Osso x-term has been updated to correct that malfunction, and now works fine (at least for me).

Handwriting?
 

Has anyone tried the handwriting recognition? Is it truly that much better?

-F

I noticed that too, although I was starting to doubt myself. Set all my calender events forward 5 hours, couldn't figure it out at first!


Yes, handwriting recognition is *much* better. I hope to be able to go back to the latest version soon because of that as well as the stability. Which is also much improved.

Peter

you just can't have perfectly QA'ed stability at the cutting edge. Resources are ALWAYS limited (no matter what the price of the product is: 25.-, 250, 2500.-, that's only a factor of 100)), and then it's the question if you (or Nokia, or whoever) invests in improving quality from 99.9 to 99.99 %, or rather extends by adding something new.
And when you buy a 770, you can't expect it to be as robust as a 1950 analog telephone. But you can expect it to be more versatile.
Btw: I did not upgrade. I looked at the features, and decided I would not need them.

And this for me is one of the issues, the clarification/notes surrounding what has been fixed is poor. (Although certainly better than no information :) )

My particular interest is in AV playback locally/remotely by either built in or third party software and Opera browser, RSS feed capability etc.

Why do we as users need to individually test the built in Audio/Video players etc, when time allows to understand what improvements have actually been made as an example...

MikeL, christianhauck said it perfectly.

My Impressions
 

I bit the bullet last night and installed the .39-14 firmware. I had backed everything up first, except my /etc/apt/sources file (damn it!). I was running the version just prior to this.

The first thing I notices is that EVERYTHING is faster. Connecting to my home wifi net (G-only, WPA-SPK) used to take 5-6 seconds, now it takes 3-4. Start up time of all the built-in applications was cut in about half for me. The unit just feels snappier.

For example, in the prior version, if I went to the Control Panel and chose Memory, I'd sit and watch while it counted up everything in use. It would probably take 3-4 seconds to get a full tally. Now it is just BOOM, right there. No watching the progress bar.

Yes, it recognized my 2 Gb Kingston right off the bat. It remembered my pairing with my BT keyboard, after I reinstalled the BT app.

I didn't have a lot of crashes before -- maybe one every couple of days, not counting Opera taking a nose dive. Opera seems faster in both startup and rendering pages. The Application Wiki on maemo.org used to be intolerable on my N770, hitting the CPU hard and just being very slow to load and react. Now it is 10x better and usable without having to chant "serenity now!".

There are still a few bugs in the system, though. Opera has crashed for me a couple times when telling it to remember a password for a site. It DID remember it, but tanked none-the-less.

And there is a new development -- when sending Opera to full screen view, it hesitates for a second or two in sort of a half-state, where the screen isn't properly rendered where the toolbars were. My best analogy would probably be an automobile that used to smoothly shift gears now has a noticeable hitch when doing it. It does it, but you get a "WTF was that?" thought each time.

It used to be when I clicked the power button and chose "shut down", it shut down fully. Starting it back up would mean a full boot and take 20-30 seconds. Now, a "shut down" seems to be more of a deep sleep that only take 3-4 seconds to come out of. It restarts X, which was my intent, but it is so much faster. Before, I had to keep telling myself "It's a handheld, you don't really shut it down, you just pop the cover on and let it sleep. That long start-up time may be embarrassing, but you never really start it, do you?" Well, no more rationalizing for me!

Finally, I took the opportunity to install and configure Privoxy, tweaking it to start when the unit boots. OH MY GOD! The Internet is back to a way I can use it! I was so used to Adblock on Firefox that I had forgotten what an ad-laden cesspool the Internet had degenerated into. Privoxy, even without downloading custom rulesets, brings all the ad-free goodness back, unclutters my screen and speeds up page load times. If you use the N770 to browse the web, do yourself a favor and install Privoxy.

I didn't expect major changes in this update. I don't think we'll see things like Java, Flash >6 or native Ogg-Vorbis support until the next major update.

For me, this was a very nice update -- a must have. Thank you, Nokia.

Chill: Awesome review, nice to see you balanced the good with the bad (purely negative reviews leave me suspect, as do purely positive ones). I'll definately throw Privoxy on though I haven't upgraded yet. Given all the hacks I've put on (and the fact I can't remember half of them), I want to ensure the general release to nokia.com is the same as the maemo.org release.

