Phones From Smart Have Modified Firmwares?
By L.A, 11:11 pm Mon Oct 5 2009 - News - 4 Opinions
I posted a comparison of Smart Gold Lite and Smart Gold Regular/Consumable plans yesterday. I said I got a new Gold Consumable plan 1800 from them recently. I got the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic with it. A friend told me that there’s a new software/firmware for Nokia 5800 so I tried to update the unit. Nokia Software Updater cannot detect the unit so I tried to do an Over The Air (OTA) update and then the phone says there’s no update available.
After a couple of failed update attempts, I tried to hard reset the unit. After that, still the phone cannot find any update. So I searched and searched the internet for solutions but cannot find an answer. Some forums says it might be the product code or something. Then I noticed that the phone’s firmware was kind of modified or altered with. I don’t know if Smart’s co-branding phones they give to customers or anything.
I am making this post hoping Smart would clarify this issue with software updates and if their firmwares are really modified. I noticed that because when you hard reset the phone, the theme, boot logo etc still bears the logo of Smart. I am hoping they only modified the boot logos and alike.
I am going to to Smart Rockwell Wireless Center tomorrow to ask them about this. I’ll post an update on this article once I get concrete answers.
Update 10-06-09: I was able to speak with Smart Rockwell Wireless Center. They said that firmwares aren’t modified and the reason why I cannot update the firmware is the product code. It may take few more months before the 5800XM phones released here in the Philippines can be updated. Also, they replaced the unit with a new one because it’s having some hardware and software malfunctions.
MiGs
8:08 am Tue Oct 6 2009
Brother,
what do you mean by “phone’s firmware was kind of modified or altered”??
Does the unit have a different firmware #?
The only possible cause is the product code. As some firmwares only cater for specific product codes.
Rico
1:01 pm Tue Oct 6 2009
AFAIK a modified boot logo doesn’t mean modified firmware… I think you can that in the phone’s settings?
In any case, have you also checked the phone’s version by dialing *#0000# on the dialer?
Jonathan
9:09 pm Tue Oct 6 2009
“a new software/firmware for Nokia 5800″. Currently, the available firmware here is at v30 (Which Nokia will call PR 3.0). Wonder why in other countries they’ve got the v31 already? This is caused by an “unknown” cause of delay for updates being released on an earlier time. So therefore you’ll have to wait three months prior on getting the latest v31 (PR 3.1) here. Then after that, by that time they would have gotten the v40 (PR 4.0) already (WHOOPS!). Isn’t it quirky?
jpbl1976
11:11 pm Thu Oct 8 2009
If you’re feeling adventurous, I recommend changing your product code — preferably to some generic Euro code (like Euro1 or Euro2) so that you can get firmware updates as they’re released by Nokia.
I did that with the N97 I bought from one of the local nokia shops; it’s too much of a pain to wait for local carriers to get Nokia to update the firmwares on their phones.
I suspect SMART and GLOBE think too little of their customers’ tech-savviness to bother.