The N97 firmware update to v12 arrived sooner than expected and without any official change log. Is it still a must have update?

Features

The update doesn’t really contain any new features. And yes – in case you’re wondering – that means no kinetic scrolling for contacts, file explorer and so on! Instead, focus seem to have been on performance and stability. The touch interface responds a lot quicker and overall the phone feels better to work with. The amount of free RAM has also been optimized. And well… That’s about all you can be sure about since there is no official change log!

Installation

I updated via Nokia Software Updater without any problems. After a reboot it seemed like the update actually continued although there was no information about this. The phone was frozen and didn’t respond to key strokes or screen taps. After a while though things went back to normal and I pulled out the keyboard… Only to have the phone crash completely! After a hard reboot by removing the battery everything worked fine though. So, a few strange happenings and a scare or two during installation but everything eventually ok – a normal Nokia firmware update then!

What difference does it make?

I have spent hours with the phone connected via USB without any connection drop – something that just wasn’t possible with the previous firmware versions – so I would assume some work has been done there. So that’s quite a difference! Knock on wood – apart from having to reboot the phone once since Nokia PC Suite refused to recognize the phone – I really haven’t had any USB connection problems at all after the update so far. It takes a while for PC Suite to figure out that there is actually a N97 connected sometimes, but after that it works.

The increased amount of free RAM probably helps to speed up the phone and the touch interface, but it doesn’t change the fact that if you leave 4 or 5 programs running in the background the N97 will run of out RAM and start closing programs. The phone seems more stable after the update, but since I’ve only used it for 20 hours or so after the update it’s really too early to tell if this will last or not.

Overall though – the increased performance really does make a huge difference. And if the USB connection problems don’t re-occur, that alone motivates this update in my book.

Summary

Though it doesn’t really contain anything new, thus being only a minor update, the performance and stability improvements still make this update worthwhile. Now we can all start longing for a major update…