I second that good review, sounds like it's worth the upgrade although I'm surprised at some of the changes in terms of speeds, almost qualifies as major upgrade.

Actually, this behavior depends on whether or not the device is plugged in to AC power. This is the same in any of the recent versions. I'm not an expert on the subject, but the following are my observations.

If plugged in, then holding the power button for 2-3 seconds (or choosing "Switch Off!" from the power button menu) will not really shut down the device - it goes into sleep mode, as you described. This mode of operation uses a little bit of power (in fact, if the cover is off, it will actually leave the screen on, with the "Charging" animated icon), but since you're plugged in, it's not a big deal.

When the device is not plugged, it will do an actual shutdown, so that it doesn't use any power at all.

If you shutdown when plugged in (and it goes into "Charging" mode) and then you unplug the device, it will do an automatic "full" shutdown (as though you had pressed "shutdown" when the device were not plugged in), thus reducing power usage to zero. Pressing the power button in this state causes the device to do a full boot.

However, if instead of pressing the power button, you plug the device back in (or, actually, any time you plug in the device after doing a "full" shutdown), it will start the boot process for you automatically, in the background, without showing the progress bar (instead, a non-animated "charging" icon will appear while booting). When the boot completes, the animated "Charging" icon appears. And if you press the power button, you get the quick-resume.

I don't know if this means that the device has to actually be booted in order to charge the battery (seems unlikely - more likely it needs to be booted to show the animated "Charging" icon, which seems like a waste, but whatever), but it does mean that if you leave the device plugged in and shut it down every night, then every morning when you "boot it up", it will be a quick-boot (because it never actually did a "full" shutdown).

If you're one of those guys that likes to start every morning with a fresh boot (?), it's better, then, to shut it down before plugging it in for the night, since the plug-in will initiate the fresh boot, and it will be ready and re-booted for you in the morning when you pick it up (just remember to push the power button before you unplug it, otherwise it will automatically shut down).

It may require the machine in an active state to charge. That would possibly explain the old issues of the battery running down while in kernel debug mode.

Clock off by 4-5 hours
 

The new flash image defaults to EN-GB and GMT. If you aren't paying close attention, the clock is assumed to be GMT, which is going to be 4-5 hours different from EDT and CDT.

I'll bet this is what people are seeing with the time change.

It appears so indeed. I can't believe I missed that! I assumed setting the time on the initial splash screen after flashing would also set the clock applet contained in the menu. It does not and it appears the applet is where GPE gets its time from.

Peter

After using this new release for a bit, it seems that the onscreen keyboard can finally keep up with me without missed or improper characters, a great improvement.

One odd thing I noticed is that when I shut the 770 off using the power button, by morning, the 770 is back on again. When shutdown, I can tap the screen and nothing happens, as I expect. But come morning, if I tap the screen, it is instant on. When I shut it off, I expect it to stay off until I press the power button again. Is there a fix for this?

I too have experienced the "device decides to spontaneously turn itself on and drain the batteries" syndrome in this and previous firmware releases. Given that the battery must be charged inside the 770 and the lack of any 3rd party external battery charger for the 770, I have had to leave my 770 at home several times to recharge due to a discharged battery. The poor controllability and random behavior of power management in the 770 is perhaps my biggest single sticking point with the device.

Hmm,

The previous 2006 release for me was always well behaved in regards to power management. I use a leather case on my 770, so I don't rely on the magnetic switch for standby. Maybe there is a timer left running on the new release that times out and reboots it...

If your 770 is randomly turning itself on, please report it on maemo-developers or Bugzilla with the information here:

http://maemo.org/maemowiki/ReportingRebootIssues

Cheers,

Andrew

hmm... I've got a weird problem since update :

I try to install MaemoPadPlus and, eventhough I already have it, it keeps asking for sqlite3.

It was perfectly working before upgrade.

Anybody experiencing the same problem ?

Haven't upgraded yet...doesn't seem like it is worth it. And hey, I'm lazy. :)

The only drawback resulting from that, so far, is that I can't install Minimo.

