Following my rant earlier in the week about the annoying habits my N73 had developed, Pedro Timóteo pointed out a software upgrade was crying out as the best solution. This should have warned me that my entire week was going to be highlighted by generalised acts of stupidity on my behalf, but blithely I carried on as normal. The consequences have been discussed in previous posts.
Anyway, two days ago, in a fit of common sense, I went to the Nokia site and began the upgrade. This was not without problems but I had backed up all my data (phew) and it was fairly painless to reinstall it all. Except Lifeblog. Three, in their infinitesimal wisdom send out the N73 without Lifeblog installed — mainly, one suspects, because they are too tight fisted to provide a mini-SD card with the phone, which Lifeblog needs to be present. This must save them all of £10 per phone.
This makes all manner of problems crop up, as going to the Nokia website you are told you can’t download this application because it comes pre-installed on the N73. What N73 owners do after an upgrade is beyond me. Anyway, the only solution I could find was to download the version for the N71 and install that. You get a few warning messages about the application not working on this phone, but it seems to work.
Generally, in the time since I have run the upgrade, the phone seems to be working better. Not as good as when I first got it, but the delay between pressing send and regaining control has returned. Setting caller specific ring tones still causes the phone to reboot though. Oddly, the upgrade has meant I now get a stronger signal at home. I find that quite strange, to be honest but then again, I am having a stupid week.
I must say a big thanks to Pedro Timóteo for reminding me to get an upgrade. It seems to have improved things a fair bit. Has it changed my opinions of the phone? Not yet.
[tags]3, 3g, bad service, Bad Shops, Cameraphone, Cell Phone, communication, Hardware, hutchinson, mobile phone, N73, Nokia, Nokia N73, Opera, phone, Phone Browser, symbian, Technology, Telephone, three, penny pinching, idiot, lifeblog[/tags]
Ain’t it great the operators “optimise” the phones for you the customer? 🙂
Anyway, Lifeblog works just fine without a memory card.
Handy that the N71 version seems to works on the N73. It probably won’t quite be the same version that normally comes with the N73, but I reckon it should still work ok.
Hugo: yes it is infuriating beyond belief. Lifeblog was something I was actually looking forward to the phone having — I had a bit of a misconception of what it could do, it is good but not as good as I had hoped.
So far, I haven’t had any problems running the N71 version and I have managed to take around 1000 photos now 🙂