.51 Update for 770 – Nothing Dramatic

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The Nokia team has released the .51 (apparently that refers to the week the update was released) update on their European site. You can download it after you type in the MAC address of your 770 which is located on a sticker underneath the battery. Hint: write it down somewhere so you don’t have to keep pulling the battery out for every update.

The update is actually the 2nd bigger file, the zipped one (the one that says ‘Software’ :) The Guide is just a two page guide to installing and running the Windows Update Wizard and not a guide for actually flashing the device. However – the new wizard itself is fairly descriptive.

The new Update Wizard for Windows was a disappointment. While it has some cool screens and clear instructions, it wouldn’t actually flash the device for me. A slight problem! And yes, you have to connect the 770 directly into your computer’s USB- hooking it up to any type of hub results in the wizard not even detecting it.

Screen shots of the new Flashing Wizard.

This is where the Wizard got stuck with me- I had to kill the wizard in Windows as it would soon stop ‘responding’ to Windows. I tried it 5 times and finally gave up and went for the CLI flashing utiliy on my Macintosh. That worked.

Flashing CLI

Below is the output for my flash… you use the -F for filename, -f for flash and -R to reboot the device after its done. The first go-round it actually stopped flashing the rootfs at 99%, so I killed the job on the mac, reset the 700, re-flashed and it worked completely the 2nd time.

• How to Flash with OSX
  

• How to Flash with Linux

blinky:~ dillera$ ./flasher.macosx -F Nokia_770_SE2005_3_2005_51-13.bin -f -R
Found image 2nd (length 8576)
Found image secondary (length 79360)
Found image xloader (length 13824)
Found image initfs (length 1581824)
Found image kernel (length 1481856)
Found image rootfs (length 58851328)
USB device found found at bus 003, device address 003-0421-0105-02-00
Found board Nokia 770 (F5)
NOLO version 0.9.0
Sending X-Loader image (13 kB)...
100% (13 of 13 kB, avg. 586 kB/s)
Sending secondary image (77 kB)...
100% (77 of 77 kB, avg. 717 kB/s)
Flashing X-Loader... done.
Sending kernel image (1447 kB)...
100% (1447 of 1447 kB, avg. 733 kB/s)
Flashing kernel... done.
Sending initfs image (1544 kB)...
100% (1544 of 1544 kB, avg. 733 kB/s)
Flashing initfs... done.
Sending and flashing rootfs image (57472 kB)...
100% (57472 of 57472 kB, avg. 622 kB/s)
Finishing flashing... done

I used the built in backup utility to save all my data (sans email) it has a nice check list of what you want to save. It restored the data and rebooted my device. Now I have all my RSS feeds and Bookmarks back. One other nice thing with the backup- you can choose not to save your email data (i.e. messages) but it still backs up your account settings.

Warning: you will lose all your 3rd party apps that you’ve installed, so be ready to re-install them or find a way to back them up. And speaking of that, on IRC this morning I see that Jaffa at Bleb has released a new utility (in the form of a makefile) that he says can help backup and restore these 3rd party apps across firmware updates. It’s too late for me (although I’ve kept all my app installers ready to push back over) but I’d like to see if there isn’t a way to install them via the CLI rather than the GUI.

So what’s it like?

So far, it’s not terribly much more than .45 I’m afraid.

• The email app shows nothing different (it still has its bad UI and is slow as balls)
• The over all system is not noticeably faster (I’m redoing my swap to speed it up)
• The Newsreader now fails to even load with my feeds

So I’m guessing this was a minor, under the hood tweaks kind of update. Nothing major seems to have been addressed. Nothing dramatic regarding speed, which I was hoping for. At least I’ve gone thru a firmware update now. Once I sort out the backup and restore of 3rd party apps I’ll be ready for the next one.