Being a hardware company, Nokia banks on consumers buying new handsets to generate revenue. If a newer software update comes out, more than likely it will be delivered on a new handset and not as an upgrade to your phone (no matter how closely spec’d your phone is to the newer one released). From instance, the Nokia E71 runs Symbian S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 1 and the newer Nokia E75 runs Symbian S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 2. (Confused yet?) This model is different from Apple’s, who have similar handsets across a few generations and all updates are accessible by these handsets. One OS to rule them all, if you will.

I can only speculate that this may actually be changing in the Nokia camp. As an owner of the E71, I can only wonder if Nokia will be bringing the Feature Pack 2 OS as a firmware update to E71 handsets. I speculate because ATT is in the process of readying the Nokia E71x for sale. Although the E71x and the E71 share the same hardware, the handsets run different versions of the S60 operating system. The E71x runs Feature Pack 2 and the E71 runs Feature Pack 1. With no difference in hardware, it should not be technically difficult for Nokia to offer a firmware update to FP2 for current E71 owners. This does open the question to whether Nokia will use this opportunity to please loyal customers and release such an update for free OR alienate customers by charging for this update. Personally, I would pay for such an update. For a small price, I can easily infuse some life into my handset and will extend its life significantly. To be fair, as an iPod Touch owner I have paid for an OS update and I will continue to.

With the Symbian Foundation announcing their release plan for 2 releases of their platform each year, again I wonder if this indicates more software updates for handsets or Nokia’s need to push new handsets into the market.

With such frequent updates, one can only imagine a quicker maturity of these mobile operating systems which would indicate that users would be privy to these updates on their handsets.

I can only hope that this update does surface for the E71. It will be sometime before they design another handset as functional and aesthetically pleasing as the E71, so I will be holding on to mine for quite some time. Let’s hope they keep the OS current.