I would be happy to do so if more than just two of us are experiencing the same exact thing. When I loaded the binary, there was no backup done, so totally clean install. No phone set up, no addon aps, no large RSMMC... about as stock as you can get. I do not even have xterm on it to gather the reboot stuff for bugzilla. And yes, the alarm clock is off too.

With all aps closed , home page (desktop) visible, not connected to charger and the stock cover removed, press the power button and shut the 770 off (leave cover off). Check the next morning if you can tap the screen the unit comes on as if the power button was never used the night before. The unit should stay off until the power button is pressed again, or until you connect the charger to it.
Does anyone else have the same thing happening?

bill322: My point is that others *have* had their 770 turn on seemingly by itself.

There are two options:

1) R&D mode is enabled, which makes it turn on with just the lightest touch of the power button.
2) There's an obscure bug somewhere in the firmware causing it.

The second is a pain to track down, which is why the Maemo team would *love* the information requested on that page sent to them, so they can try and fix it.

Don't send it to me. Don't post it here. Send it to Nokia through the maemo mailing lists, including the information requested on that page and that might be enough for them to track it down.

Cheers,

Andrew

Reboot Loops!
 

I have flashed my 770 with the newest image 2 days ago, and spent like 3 hours restoring everything... I was happy to be able to use my 2GB Kingston right away... Before this image I was using 1GB Kingston...
Well I found out that the device wont start right...
It gets into REBOOT LOOPS and sometimes It starts but you never know how many reboots you have to wait until the device starts!!!

I reflashed it and restored my back up file this morning, assuming maybe it will work fine this time...
After restoring everything I turned it off and tried to start it!
BUT SAME THING ! REBOOT LOOPS!

Schmolch says mmc4 kernel does not work
but I don't know how to fix this issue... I will be so happy if somebody can explain this process step by step...
I don't want to give another 3 hours to flash it...

Thanks in advance...

Thats interesting. I've also been seeing the reboot loops as well. Mine started before this last flash update. I didn't want to update it, but oddly enough a few days after the new update came out, mine wouldn't boot any more. The initial screen comes up, but the progress bar would never start. Then it would loop. I never let it loop more than 2-3 times so I had no idea it eventually would come up. I ended up reflashing it with the new update and all was well.

Then, about a week later (yesterday) I had the same thing happen again. The e-mail client crashed, so I rebooted it. And then got into that loop state again. After 3-4 times I just flashed it again and gave up.

So I'd be curious to know as well if there's something that is causing this. I'm wondering if somehow the internal memory gets corrupted and it can't mount the filesystem any more. But then again I had no idea that if you left it looping it would eventually boot. Would have saved me some data loss since I don't back mine up every single day :-/

Yeah, I kinda wonder if some of the problems people are experiencing are due to bad flash. Does anyone know if Nokia's flash upgrade tool does a block check when attempting to write a new firmware to flash?

Along these lines, I just posted a discovery in the troubleshooting forum: my home desktop flashes fine, but work laptop occasionally does not. Maybe something interfering. I recommend shutting off all unnecessary processes while flashing. Also, the linux version has only given me trouble 1 out of over 20 flashes (run on ubuntu).

About email client
 

Anyone experiencing loose of the device name into the email client once deleting emails? Mine worked well for the first week, then, without having changed anything particular, suddendly the message "Delete from: Server and Nokia 770 / Nokia 770 only" has changed in "Delete from: Server and (null) / (null) only"

I'd like to resume this, because if anybody just tried or noticed it out, it's the best way to expaline the interface progresses in this update.

Using the 770 only with fingers is no more a pain, it is a GREAT usability improvements.

Apps such as Navicore and Canola make great benefit of this, and now I am able to use my N770 while driving with no use of the stylus!

IMHO it has been a difference not enough stressed out, and it alone deserves this upgrade.

seconded!

only just got round to upgrading, and can't believe the difference with finger/thumb usage - EVERY aspect is now do-able with thumb touch, from connecting to wifi to browsing to file manager, opening pdfs etc.

have only just discovered this and haven't even had to get the stylus out at all for the last hour.

fantastic stuff, well worth the upgrade alone. anyone like me who wasn't bothering, I highly recommend it!