Nokia Releases OS2008 firmware update for Nokia Internet Tablets N800 and N810.

Though people have been using the beta version of it for quite some time now, the stable version of OS2008 for Nokia N800 was officially announced on the Maemo website couple of days ago. Also released was the first update to OS2008 for Nokia N810. Read Reggie’s post about it on itT. My initial impression is that the update process is not documented correctly by Nokia[see note below]; OS2008 looks nicer, performs faster and many of the important applications are already available for it. Canola 2 Beta is officially released while I am typing this post!

You can participate in the discussion about this release on Internet Tablet Talk forum thread. Half of the posts there complain about the lack of proper infrastructure on Nokia’s end to meet the download demands of Nokia tablet community. There are several alternative ways to download the update posted in the same thread if you are facing the same download problems with Nokia’s servers. MaemoPeople.org also posted links to OS2008 torrent downloads for N800 and N810.

Note: Automatic update procedure is not supported for this update AFAICS. Manually download the OS2008 OS, preferably from a torrent or an alternative mirror, follow the update instructions, and when instructed to press and hold the Swap button/key, press and hold the Home button/key instead. I just kept messing with different buttons till I got it right.

There is a detailed review of OS2008 for Nokia N800 – filled with pictures – on tabletblog.com, so don’t miss reading it. Many people seem to have positive experience about this update so far but those who don’t seem to be all too happy about it are Ricky Cadden of tablet-guru.com and Jonathan Green of Maemoapps.com; Ricky is not impressed with the application restore process as the download speed from the Nokia repositories is too darn slow(which is not really related to OS2008 itself) and Jonathan notes that the stylus keyboard doesn’t pop-up when restore option is used right after OS2008 is installed.

List of links starts here(to be expanded further):