As much as I like my Nokia E71, when I bought it, it had a few minor annoyances. Because it had firmware revision 200.21.118, there were a couple of irritaing bugs. The screensaver time would not update, unless you pressed a key. The camera quality, wasn’t brilliant – some first shots came out with a purple ‘hue’ that would be corrected only by taking a second shot.
So a recent check of my phones firmware updates revealed version 400.21.013 was available to install. After backing up the contents of the phone memory and 8Gb memory card, I connected the phone and started the download via the phone software update service. Never having any bother before with firmware updates, especially on my N95, I was confident this would pass without incident.
However after 15 minutes the update software (1 minute away from completion and displaying various warnings about not disconnecting the USB cable) reported that it had lost connection with the phone and I had to disconnect/reconnect it and reattempt the update.
Doing as instructed, it appeared to go through ok until the last minute again and displayed a message that the update had failed. Fearing that my phone had been ‘bricked’, even though the phone had been correctly connected to the the update service, I started the phone up and thankfully booted ok. A check with *#0000# displayed the new firmware version of 400.21.013, so the update appeared to complete successfully. everything seemed to be ok on the phone, except when I tried ‘web’, the built-in browser. For some it wouldn’t connect and displayed various error messages to the effect that it couldn’t connect. So I installed ‘Gravity’, my Twitter client. This also displayed an error message and wouldn’t connect to the internet.
The only thing that gave me a clue how to get around the problem was to take the battery, MicroSD card and SIM card out. I usually install all my applications to the MicroSD card and thought there could be some sort of preferences file screwing up the internet connection.
I never found out the root cause, however despite several hard resets, installs of backups and re-install of the firmware (which did result in the same error as the first time), the only solution I found was to hard reset the phone, wait for a while and then try Web. It seems as though, after a firmware update the phone needed time to re-register itself back on the network before I could use extended services such as internet access.
Once I’d re-established a reliable internet connection I set about blanking my MicroSD card and restoring only data that would interfere with phone application settings, then the applications themselves.
Suffice to say, my phone is fully working again, the time on the screensaver is fixed and the camera is much, much improved!
if you go ahead with a firmware upgrade, tread carefully and prepare for one or two heart-stopping moments!
Disclaimer: if anyone screws up their phone after reading any part of this blog and blames me, tough luck. I accept no responsibility for your damaged phone in any shape or form.
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