Nokia’s first Windows Phone, the Lumia 800, started shipping almost four months ago. A small percentage of early adopters who picked it up have had some issues with their battery. Either their device was burning through a full charge way too quickly, or worse yet they couldn’t even recharge their phone and had to replace it. In order to rectify the issue Nokia said they would ship two firmware updates, which they did, but some people still experienced issues. Today we’ve just learned that there’s a third firmware update being rolled out in Singapore, version 12070. The folks at WPCentral flashed it on their Lumia 800 and say that battery life “tripled”, but the good news doesn’t stop there. There’s evidence in the firmware to suggest that Nokia is working on adding new features to the camera app, specifically called: Smart group shot, Action shot, Panorama, and Self timer. We thought that companies weren’t allowed to mess with Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system, that it had to run exactly the way Microsoft decides it should run, but then again we all know that Nokia and Microsoft have a special relationship.
As for when we’ll hear more about this update coming to Europe … we can’t really say. Nokia usually posts something on their official Nokia Conversations blog whenever they do something of any major significance. Tripling battery life is pretty damn significant if you ask us. Also, those new camera features aren’t enabled, so that’s yet another question: When will the fourth Lumia 800 update be released?
If we had to take a guess, we’d say Nokia is going to roll all these updates into one mega update that they’ll issue whenever Windows Phone Tango comes out. Yes, Tango is the version of Windows Phone that enables low end hardware, but it also comes with new features and bug fixes. Said features and fixes will also come to today’s Windows Phones.