As I’ve previously blogged, I currently have a Nokia N80 mobile phone on the Orange UK network.

The phone itself is fantastic, apart from a few things like short battery life and a tendency to run out of memory. Nokia have released a few firmware updates since the phone came out, the latest of which is version v4.0623.0.41 released on 26th July. According to people who have tried it over on AllAboutSymbian, with this firmware the phone is rock solid. In particular, it has fixed a problem with Bluetooth in which the phone dropped the Bluetooth connection after a few minutes. This was particularly annoying for users of Bluetooth GPS receivers.

Each network goes through the process of certifying each Nokia firmware release for their network, and possibly adding their own tweaks to it. For instance, Orange add a photo uploading application.

Now until recently, there have been two ways to upgrade the firmware of the phone: either take it to a Nokia Service Centre, or download some illegal cracked software and do it yourself. The latter route will invalidate your contract with the network for instance, and certainly would be picked up on if you had to return the phone for any reason. Upon release of the v4 firmware I took my phone to my local service centre and requested a re-flash of the firmware. It came back with version v3.0617.06, which whilst better than the original version, still has significant bugs compared to the v4 firmware.

The Nokia Service Centre software will only flash the phone to the latest level of firmware authorised by the network operator. The only way to get the v4 firmware would be to have a generic, unlocked version of the phone, or to take the illegal DIY route.

In the last few days, Nokia have added the N80 to the list of phones you can update yourself via the Phone Software Update page. However, reports suggest that like the service centres, it will only allow you to install firmware authorised by your network operator.

So, naturally you would hope that Orange would test the v4 firmware and authorise it for their phones? Well the answer appears to be no. Rumours are circulating that Orange have withdrawn the N80 from sale, and their web site seems to back this up. Now this could be due to the pending release of the N80 Internet Edition, but some people have been told that due to “software issues” Nokia are no longer supporting the N80. Does this mean that they won’t authorise the v4 firmware that by all accounts turns the N80 into a perfectly stable phone? Various reports of conversations with Orange customer services suggests this might be the case.

So, Orange appear on the face of it to be leaving their customers with a crippled phone, especially if you want to use it as a sat-nav device with a Bluetooth GPS receiver and software like Tom Tom Navigator 6 (which of course I won’t!) This leaves owners of Orange N80s who actually want a fairly bug free and fully functional phone with only one course of action: illegally use cracked software to update the firmware and risk invalidating your warranty with the operator and Nokia themselves.

All in all, not a very good situation. I was a customer of O2 for eight years before I switched to Orange to get the N80. I have to say at the moment I’m regretting that move, and it doesn’t seem like I’m getting much service for my £55/month. It has to be said that neither O2 or Three have yet provided the v4 firmware to their customers, but at least in the case of O2 they still seem to be selling the phone.

I’ve been brewing this post in my head for a while so I’ll do my best not to turn it into a rant, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t like sat-nav devices.

As I’ve previously blogged, I am a bit of a gadget geek, so the actual technology I find fantastic. I do look at the likes of devices from Tom Tom and Garmin and can appreciate their shiny gadget appeal. I can also appreciate that many people will find them very useful, it just doesn’t ring true to me.

My main gripe is that they are a technology which ultimately degrades the sense of forward planning that personally I like to have in certain aspects of my life. I am known by my family and friends as being able to generally find my way around by a combination of luck and judgement. Part of this comes from years spent following Watford to over 70 football grounds around the country which gives me a very good knowledge of the national motorway network, and part of it comes from the fact that I seem to have a reliable internal compass which enables me to at least work out the general direction I need to head in.  With 5 minutes of Google maps before I leave I can be quite accurate in both finding my way to somewhere new, and just as importantly estimating the amount of time it will take.

In this respect I fear that sat-nav could have the same effect on society that mobile phones had on the art of planning a night out. Remember back to the time when people made plans they would stick to, agreeing to meet at a certain place at a certain time? Well if my experience is anything to go by the mobile phone has put paid to those days of common decency as the more tardy members of society just rely on the fact that they can phone up and find out where people are.

Of course, the numerous other benefits of mobile phones outweigh this downside, but I don’t yet feel the same way about sat-nav. Whilst sat-nav features such as speed camera detection and being able to find the nearest petrol station are undoubtedly useful, these are not yet enough to convince me.  From what I’ve seen on the roads however a lot of people disagree, which leads me onto the slightly more irrational part of my dislike…

A number of times over the past few weeks I’ve been perplexed by the actions of the car in front of me as its unpredictable and erratic driving starts to grate. It might suddenly slow down at a junction as if unsure whether to turn or not. This might continue for a few turns until it finally finds the exit it was looking for. More often than not nowadays the car in question has a sat-nav device stuck to the windscreen. Putting aside the laws which state that a car is un-roadworthy if it has so much of a crack in the “A zone” of the windscreen but having a widescreen display stuck onto it is ok, it seems that some people appear to be using a sat-nav device in preference to actually looking at the road ahead. My guess is that the typically British trait of not liking being told what to do is coming to the fore, and that these people simply use the sat-nav as a moving map display, turning off the nice voice that will actually give them adequate warning of when to turn. Either that or they can’t actually figure out/be bothered to program in their destination. The net result being that instead of looking at the road, other road users, and the large clear things we call road signs, they peer at a small screen to determine if Acacia Avenue is the next left or the one after.

So apologies for those reading this who have one (Andy!) and I’m sure you are all responsible sat-nav users who really get benefit from the device. Maybe someday I’ll join your ranks, but not just yet. Now DSLR’s that’s a different matter. Canon 400D or Nikon D80? Choices choices…