[MDA III, XDA III, PDA2k, 9090 Software Upgrading] veletron:
Hi

I have been playing with this for a day now, and it has introduced more bugs in the wifi functionality. If you want to use WiFi from your IIs then I would avoid this 'update' like the plauge.

What you get:

- ROM: 1.31.00 WWE (13th Dec 04) so this is 2.5 months old

- Radio 1.06.00 (1.06.02 is latest)

- ExtRom: 1.31.139 WWE (no real updates to existing progs)

Whats Better

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- The camera performs better in low light conditions (I used to get vertical lines on the screen

- Bluetooth stack build 3500. A vast improvement, but the latest is now build 3900 which some say solves the 'scratching noise' that is heard in some headsets

Whats Worse/Not Fixed

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- O2 Active V3.5. Its bloody awful - spends its life redrawing the screen, its very sluggish, and adds nothing to the today screen. I never used to use the old version, but having the O2 icon was handy for its ability to list the active connections and terminate them. Much is made of the ability to change the position of the icon (which I never found to be a problem in the first place. Tapping the new icon starts O2 Active rather than listing the active connections. To list active connections, you need to tap and hold for 5 seconds. I find that after tapping and holding, I get the menu, but that the menu then fails to respond to my 'close connection' taps. I reverted back to the old O2 active program.

- WiFi. They have completely buggered it up. It was unreliable at best beforehand. I have a network at home, which I finally pursuaded the device to connect to after multiple resets. I headed into work this morning (2 AP's) switched it on, and it just sat there searching for the network. I went into Tools-->Network cards, and see the work network listed as 'connected' (it was not connected, I had not given it the PSK yet). I soft reset the device, and it finally saw the network and prompted with the usual 'Internet/Work' dialogue. I was then asked for the pass key. At this point I noticed that there is no longer a possibility to activate the soft keyboard in order to enter the pass key (A right pain in the arse when the passkey is just a random multicase/numeric key, and all you get are ** on the dialogue). Anyway, I entered the key, and the device refused to get a valid IP address. Doing IPconfig showed that the wireless card was trying to use an old GPRS IP!!! I tried a renew (3rd party ipconfig tool). I tried stopping and starting wifi. Eventually, I soft reset (still the same), so I stopped wifi, soft reset, started wifi - and *finally* it decided to go and get itsself an IP address. (this is a bug I saw in the old firmware, but its worse than it used to be).

- WiFi still marks the wrong networks as 'available', i.e at work, 10 miles from home, my home network is marked as 'available' and my work network is marked as 'unavailable' !!! (this is an old bug)

- In Network adapters, the dialogue, 'My Work Network Connects To:' is blank, and there is no longer a possibility to select work/internet (options are blank). This is new to v1.31.139 (anyone else also missing this)

- If you select a wifi connection and change it from being a 'work' connection to an 'internet' connection then the change does not stick. This is new to v1.31.139

- In the MMS applet, it is no longer possible to select a 'modem' directly. I used to be able to select 'O2 Active'. You now have to select a profile that includes an appropriate modem. This is new to v1.31.139

- When editing a network profile in 'network management' eg: My ISP. the device still forgets to display existing modem/vpn connections. (same as old version).

Out Of Date Software / missing software

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- Photo Contacts (CallerId cab) is still version 1.17 (latest is 1.20)

- Missing O2 plus - other o2 devices include this

- Missing Intelipad

- Missing Smartdialer

- Old build of Java Midlet software

- Old build of MMS composer software

Other Thoughts

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For my money, the device feels more sluggish than it did before. Though its difficult to prove this!

O2 has spent far too much time on that O2 Active rubbish - does *anyone* actually use this cr@p?? - and not enough time integrating/testing the latest versions of CE, drivers, and third party apps.

I'll add more to this as I find new bugs, and send it all off to O2 in a couple of weeks.

What I am now using

------------------------

I am now using v1.31.139 + Bluetooth build 3900 + PhotoContacts 1.20 + Java build 1004.

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Additions: 1/3/05

- SMS notify no longer seems to work. Anyone else suffer from this? MMS notify works fine and SMS notify is switched on. Perhaps the notify event is missing, but I have no idea how to sort this.

- VPN over wireless lan is still not possible - it tries and fails to connect. VPN over GPRS still works OK.

Additions 02/03/05

- SMS Notify problem is *not* to do with the rom update. I removed the registry key: HKLM\software\microsoft\inbox\svc\outlook since I had no need for the outlook folder in inbox. Removing this also kills off SMS notify!! I backed up, hard reset, preventing the stuff in the extended rom from installing. Installed PHM regedit, exported the outlook key, restored my backup and imported the reg key!!

- Internet/Work settings missing from Wlan setup. After restoring the backup, these had returned. Pretty strange, perhaps they were linked to the same registry key. No additional software bar the contents of the extended rom had been installed. If anyone else gets this, I suggest back, hard reset, restore might fix it.

Regards

Nigel