We've been holding off on running this until we got confirmation from Samsung on just what was going on, and now we have it; it's official, folks -- the Instinct's latest firmware update is all about the browser. To quote Sammy, "most of the traits of this upgrade focus on improving the Web browser experience," and the word on the street seems to be in line with that with faster page loading and generally fewer crashes being reported across the board. As best we can tell, it doesn't solve every last issue in the book, but it's awesome to see that Sprint and Samsung seem to be staying on top of this stuff. Have an Instinct? Sound off on comments with your update experiences.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

The good news is that Nokia seems to be proactively addressing problems and taking care of new N96 owners, issuing a firmware update just days after the first units hit shelves around Europe. The bad news, though, is that this first update might actually be making things worse. You know what they say about vocal minorities, but there seems to be a groundswell of complaints brewing over the upgrade to v11.018 issued last week, particularly regarding earpiece volume. An N96 you can't hear isn't much more than an HSDPA-equipped paperweight -- and a particularly expensive one, may we add -- so if there's a real issue here, let's hope Nokia keeps pumping out that code to get it closed.

[Via All About Symbian and Symbian Freak]

N82 users seem to be among the most diehard fans in the entire Nseries stable, so we'd say they're owed a bone as a token of Nokia's appreciation for spreading the gospel. To that end, Espoo has brought firmware v30's splendors to the N82 hot on the heels of its N95 and N95 8GB debuts, offering a new Flash Lite build, Maps 2.0, speed and stability improvements, and a host of other tweaks. Sadly there's no N-Gage client bundled, but whatever -- it's available as a separate download, so no harm, no foul.

[Via All About Symbian]

We're going down our "things that absolutely must change on the iPhone" list, and yeah, "redo the Safari toolbar" isn't anywhere on there. Not even at the very bottom. Cupertino works in mysterious ways, though, and they've decided in firmware 2.2 that it's time to muck with the positioning of the text boxes so that the address bar and search bar both appear at all times without needing to first tap in the area. They've also moved the refresh button inside the address bar itself, which should truly revolutionize our browsing experience yet again. Apple, screw copy / paste -- we're officially stoked.

[Via Wired, thanks Konstantin]

Apple has released the first beta of iPhone firmware 2.2 to developers, and we're hearing that it'll cause your phone to sprout wings, run Android in emulation, connect to fully-operational LTE and WiMAX networks all over the world, and bring world peace. Oh, and it'll be able to copy and paste things you never dreamed possible, like ponies and happiness. On a more serious note, though, no one seems to have a firm grip on exactly what it adds yet -- push notifications are high on the wishlist, as always -- so we'll keep you posted (and you do the same).

Now that 2.1's out, your iPhone 3G is finally perfect -- right? Well, that all depends on your definition of "perfect," but odds are you still have a niggle or two poking out from behind that heaping pile of bugs and security flaws that were smoothed over with Cupertino's putty knife in last week's update. Here's a quick look at what we're hearing so far:

• Excluding those of you who don't know where you are, our poll on claimed reception improvements in 2.1 suggests that the majority of iPhone 3G owners (by a slim margin) are seeing no improvement or -- gasp! -- a degradation in signal strength since 2.0.2.
• Given that 2.1 patches up some bugs with third-party apps, it comes as no surprise that a few of 'em are apparently breaking with the new firmware (a disappointment, yes, but not a surprise). It sucks that Apple whacked the ball into developers' courts on this one, and we're hoping for the sake of users and devs alike that it's not going to take many sleepless nights of re-coding and debugging to get the affected apps back on the straight and narrow.
• We're now hearing some reports of email buffoonery ranging from an inability to add new accounts to 2.1-equipped phones, to failures of existing accounts that had previously worked, to total Exchange breakage. Are you folks seeing anything there? Any corporate types freaking out that they've lost access to their beloved ActiveSync setups?

We actually found another bug in 2.1 ourselves: we can't find copy / paste anywhere. It's anyone's guess how that one slipped by the testers.

[Thanks to everyone who sent these in]

That delightful little gift to original N95 owners in the form of firmware v30 has now spread to the European-spec N95 8GB, too, offering better battery life (allegedly), a new Flash Lite client, upgraded media player, "enablers" for Comes With Music (sounds promising), and a host of other tweaks that make the N95 better than ever. In fact, it might have some N95-1 and N95-2 owners saying "N96 who?" -- but North American N95-3 and N95-4 owners, as usual, might let their eyes wander toward the newer piece anyway since there's no indication when they'll be seeing the upgrade.

Though the Treo Pro has tempered pretty much any love we'd had for the suddenly ancient-looking 800w, we've got to hand it to Palm -- they've been on the ball with software updates since the phone's release a month and a half ago. The latest, which Palm calls "highly recommended for all Treo 800w devices," fixes problems with the detection of certain USB accessories and the inability to charge a completely dead battery (and don't worry, they've posted a trick for getting it charged enough to install the update). What's more, this particular patch can be applied over the air simply by visiting a URL, which is exactly what we like to hear.

