To help other people from being sold a device that’s not going to be maintained by its manufacturer, let me warn you that some versions of Nokia’s E71 smartphone sold in the US (aka E71-2 NAM) have not received any firmware update since the product was introduced on the market last year. Meaning, known bugs have been fixed for some customers, but I and others are left hanging dry. That’s rich for a $400 unlocked phone sold by one of the biggest ecommerce players in the consumer electronics world (Newegg.com). It’s not like I bought the phone for cheap from the grey market and unlocked it with an unsupported hack.
Nokia is aware of the problem but doesn’t even have a deadline to fix it. I thought they finally meant to be a competitive player in the US but it seems I was wrong. Also, apparently Nokia is too poor to py for decent upgrade servers.
Looks like Palm is back in the game so if Nokia doesn’t get their act together I’ll be on the market again soon for an unlocked phone that can work worldwide and is actually properly supported by its vendor.
02/15/09 update: proceeded with the finally available update. Going through applications to see things are working fine, Gmail settings didn’t make it even after backup/restore (since the E71 doesn’t save user settings through firmware updates – yeah it’s stupid at that price range).
