11.25.07

OS 2008 Firmware Updated

Posted in Software Updates at 3:30 pm by Jonathan Greene

While the N810 is just starting to become available (depending on who you ask) the latest 2008 OS slipped into the wild and I finally got the chance to check out an official release on my device. There’s nothing immediately new, but it does seem that there are some fixes and adjustments which smooth out the whole experience. I don’t see a changelist anywhere…

I’m finally able to run some apps that had given me issues from the initially loaded OS which is nice, though not everything works as you might expect. I actually think this last detail is more a factor of the developer community working on scratchbox configurations than on actual devices in the wild, so this should improve greatly in short order.

As you can see from these two screen shots, I was running a few versions back compared to the active release.

Initial OS:

Current Version:

One key difference existing tablet owners will certainly appreciate is the restore function from backup. I did a backup (61MB) just before I flashed, and after setting my date and time, received a prompt to restore as you might usually expect. The tablet now supports the ability to restore repositories and even applications (from the restored repositories) and it absolutely worked – and worked well! The main issue for someone like myself is the number of apps I’ve installed as straight .deb files. These files must be reinstalled manually again for the time being.

I should note Skype is no longer working for me, in that it is not installed or able to be installed. I should have seen this coming since people I know running 2008 on their N800’s have yet to see Skype actively, but that’s OK for now. Just be warned if you are running a pre-release OS.

There’s been talk about fixing the repositories as well as how firmware updates happen in subsequent OS releases. I look forward to that certainly but welcome today’s changes wholeheartedly. I still need to spend some time re-tweaking my device, but far less than I had to do with previous updates and not having to hunt things down (for the most part) again is just great.

Permalink