Realising the need to get some improvements for my P990, I did the update on August 2nd and after 2 weeks on stress test, here is my report, mainly looking at the major improvements and bugfixes. R6E28 is kinda special because it's supposed to be the last P990 update before Sony Ericsson stops its development and concentrates on new UIQ 3 generations like the P1i and W960. Does it measure up to its users' expectations?
As I mentioned in my R6D23 report here, there are 2 most obvious bugs, the 'space bar' and 'long text' bugs. I can confirm now that these bugs are now fixed in R6E28 (phew!...)
Another bug fix solved the 'recent contact selection' when composing new text messages. The jog-dial can be used in FO mode to do this function. In R6D23 FO mode, this did not work. To do this, make sure the cursor is located exactly in the message recipient’s “To” field.
What about improvements? Well, there are minor tweaks here and there - for example, the multimedia volume is now louder using earphones, but nothing else major that I can say.
The most obvious improvement is the RAM Memory handling. After a cold boot (restart), my P990 is now showing around 17MB of RAM, compared to 15MB in the previous firmware. The screenshot below shows 16MB of RAM after reboot with Swiss Manager Pro and AutoCam running.
Applications running in the background now consume a lower memory footprint when left idle and it is now possible to run applications without casualties. For example, I always keep Messaging, DreamConnect 3 and Projekt running in the background, i.e. all at the same time. This was totally impossible in the previous firmware. I also have Exchange ActiveSync and SMS Spam Manager running. Please take note that Messaging and DreamConnect 3 are known to use a large amount of RAM.
However, with the P990’s RAM limitation, there are still issues, especially when you have too many applications running in the background. In this screenshot, Messaging is killed when opening Documents To Go. But the good news is that other applications stay opened! Projekt and DreamConnect 3 are still there.
All in all, I am very satisfied with the memory management in this firmware. There are less applications being shut down by the system in the background.
Another huge improvement is in the camera department. It is now faster to launch the Camera application, with an almost instant response and it consumes less memory. Previously, when the camera was activated, it killed all other running applications. Now no more. The autofocus also works better, where objects are 'locked' faster. In terms of photo quality, I can say that the P990 now produces better photos than any other Symbian smartphones I've used.
Conclusion
This new firmware makes the P990 more stable, especially in the memory management and during my 2 weeks of heavy usage, I have experienced no “Restart to improve performance” behaviour. The P990 is now behaving nicely and is easier to handle. Of course, if from the very beginning Sony Ericsson had put 128MB RAM inside the P990, then this saga would have been a very different story and the P990 would have been the power user's smartphone, as was the P910 before it.
Asri al-Baker, AllAboutSymbian, August 16th 2007