Next Firmware??

hi,
i heard it will be at 2/april and this news is comfirmed..

cheers,

Well, its now the 9th April - any sign?

R5 is out from today!!!

I upgraded to the latest firmware last Tuesday (10 April) and have been putting the phone through its paces ever since.

I dearly hope that it's not too soon to say this, but the P990i seems to be FINALLY behaving itself and performing the way it should have done straight out of the box 6 months ago!

I won't dwell on the many problems, they've been well documented in this and other threads. But I will say that the latest firmware eradicates most, if not all, of them.

It is amazing what a difference speed and stability make. The phone looks the same, has the same functionality as before, yet the improved interface speed and stability transform it from being an irritating brick that I carried around begrudgingly to a trusty companion that I wouldn't want to be without. The improvements to the browser are particularly noticeable, the thing is stable and can now easily handle running in parallel with the email and/or RSS clients.

All is not perfect (is it ever!?): some niggles remain, but they are mostly improvements rather than real bug fixes:

1. The implementation of the Today screen is just plain awful. Sony Ericsson, please, please have a look at how your competitors do it: Palm and Microsoft both have far better Today screens, ones that are genuinely useful. The information needs to be presented clearly and elegantly on one screen, without the need to click buttons and scroll around to see all your entries.
2. The PIM software should be much better. It's as if S-E haven't bothered to look at Microsoft and Palm to see how these things should be done. Come on guys! Just a few examples: make the full text of each diary entry visible from the day view, not two or three clicks away. Make the Contacts database 'smart' searchable (on my old Treo 650, typing the first initial and then maybe one or two letters of the surname was usually enough to bring up the contact I was looking for from a database of over 1,200 names). Make all a contact's details visible from one screen, don't make me click through different tabs.
3. Sort out the PC Suite. Firstly, it's painfully slow and secondly, if Palm and Microsoft can sync Outlook categories, why can't S-E? How hard can it be!? Thirdly - more worryingly - the PC Suite behaves erratically: sometimes duplicating contact entries that have been modified on the 'phone, sometimes not. Sometimes 'updating' entries that haven't been modified on the 'phone. Sometimes not. Strange. Doesn't inspire confidence. And of course the 'Backup Restore' feature is completely useless. Most people can't get it to restore correctly. I can't even get it to backup in the first place!
3. Sort out the remaining small quirks in the UI. Why, for example, when presented with a list of options (e.g., setting the 'home city' in Time & Date) can I not simply press a letter to be taken to the first option starting with that letter? Why do I have to manually scroll all the way down?
5. Fix the problem with the picture thumbnails. I must admit, I haven't personally experienced it again since the latest firmware, but I've read that others still have. This is minor but hugely irritating and - I would have thought - easy to fix.
6. One final gripe that I haven't see anyone else mention but it's a particular irritant to me: why can't I boot the phone up without a SIM card in it? Windows Mobile devices and Palm Treos will both happily boot up and let you access all of their functions (except phone functions of course) without a SIM card. My P990i just stops at the start-up screen and refuses to do anything until I put a SIM card in. Crazy.

Overall though, the P990i is, finally, living up to its initial promise. For the first time since the phone's release, I would now actually recommend it to someone.

If S-E addresses the issues mentioned above, it could have a worthy contender for 'best smartphone' on its hands again. But you better be quick, because look out, what's that? The Nokia E90 is on its way...

I think you have put your finger on a nubmer of important points.

I had the P900 and P910, both of which I quickly discarded - I expected them to be like the Psion of old, but with communications! While the 910 was better, it still lacked features that other phones had e.g. why was the camera so poorly spec'd?

I have used Windows Mobile devices for the most part - but the real problem with them is the sound quality. I don't think it is a speaker issue, must be something to do with the codecs.

So I came back to the SE with some trepidation - but the P990 is a truly superb device, containing just about everything a mobile user could want. I agree that the latest ROM is an improvement.

HOWEVER, you put your finger on one vital issue - synchronisation. What is wrong with SE - it can't be difficult to write a program that compares date and time stamps and checks for the fields that have changed. How can they get it so wrong? This was the problem of the Psions of old, and they still can't be bothered to produce a program that gets it right.

Read this SE: if you can't get the sync right, it is no point offering a smartphone at all.

I just upgraded the firmware using Update_Service_Setup-2.7.4.8-2. The speed from switching one menu to anthor is faster compare with the previous firmware upgrad. But there seem to be an issue with the alarm volume. The alarm seem to be very soft even though you have adjusted to high in the Control Panel > Device > Sound & alerts > Alarms options.