Slightly erroneously (see below), but at least it's informing them! As shown (again) below, Nokia Software Update, recently updated, now informs users of the main benefits of installing specific firmware updates. As well as the simple numeric enhancement, users now get plain English 'this is why you should update' prompts. Add in the recent use of official Nokia press releases to push major firmware updates and the slow but steady stream (e.g. here) of general minor update articles and it seems that Nokia's update servers are really cranking into gear.

'Updated Maps 2.0' - this is fair enough, I'm sure v31 firmware had a more recent build than v20. 'Improved N-Gage games' though? v31 firmware for the N82 didn't even include the N-Gage client, in any version! And what about all the other benefits of v31 over v20? Flash Lite 3 improvements, Share online 3.0, faster operation overall, and so on?

Still, I mustn't grumble, at least this is a step in the right direction. Putting actual user benefits to the forefront when asking users to risk damaging their phone data by going through the whole (potentially tortuous) firmware update cycle might help reassure them that it's all worthwhile. Of course, UDP (User Data Preservation) is becoming more common, but a) it's not ubiquitous yet by a long, long way, and b) it's not 100% reliable (in my experience) yet.

Have you noticed any other in-update mini-changelogs and, if so, how accurate were they?

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 16 April 2009

PS. In case anyone was wondering why I had an N82 that had such an 'old' firmware, it was a privately acquired unit from eBay that I just had to snap up.... 8-)