Step aside, JAC Hero, there's a new firmware in town. Fatal1ty (that Fatal1ty?) and nk02 have not only managed to obtain the HTC Hero's new (and almost final) Sense UI-infused firmware, but have spruced it up for consumption by HTC Magic / Dream users. There's naturally a bit of glitchiness -- apparently WiFi and Bluetooth don't work at the moment, and the camera is all funkified, but the real treat here is the first implementation of Flash 10 on Android, even if it is a bit "laggy" on the RAM-starved G1. The widgets are also on display, and other than Flash the general experience is apparently pretty snappy. Naturally, the xda-dev folks won't be leaving well enough alone, and we should be seeing refined versions of this and future Hero firmwares leading up to and after the release of the actual device.

[Via xda-developers forum; thanks Jeremy W., screenshot by johnnylicious]

There's no shortage of complaints -- some minor, some not-so-minor -- about the shipping firmware in the N97s that are already out in the field (our wonky backlight comes immediately to mind), but fortunately, it seems that Nokia's looking to tackle the issues perhaps more proactively than it's ever done before. Nokia Conversations' official Twitter account has announced that the "first variants" of the N97 (which we would take to mean the North American version, since the US got it first) will be blessed with firmware 1.1 starting on July 1, which hopefully will be available over-the-air without any Nokia Software Updater silliness. No word on what exactly will be changed in the new release, but honestly, if we can just get the LL Cool J startup screen, that'll be good enough for us.

[Via Nokia Experts]

We don't know exactly what's new yet, but Palm's released firmware version 1.0.4 for Pres on Sprint (not to say there are any other Pres out there at the moment, anyhow). Stay tuned for details.

Update: Looks like the only changes here address security vulnerabilities -- and interestingly, Palm gives a shout-out to Townsend Ladd Harris (a Pre homebrewer no less) who helped find them. Cheers to that.

Update 2: Sadly, Palm's plugged the hole that allowed homebrew apps on the phone without a jailbreak, though software you've already installed on the phone will continue to work. The hole that's been plugged was admittedly dangerous to leave open (installing apps via a link in email), though rooting and installing otherwise remain unchanged as far as we know.

We still think that the Saga is one of the better portrait QWERTY WinMo phones currently on the market -- the optical mouse is awesome and global roaming is a more-than-welcome capability -- and it's only gotten better with the release of an official update from Samsung. The new build features Microsoft's latest Windows Mobile 6.1 AKU (1.5.1, if you're curious) and adds the capability to send MMS messages when you're roaming on GPRS, but most importantly, it unlocks GPS so that third-party applications can take advantage of it. This is a trend that Verizon's been pursuing full-force this year, and needless to say, it's a welcome one.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

You can refresh all you want but that won't make the 3.0 update for your iPhone appear any faster. In fact, you might want to give your trigger finger a rest for a few hours -- Engadget bud, Richard Lai, noted in a tweet that Apple's Singapore site says that the iPhone OS 3.0 update will release on the 18th while Apple India says the 17th, the date announced by Apple -- the difference presumably accounting for the 2.5-hour timezone offset between the two countries. That would peg an OS 3.0 release anytime between 1700 and 1930 in London or between noon and 2:30pm in New York. But don't let a little knowledge ruin your obsessive behavior, where's the fun in that?

Update: The theory is supported by reports that carrier 3 in Hong Kong sent a network-wide SMS notifying iPhone owners that OS 3.0 will be available on June 18th, 01:00 local time. That's 1pm on the 17th in New York, 6pm in London, and 1900 in central Europe.

[Via Pocket-Lint and Richard Lai]

Read -- Singapore launch
Read -- India launch

For most Pre owners, updates to the operating system happen silently and with little drama -- just the way Palm and the average user likes it. For the more inquisitive of us, though, Palm is offering a detailed breakdown of how the updates get pushed down to the phone and under what circumstances. For starters, you've got to be on EV-DO or WiFi, because 1xRTT (in addition to being ridiculously slow) would block incoming calls when active. Furthermore, you've got to be rocking at least 30 percent of your battery juice. Unless you update manually, the phone will check all by itself every 7 days, and if it finds something, it'll grab it within 2 days during periods when you're not using your data connection (wouldn't want it ruining the user experience, after all). The download typically gets dropped into non-user accessible storage, but apparently, Palm has a contingency plan in place if an update is truly massive -- if that happens, it can steal some user storage with your permission. As we've mentioned, once you have the download, the phone requires that you install it within 7 days; if you don't, it'll auto-install the next chance it gets. Quite a process, isn't it?

[Via Palm Infocenter]

We've got a number of tips this morning about lucky iPhone 3G S pre-orderers getting shipment notifications from Apple. Naturally, with a high profile launch like this we're guessing Apple has done all it can to ensure shipments won't slip through earlier than the June 19th launch date, but hopefully at least few folks will get lucky -- and at least they've got one of the only guarantees of a launch day phone going. In other news, an anonymous Apple Store employee has done some homework and tallied up average reservation numbers at other US stores -- he estimates about 800 people on average are on the reservation list per Apple Store (ranging from a couple hundred to well over a thousand), which amounts to about 200,000 reservations as of now, a number he believes could double before launch. There's no way to back that number up, but it sounds fairly rational. Finally, the iPhone 3G S firmware download link has made its way into the wild. Sure, it doesn't do you any good if you don't have an iPhone 3G S, but we thought you just might want to know all the same.

