My name is Luke and today I will be posting my first techie blog post of hopefully many more to come. Whenever I get my hands on a new toy I am propelled to break it or at very least, test it to the very limit so I know that if I were ever caught on a sinking ship, in sub zero waters, I would be safe in the knowledge that my phone would be the phone that would handle tasks like wireless file sharing at any given moment during that situation.
In today’s post I will be covering my n97 and what techie things I did to improve it.
If you purchased the n97 in its first few days of release then you would have likely found the firmware to be really buggy. After phone calls the software would sometimes lock up, there was no kinetic scrolling and generally that was enough to just be annoying. It also had tendencies to set the ring tone back to the default Nokia tune. Either this was some sort of subliminal form of advertising, or it was an annoying bug that had to be fixed.
In time it was resolved with later firmware releases, but this imposes 2 new problems altogether. Firstly the firmware took 2 months longer to reach publication in the UK than it did the rest of the world. To get around that issue you would have to void warranty with Nokia by choosing to change your product code using a 3rd party program. Well, that is exactly what I did and I will now go into what exactly all this means. Please note that I can not be responsible for any damage or liability that results from the below procedure. Please do so at your own risk.
Nokia brands each of their phones by product codes, I bought my phone in the UK. This means I would have a UK product code that would look something like this 012345 . There are many types of product codes which even go into as much detail as the phone colour: click here to see an example. RM-505 product codes (Global Editions) and RM-507 product codes (North Americas) are only separated by the difference in frequencies respective to those regions. Also be aware of the default language and predictive text that come with different each product code.
So to cut to the chase... Nokia releases its firmware updates by region. Some regions get it quicker than others, and in many cases UK product code owners have to wait for up to a minimum of 2 months after release date in many cases till the firmware is rolled out to them. Some providers (e.g. Vodafone) request Nokia to “Brand” firmware for phones they sell. This means when you turn on your device you typically get Vodafone logos and Vodafone applications. Not only is it just a load of Vodafone bloat-ware to me, but when Nokia finally do release updated firmware to the UK, it can take a further 2 months for Vodafone to then adapt their own UK branded Nokia firmware making it even longer to update the bugs in your phone!. So in this process I am going to take you through how to get around all these nasty niggles you maybe having with updating your £500 phone.
So how do we get round this problem? Well my compadres, we change the product code to a region that has received the update. I would be very careful selecting a product code that will work in your region as you do not want to have a weird language or break your 3g. So I chose 0570817: RM-505_EMEA_EURO_QW1 Black. This is because it uses the same 3G frequency as the UK and includes the language pack I will be using (UK English). The fact that it also states “Black” is to tell you that the default theme after install will be black as there are white and black models of the phone available. No guesses which colour I have then.
To do this we use a program called NSS which means Nemesis Service Suite. You can get it from here.
Make sure OVI suite is installed but at the same time not running.
Simply connect your device to the computer in the ‘PC Suite’ mode.
Download Nemesis Service Suite Beta 1.0.38.15 (zip file,6.95 MB) and Install (use the default configuration, i.e. just keep clicking next during installation) and run NSS. You should see the following screen.
Simply click the lens as shown in the picture above.
You will see the above screen, next click on ‘Phone Info’ situated next to the top left corner.
In the ‘Phone Info’ screen, click ‘Read’ to bring up your current product code, HW version etc.
(This is what you get after clicking “Read”)
Next simply click ‘Enable’ next to the product code (Fig. 1).
Fill in the desired product code (Fig 1.), Please make sure you fill in the right product code e.g. filling in a NAM product code when your device is a Euro model can cause serious damage when you update. Now press ‘Write’ (Fig. 2).
Nothing will appear to have happened, but your product code would have been changed. To verify hit ‘Read’ once again.
That’s it. You have now changed your product code.
But Wait!
So now that we have done this there was still one other issue which greatly annoys me about Nokias software. When opening the OVI suite (The software which comes with the phone) and trying to update the firmware, it fails to find any new firmware even though I know for a fact my new product code should allow me to download the latest version of firmware. After a bit of research it just so happens that the OVI suite is useless and you should download the Nokia Software Updater from here instead and install it as a separate independent program as it seems to be more functional than the one imbedded into the OVI suite. You can download it from here http://europe.nokia.com/support/download-software/device-software-update.
Enjoy!
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