The Nokia X6's v12 Firmware lets you trust it again

Published by Ewan Spence at 12:00 UTC, February 11th 2010

Following on from my review (parts 1, 2, 3 and 4) of the Nokia X6 32GB Comes with Music, I have received the new v12 firmware with open arms and report back here on the transformation it makes to my intensive use of this music-focussed smartphone. There are still issues that need attention, but at least I can trust the X6 - for the first time.

And so onto the latest firmware on the X6. For those of you following the story so far, I gave the X6 32GB (Comes with Music) version a serious workout over a four part review (Hardware, Music, Multimedia and Applications), and the summary works like this: Given the price point, the construction was effective and had just enough stylish touches to make sure it would be considered by the fashion concious; a finger light capacitive screen brought new joy to the S60 5th edition interface, even though nothing was fundamentally changed from the 5800; but the X6 had problems.

The big one, of course, was the atrocious memory handling. After light to medium use of certain apps, the smartphone would lock up. On top of that, the graphical transitions and moving between menu screens was slow, and the caching abilities in the Music Player added to the feeling of a phone trying to work through fifteen tonnes of strawberry jam.

And it didn't need to be that way – the memory profile and app load out is similar to the N97 mini, and Nokia have managed to sort that out (given time, via the N97) to be a decent device. How long would the X6 have to wait before we could recommend it?

Not long as it turned out. Firmware v12 came out at the start of February (2010), and while it has not made any major additions to the applications on the device, it contains enough bug fixes and tweaks in the installed applications to remove the major memory issues that plagued my device and to turn it into a usable phone again.

Just in time as well, because the 16GB version of the X6 is now shipping in some territories, and thankfully (we checked this with Nokia) this version, which does not have Comes with Music, will have no sign of the buggy v11 firmware, i.e. it'll ship from day one with v12 or higher.

So I thought it only fair to return to the X6 that it is now loaded with the v12 software to see what difference it has made. The biggest difference is something very simple, but one that any personal device needs to have before it can succeed in the marketplace.

Trust.

With the X6v11, while it sat on the desk beside me, and it had a 3G data sim in it, with review software loaded up – the X6 didn't get my day to day SIM. It had that for all of 90 minutes after starting to review the unit initially. A phone, especially a smartphone, is a critical item, it just has to work when it is asked to do something, be it incoming calls, sending texts, grabbing a web page of traffic reports or being asked to play a certain video when demoing to a client. I could never trust the X6 to do that before.

Now I can, and after four days with the X6v12, I'm happy to swap the SIMs around, out of the trusty E75 and into the music phone (although when I start travelling in March I suspect I'll reach for the E75 as the travel phone because it has a qwerty keyboard and also the benefit of being proven 'in battle'). By simply having the X6 with me at all times, and not being afraid to experiment, I start to really use the phone. I don't mind just picking up random applications from online stores (like the Ovi Store), sitting around and calling up web pages and leaving Gravity running in the background for Twitter access, because I don't have to worry about if one more thing will stop it working.

But let's not get too far ahead of the curve. All this update provides is a stable environment, it does nothing to speed up the X6. The music player, which I can now leave running in the background, still has the huge flaws previously discussed. The additional problems in the music player are still there. Not all the information in the ID3 tag is being read, the support for album art is inconsistent, and it's slow to react to button presses.

And the biggest flaw, there is no speed when moving around my albums and music tracks, and there are long pauses when I go into a new folder (be it to list album tracks or an artist's discography). It's barely acceptable in a modern phone, and while the X6 in the 16GB form is going to minimize the marketing of the music app, it's still going to be something that a lot of people will be using.

At least it's now at the “usable” level and not the previous “embarrassment” level. Does this firmware clean up the UI, give the X6 a speed boost so everything appears slick and fast? No. Was the firmware something that Nokia needed to do sharpish so they could work on those areas? Yes.

There's still a fair amount of work that should be done to make the X6 as snappy as the hardware demands. Whether Nokia will do this is open to question, although I would like to think that there will be at least one more update to the X6 to take it to a v20 firmware. Assuming that's more than a bug fix, the X6 could be on its way to becoming a competent replacement for the 5800 and to fly the flag in the mid-range for Nokia.