[Thanks to everyone who sent these in]

Read - iPhone 3G S shipping notice
Read - iPhone 3G S firmware

If you were to put the Pre on a scale of hacker friendliness from 1 to 10, where 1 is the iPhone (remember how long it took for the first jailbreaks back in the day?) and 10 is, say, OpenMoko, we're starting to get the impression that Palm's latest effort falls somewhere way past the 5 mark. We got out first hint that they're being good sports about letting developers play with the Konami code access to developer mode, and now we've got news that it's easy -- nay, trivial -- to run whatever firmware you'd like on the phone. It seems all you've got to do is hold down the volume up key when connecting the Pre to your computer via USB, then you can flash the phone 'til you're blue in the face; even better, the enterprising dev who found the trick says that it's mega simple to modify the stock build and he'd wiped out the activation check with minimal effort. This can only be good news for tweakers and anyone wanting to walk off the App Catalog's beaten path, and if this ultimately means we're a few solid steps closer to a Pre running WinMo 6.1, sign us up. Way up.

[Via Daring Fireball]

We don't have confirmation whether BlackBerry connectivity is in there, but that rumored new firmware release for the X1 is apparently out and about. It's supposed to make the phone generally more responsive -- we always like to hear that -- but you'll also get a brighter keyboard backlight, improved messaging, and better signal strength. In other words, they seem to have hit a bunch of things that we wouldn't imagine could be fixed with a firmware update alone, so we're counting our blessings -- as long as this doesn't think they're allowed to slack on getting that X2 to market, that is.

[Via CoolSmartPhone]

An incredible way to start the weekend, Storm owners: Verizon is finally pulling the trigger on a firmware update, which will be available to all comers starting on Sunday at 3PM Eastern time. If that's too much trouble, you'll alternatively be able to sit back, chill, and wait for the over-the-air version to hit, which should follow on at 10PM. Verizon tells us that it'll be releasing 4.7.0.148, as rumored -- just a tiny bump from the failed build 141 that had been rumored before that, but all told, far, far too long since the last official update was rolled out. We can only assume this has been tested better than a NASA launch at this point, so you're on notice, guys.

The link appears to have been pulled for the moment, but HTC briefly offered a promising firmware update for AT&T's Fuze that brings a variety of goodies to the carrier's branded version of the Touch Pro. Among other things, you get AKU6, a new version of Voice Command, PTT button reassignability (because -- let's be honest -- not many people are using PTT on this device), an FM radio app, improved TouchFLO performance, and faster GPS locking. Again, the link's currently dead -- but here's hoping it comes back shortly (or at the very least, before the Fortress drops).

[Via Mobility Site and WMExperts]

After delays, multiple false alarms, and staggered launches, we'll admit: our patience is being tested with this whole Android 1.5 situation on T-Mobile USA's G1, and we imagine there are plenty of users who feel the same way. Previously, it took root access -- a process many lay users would rather not undertake -- to shoehorn 1.5 onto an official carrier-branded unit, but we now finally have a legit, signed build that'll install without any hackery whatsoever. This release will give you all the splendors 1.5 has to offer, preserve myFaves access, and requires little more than a file copy to your microSD card plus a couple key combinations to install, so it's pretty much a must-have if you're tired of waiting for T-Mob to do its thing. Now on to Donut, eh?

[Via Phandroid]

Remember how we found out that there's a difference between the Google-branded Android firmware and its HTC-modified equivalent, and the latter isn't allowed to feature the silkscreened Google logo? The HTC version is way cooler on account of its Exchange ActiveSync support and the much-improved camera app; the only downside is that you can't flaunt that logo on the case, which -- let's be honest -- is totally meaningless to an end user (unless you're some raving Google fanboy / fangirl, and in that case, no amount of awesome customization is going to sway you). Anyhow, it's up to individual carriers to decide which versions of the devices they wish to launch, and Rogers customers will be excited to know that they're getting the logo-free HTC builds. That makes Canadian Dreams and Magics a whole hell of a lot more useful to business users than the G1s down in the States, and going forward, this is an issue T-Mobile probably wants to think about -- as long as the base Android code doesn't license ActiveSync, anyway.

Gallery: Rogers' HTC Dream and Magic aren't "Google phones," have Exchange support

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So there's a new build of the 9530's firmware floating around; this is pretty much a weekly occurrence and not necessarily anything to get terribly excited about (though we're sure the more enterprising Storm owners out there are going to want to upgrade). Here's the thing, though: we've recently been told by a very well-connected source that Verizon rejected 141 because of one issue alone, and was already testing a replacement for it that was "still in the 140 range." That would mean that it'd have to be somewhere between 142 and 149 -- and yes, fellow mathematicians, 148 meets that requirement. Given the countless delays and the fact that Verizon has already rejected at least two firmwares, we wouldn't count on this happening any time soon -- if at all -- but it's a nice, hope-filled target to shoot for.