The first Symbian^3 device to ship from Nokia, the N8, has been a mixed success. The Finnish handset maker claims that it set a record in terms of preorders, but failed to provide any hard sales numbers. Early reviews say the hardware is beautiful, the camera is the best on the market, but the operating system is painfully dated and makes things needlessly complicated. An analyst from Morgan Stanley even released a research note saying that in Europe Apple sells 6 iPhones for every 1 N8, which is rather telling and bad publicity no matter which way you look at it. Then there’s the manufacturing glitch that plagued several early units, rendering them into expensive paperweight. Uhhh.
Nokia has said that they’ve been paying attention to what people have been saying, and the N8 would be getting a steady stream of firmware updates throughout 2011. The first of such updates is due to come out next month according to a tweet from @NokiaIndia that reads: “@neerajvohra Hey Neeraj, Nokia N8 users can expect a firmware update sometime in Jan. We’ll keep you posted :)”. Rumor has it that this first firmware update improve the user interface of the web browser, make text entry useful enough that you don’t want to punch yourself in the face every time you want to send a text message, and a few other optimizations here and there.
The later firmware updates, due in the second half of 2011, are what we’re excited about since we’re expected to get a totally new web browser, an updated look to Symbian’s user interface, and many other yet to be announced goodies. By then the 5th generation iPhone will be out, Android will look like … who knows what, and we’ll be looking forward to MeeGo powered devices that will supposedly have a unique user interface.
Sorry Nokia, but you should have made sure the N8 was perfect before you launched it versus slowly improving it over the course of the handset’s lifetime.
[Via: The Nokia Blog]