Whether Nokia would have been better to not release the X6 at all until this firmware was ready is an issue open to debate between academics, marketing and the tech support desk. I think I'd lean towards not releasing a product which fails in its primary purpose, so the X6 16GB in my mind is now in [re]launch territory. Let's see how the rest of the world takes to this improved mid-range handset.

-- Ewan Spence, Feb 2010.

News Discussion

Quote:

Originally Posted by Unregistered Ewan, As usual a great review. My question is: "how long is it going to take Nokia to wake up and fix their offing phones?" Why software upgrade after upgrade after upgrade to fix something that should be correct straight from the factory. While not an iPhone lover, you have to admit that Apple gets the user experience, and the firmware right the first time. Nokia is still floundering and these back and forths about being the largest phone manufacture mean squat. If Nokia had to compete solely on the basis of the N97, N97 Mini (pretty good phone), X6 against the iPhone, Nokia would get their clocks cleaned. If there was no such thing as bottom feeding customers purchasing the lower end phones, Nokia would be in deep doo doo.

Nokia has been doing this on their firmware releases for years.

All of the Symbian devices I've owned over the past few years - N73, N95 and N85 and 5800 had absolutely dire initial firmware releases. N73 was great at v4, N95 at v20 was good, and the N85 at v30+ is finally good.

But it shouldn't take a couple of major firmware updates to get it right - they're using the paying customer as a beta tester, which is utterly inexcusable.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Unregistered Ewan, Why software upgrade after upgrade after upgrade to fix something that should be correct straight from the factory. While not an iPhone lover, you have to admit that Apple gets the user experience, and the firmware right the first time. .

This is true of the user interface, and mostly on the firmware but as a long time Nokia developer who is now carrying an iPhone because I am getting up to speed on iPhone app development I can promise you that there is a whole list of things wrong with the iPhone that Nokia have been getting right for years.

The crucial thing is that the user interface is the thing that users see most of and pay most attention to. Apple's UI is so good that the fundamental iPhone flaws are overlooked/forgiven.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RollerSMB It's already been raised, so I can't be blamed for making this an iPhone vs Symbian thing.. Can I?.. anyways.. I think it's just a matter of priorities. Both Nokia and Apple try to release their products as soon as possible. In that rush, however, something has to give. For Nokia, it's testing (hence early adopter firmware issues), for Apple, it's features (copy/paste, multitasking, etc). So it really is all dependant on what you want. As a power user, I prefer a feature rich, potentially unstable firmware, because I can deal with/forgive it. But many non power users prefer a feature limited stable firmware (and I've recommended iPhone a lot lately because of this). Simply different strokes for different folk! (queue 'why can't we be friends' track here ;) )

Nokia just seem to be in a rush to get incomplete products out the door.

Apple don't. The missing features were generally omitted on purpose - clipboard and MMS being the prime examples. Multi tasking not currently being allowed is for other purposes completely.

I personally don't agree with you - the platform should be solid at release, and missing features is easier to live with.

For example, what if one of the bugs causes dropped calls? Thats utterly inexcusable on a phone.

I am a fan of Nokia, but not to the point of being a fanboi type. I recognise that they've got some potentially great products, but darned near every single one (possibly with the exception of the Maemo platform) is blighted by early (and late) firmware problems.

Obviously they seriously lack in testing. I've been working in software development for years and realise how difficult it can be to thoroughly test products, but the Nokia early releases really strike me as having absolutely minimal testing to the level that I would never expect from a consumer product.

Quote:

Originally Posted by clonmult I personally don't agree with you - the platform should be solid at release, and missing features is easier to live with. For example, what if one of the bugs causes dropped calls? Thats utterly inexcusable on a phone.

LOL! That's precisely what happened when the iPhone 3G came out in 2008. They had to rush out a firmware update in the middle of August 2008 to put it right and then another 2.1 version in September. People do tend to forget Apple's errors quite quickly though.

Nokia tend to get the call quality, stability and signal strength right. Apple STILL have a problem with signal strength - but that's OK because the iPhone is not about being a phone, it's an "experience" <vomit />

Nokia did have a bit of a problem with the 5800 and some US networks, but generally they are good at making their devices work as telephones. They never get the credit they deserve though.

Full thread: 8 Comments / Post New Comment