the phone… so I don’t want to be interrupted at regular 1-minute intervals… I’m sure there is a solution for this.

  11) I tried third party agenda programs. They are varied, and their input and visual options are several. However, they all make use of the same notification mechanism – the phone software. So there is no real gain in using them (and I also consider the phone event data input interface to be adequate).

  12) I should be able to customize the defaults for the agenda events. I typically want it to alarm at the time of the event (I use the meeting type as general reminders, since they are the most practical to generate notifications). I should be able to configure that the default event time is always 0 minutes before the event, since I usually require 0 minutes in advance or, exceptionally, a few hours or days in advance. 15 minutes is usually not useful for me, so I always have to change it. These configurable defaults would allow me to setup an event entering fewer fields, in most of the situations. This would add a lot of comfort when using the agenda.

  13) I should be able to see the current date and time when I am entering an event. The notification time usually has some relation to the current date and/or time, so I should be able to see it without switching back to the standby screen or the clock application.

  14) There could be an option to change the colors of the agenda. I noticed the N93 doesn’t have very nice themes available yet. The one I got (from TMN in Portugal? or is it yours?) shows blue events on a blue background. Well, slightly darker blue over slightly lighter blue. Not as visible nor as intuitive as red (or black) over blue like on my 6630. With the event color option I could change from, say, 2 or 3 different colors to override theme limitations.

  15) If I silence the first event in a series of events programmed to signal at the same time then the events following the first should automatically be silent. This is because with a loaded agenda the sound takes up CPU which makes the speed at which I can delay or stop events slow. The N93 is much better than the 6630, but it still takes some time to delay a series of events. And, also, it is annoying, since delaying 5 events in sequence makes the sound during the whole process (for 5 events it may take up to 10 seconds on my 6630, on my N93 I don’t know yet, but each event generates it own sound).

  16) The phone often outputs a message like “some agenda appointments failed because of hour change”. Or something like that (I get the notice in portuguese). What hour change? By definition: notifications depend on the fact that time keeps changing. Does it mean that it cannot handle events that span across hours? Or was the phone clock modified in any way without me knowing? I checked the operator clock update and I made sure it was off. But this message still appears very often. The message is, in fact, absolutely useless if it doesn’t tell me what entries were missed. What am I supposed to do when I get such a message? I just know some event or group of events were missed, and so I am now warned that the agenda (as a whole) cannot be trusted from that point on. And I get reminded of this very often. I think this message didn’t go through any design steps whatsoever.

  So, to summarize, my question is: when will these problems be solved? I spent some effort typing this message, so I hope you NOKIA considers it useful. I’m sure that what I point out here would benefit all users, from the ones that don’t use the agenda very much to those that, like, me, use it very very very extensively and now and then feel extremely frustrated due to the lack of better options (including those from 3rd party vendors).

  I reached the point of thinking of developing an agenda application myself, but one which would also handle the notifications. C/C++ is not as portable (at least not with little effort even across Symbian versions), and so I would prefer J2ME. I would have many problems ensuring that the J2ME application would be always running, so, again, I have the feeling I don’t have many (low effort) options. And custom agenda solutions are usually unable to display the list of upcoming events in the standby screen.

  I also know that this may not be the best place to ask such questions. But I don’t have the time to read through forums, finding the right site, etc. I tried emailing NOKIA, and I also FAX’ed them, only to be ignored. It would be easy for me to simply find a better agenda in some other phone or PDA and give up using Symbian phones. However, I write this hoping that these are not such difficult problems to fix, and that NOKIA feels motivated to improve this component (which I think is one of the last few needing a major improvement). A also assume that NOKIA just didn’t receive good customer feedback on this matter and thus they may appreciate these comments.

  (this message was about 10 months old when I posted it)

• Rilhas

  My N93 has become slower and slower and slower… if the screen saver is active then it takes about 10 seconds to get any application to run. For example, pressing the LED flash key will take about 10 seconds to turn on the flash. Opening the messages takes about 10 seconds to get the messages application to start.

  After that initial delay it all seems back to normal again. I “reformatted” the phone to the most recent firmware many times now, restored my data, and it seemed to be better after that for a while (for 1 month or 2). But now this no longer works, and I get no significant improvement.

  I imagine that there is something wrong with my data, but I don’t have the option to back it up in parts, so I always have to restore it all. So, the problem persists.

  I don’t know what to do about this, and I didn’t find any information that could help. Maybe someone has some idea about how to solve or work around this.

• Rilhas

  Firmware 20.0.058 still has significant bugs. I just applied the firmware, and I am unable to delete the games and the other applications which I don’t use and take up a lot of memory.

  The delete attempt results in a “damaged file” or “corrupt file” notification and the applications will not be deleted (and no memory is recovered).

  Another major bug happens if I delete a connection (or access point) and then create another one with the same characteristics. In this case, the old access point will appear again. If I delete it then the new one is also deleted. After N attempts I always get N+1 connections which either all exist or all are deleted. Truly anoying.