[Via Palm Infocenter]

Turns out there may have been some legitimacy to those nagging feelings that something just wasn't quite right about iPhone firmware 2.0.2 -- a build many initially hoped would be the holy grail to cure the iPhone 3G's reception woes. Here's where it gets a little weird, though: a "source close to AT&T," so RoughlyDrafted claims, says that 2.0 and 2.0.1 are actually the culprits responsible for holding back 2.0.2 from greatness, not lousiness in 2.0.2 itself. The story goes that the older versions have faulty power control software in their radios, forcing base stations to connect to phones at higher powers than they'd normally have to, which in turn leads to base stations running plumb out of power -- and once that happens, you get dropped calls, bad reception, and lousy data rates, among other UMTS ails. Following that logic, the network should improve on its own over time as more and more owners update to 2.0.2, which explains AT&T's uncharacteristic text message to owners urging them to take the plunge. This all sounds plausible, we guess, but if 2.0 and 2.0.1 were really screwing with base stations that badly, wouldn't owners of other 3G phones be affected equally?

[Via mocoNews]

Hopes were high that 2.0.2 would decisively crush the reception woes some iPhone 3G owners have experienced since taking delivery of their cracking beauties; dropped calls, latching onto EDGE reception when 3G (also known as "the good stuff") is available, and general signal strength wonkiness have all plagued a select group of handsets since launch, making for a decidedly MobileMe-like user experience. Some upgraders are actually reporting just the opposite, though -- for these lucky few, 2.0.2 seems to be making reception somehow worse than it already was, and what's more, there are intermittent reports cropping up of broken third-party apps, too. With the 1.x line of builds having chugged along with relatively little drama for a year, here's our question: what the hell is going on? Why does 2.0, after two post-launch builds, still feel like a beta? MobileMe took the lion's share of the fall for Apple having spread itself too thin through the launch-heavy summer months, but did some of that fire-drill mentality trickle over to the breadwinner, too? Sound off in comments with your experiences putting 2.0.2 through its paces so far!

[Via Mobility Site]

Update: Apparently Steve Jobs, who should have his face buried in a developer workstation somewhere in Cupertino slaving away on iPhone bug fixes, somehow found the time to slack off for half an hour and fire off an email to some guy who wrote him complaining about third-party apps that are crashing on startup. Jobs allegedly says that the issue is a "known iPhone bug" and that it'll be fixed in the next update come September -- but frankly, we wish he'd let his assistants attend to this sort of needless communication so he could get back to, you know, writing code and inventing phones. Thanks, Alexander!

Update 2: An Ars Technica reader seems to have developed a workaround to the crushing pain of dead third-party (and installed first-party) apps and iPod player weirdness: go back to iTunes 7.7 from 7.7.1. It's not for the faint of heart because you've got to reset the phone and delete some files off the computer, but until this supposed firmware update (and possible iTunes update) rolls around in September, it may be the best thing affected users have going. Thanks, Garrett!

Some of those sweet-sounding bug fixes neatly tucked away in the last firmware update for Europe's N78 have finally trickled down to the second-class citizens left of the pond -- a bit late, yes, but if it's any consolation, users will still be able to take advantage of Nokia's slick over-the-air interface to grab the goods. Perhaps the most important change in this build is improvement of the sensitivity of the right soft key, a pretty big problem out of the gate that plagued our test unit. Speaking of sensitivity, the Navi wheel's has apparently improved as well, as has the music player's ability to remember where you left off in podcasts. Thanks for not forgetting your loyal North American customers, Nokia, but seriously, could we try to keep the love just a little more in sync?

[Via Symbian-Guru]

Support forum threads on Apple's site and a number of ramblings across these great interwebs are starting to complain at great length about the iPhone 3G's headlining new feature -- 3G reception, that is -- and pretty much every aspect of it: signal strength, call dropping, connecting to EDGE when 3G is present, the list goes on. Some smartypants analyst from financial firm Nomura thinks he has it all figured out, saying that the issues are "typical of an immature chipset and radio protocol stack" and suggesting that a firmware update pushed out to existing handsets is unlikely to ease the pain. We've been hearing that Cupertino could actually be working on just such an update at this very second, though, so this cat better get ready for the possibility that he could be eating his own words down the road. For what it's worth, intermittent issues have been reported the world over, so this doesn't seem to be anything to do with AT&T's (or anyone else's) infrastructure -- and needless to say, not everyone is having issues to start. And for anyone whose iPhone 3G we just jinxed by writing this post... well, our bad.

Funny story -- these guys will be one in the same here in just a few months, but until then, you'll have to pretend there's absolutely no relationship between Palm's 700p (Verizon) and 700wx (Alltel). Jibber-jabber aside, those still rockin' either Treo may be interested in sucking down what's apt to be the final ROM update for both handsets on these carriers. As predicted, Palm didn't go into great detail about what all the respective Radio Patches were, um, patching up, but you know you can't walk around without the latest and greatest on your phone. That being said, tap the links below (choose carefully!) to get your download on.

[Via PalmInfocenter]

Read - Palm 700p (Verizon) update
Read - Palm 700wx (Alltel) update