{Tech Info Online}

It has been an interesting start to the week with two Symbian handset getting firmware updates almost simultaneously. Both run the Series 60 Fifth Edition OS and are more or less arch rivals. We are talking about the Nokia N97 and the Samsung Touchscreen flagship, the i8910 Omnia HD.

The Nokia N97 update seems to be a significant one with the version graduating to the 2.0 scale and also brings in a lot of changes that users have been asking for. There seems to be an overdose of kinetic scrolling now in the menu, within contacts and even whilst scrolling through music tracks. iPhone and iPod owners might smirk at this - but Symbian users will know who important this was to them! The Nokia N97 also gets new widgets. Another thing that is interesting is the way the starting alphabet of the contacts pops up whilst you're scrolling. Very neat!

Another interesting addition is that alternate characters for the keyboard are now available with a long press. The best thing about this update is that the phone still feels faster with these improvements. However, we would stop short of praising this update until we have this version tried and tested. The update is set to arrive later this month or early next month. This might just be the update the Nokia N97 badly required, especially after losing some of its sheen - thanks to Nokia's own N900!

Another device that received the update treatment is the Omnia HD. The phone seems to have received a Russian/Hong Kong centric update that has fixed most of its bugs from the previous versions. While it might not be as significant as the N97 update (still no Kinetic Scrolling!) there are a couple of interesting feature additions. The main addition is the 3D tasks launcher that imparts a sophisticated look to the device. There are other features and bug fixes like that web browser bug that caused it to crash if you press stop whilst browsing. Users also get one finger, long press zoom in the browser and the media browser, an updated, more spaced out on-screen QWERTY keyboard, Flash Lite update and new widgets pre-installed.
Source:[techtree.com]