Just about a week after PR1.2 hit globally, a lot of users have been able to officially update their N900’s. Some for the worse, the majority for the better. Unfortunately, along with all the bugfixes and improvements that PR1.2 brought, some things were overlooked and others caused popular applications (that had not been updated using PR1.2 SDK patches) to break.
Overall device snappiness is increased, Conversations loads and functions a lot faster thanks to internal changes to the SQL database, Ovi Maps has a UI refresh and locks a lot faster and there is a ton of more free space to the internal root filesystem after initial bootup. There was also some polishing done that you might have missed. Here’s a list of 10 features that I’ve come across.
1). Remove sending SMS’s to non-mobile numbers. Go into your address book and hit Settings.
2). The browser (MicroB) now has the ability to toggle between orientation switching right from the settings menu.
3). Facebook chat is included out of the box.
4). You can re-arrange the menu by long-pressing on an icon to move it.
5). There is now a built-in data monitor with the ability to warn on overages. This is a very nice addition. Settings => Phone and scroll down to see your usage.
6). Volume control while the phone is locked is working again.
7). The virtual keyboard has changed – but that also depends on the theme you’re using.
8). Holding “1” on while in the Phone application will finally call your voicemail.
9). Long pressing on the hardware keyboard will toggle the second function of the keys, instead of having to tap the blue arrow function key.
10). When you switch to your task list, and you’re playing music – you no longer have a static image of the media player. It’s live, just like all the other windows, and you can see the scrubber moving as you progress through the song.
Unfortunately, some bugs did not get fixed and others were introduced. The media player widget’s ‘play’ button is still not functioning properly, telepathy bindings have changed and thus maze, pecan, ICQ and other third party/community plugins do not work 100%, the desktop email widget does not support Nokia Messaging (we already knew this, thanks to EverythingBlaxx for reporting it) and most importantly – they broke something in hildon-desktop that previously allowed “swiping” down the status bar, now you have to press it.
Overall, PR1.2 was a very welcome and highly anticipated upgrade to the N900. Hopefully we get more trickled updates and fixes before the next public release – because 6 months at a time is just too long for me to wait for official bugfixes.
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