Konttori (the Coach for Harmattan Applications Framework) hinted in a recent post about upcoming update for our beloved N9 and we can read "around 3500 improvements (fixes or features) to be in the release" (PR1.1 and PR1.2 combined i guess) , i didn't want to post about that until having some "facts" about what can we expect really to be addressed, and here we are with some of them, but first of all, you should know there'll be like 3 future firmware updates for the N9 in the future PR1.1, PR1.2 and PR1.3, maybe more, but that's for know and it's enough to use the device for daily use for 2 years ;)
Anyway, 308 task or features were completed for 1.1, you should know that PR1.1 is all about being faster, stronger, better. It succeeded on all metrics, reliability, use time, performance, long period use. All metrics for 1.1 are simply outstanding based on Konttori comments and hints !
- Low power mode enhancemens, battery charging and silent profile are now shown in there.- Tons of NFC and connectivity improvements.
- Performance enhancements.
- Visual tuneups (e.g. toolbar has a shadow now).
- Splash screen has been taken to wider use.
- Color management is less nervous than before (neutral sRGB space color palette is now used always, except in clearly outdoor situations, when oversaturation is applied to adjust how eye desaturates content in brightness).
- Lock screen music controls has been added (It's in the top of the screen and at least I'm pleased with how nicely a nuance the controls look. Currently playing song is on big friendly letters, replacing clock when you are playing music).
- Swype keyboard has been added.
- Keyboard switching is very smooth with swipe gesture. - Battery notification was tuned for 1.1 and should come every 2 minutes while in call, every 5 minutes when display on and every 30 minutes when display off.
- Turning device to landscape is supported allover UI it seems.
- Double tap was re-tuned a bit for 1.1. It's a bit more reliable again.
- Tons of exchange fixes
- Facebook starts faster and has tons of fixes in both 1.1 and 1.2. I'd say it's bearable in 1.1.
- wifi in general has been improved by leaps and bounds in 1.1.
- Magnifier works in 1.1 much better than in 1.0.
- Swipe-to-close is enabled by default in 1.1
- Top status bar lag has been fixed
- Browser has been improved heavily for 1.1, but not on the UX front. 1.2 has some feature improvements.
- LED bug that has been fixed for 1.1.
- 1.1 also includes a battery charging indicator in low power mode (LPM)
- A lot of work has been put to better interoperability of BT with cars
- pulseaudio issue has been fixed
- We have automerge contacts support in 1.1, although it has some usability issues. Anyway, zillion times nicer than not having automerge at all.
- Silence by turning device down works in 1.1
- quicklaunchbar is quite a bit better in 1.1 already. you don't need to swipe-hold to open it, just a quick, but small swipe from bottom will do.
For the PR1.2 it is officially feature enhancement release, so, it contains a lot of new things. :
- Universal copy paste is coming in.
- Swipe-to-close and more logical and visual in 1.2.
- Implementation of decoder enhancements for h264
- Folders will come in 1.2 to home screen. And it's not only apps that need it. If you start using bookmarks a bit more, it's really irritating to not to have bookmarks. Guys in Oulu say that the work should be complete for the feature, so it's about 3 weeks to have decent polish on it. It's one of the "big" features of 1.2
- 1.2 has some sweet camera improvements though (but no comments on what, sorry)
- Lock screen has the support for full screen avatars for incoming call. 1.2 at the earliest
- Deeper integration of maps with the core applications (contacts and favorites)
- Skype video call nor 3G video call support not sure about the later
- PR1.2 changes the swipe down to function as direct close without going to recents/multi-tasking view. Other changes are not going to be made, as they would break the generic swipe logic too much.
- Manage Applications option has been added to the Applications list
- Separated Flash option in Camera UI
- LED Flash icon in Video Recorder UI
- New style for the buttons
- New “Color Profile” setting in Display options
- Face Recognition support in Gallery
- Insert Faces in Photos
Not sure yet if this could make is way on a future update :
- More games will definitely come, but none is HD, as the screen is WVGA
- Somebody should do numeric T9.
- Not sure if the birthday support is coming or not. I think it is, but not sure
- No comments on video call (included skype)
- Bigger avatar on calls perhaps coming in 1.2
- Push notifications (on mentions and retweets in the Twitter app) were supposed to come
- Contacts as shortcuts is possible, simple to be done, but not in the books at the moment. Please write to nokia care about that. And create a bug.
- Java support is not going to come officially.
- Flash support may come.
- Voice control was in the cards, but we eventually dropped it. Not coming, sorry.
- upcoming calendar notifications has been discussed a lot. I can't remember why it's not there, but there was some reason for it...
- Browser toolbar in landscape should indeed be at the bottom. We are planning to get it to autohide in 1.2, but no promises (it's not on the top of the to-do list)
- Video player won't have usability improvements. Better get a 3rd party app for those. It takes probably 200 LOC with qml and qt-mobility/gstreamer to create a better video player (usability wise) than the currently shipping one. It would be a nice hobby project for somebody. Don't get me wrong, it's perfectly OK video player if you have 10 videos, but it certainly doesn't work well enough if you have a lot of videos.
- 3G video support will ever come. We always considered it as a forgotten technology (and hence favor VOIP-alike video conferencing solutions).
- VPN should be coming soon.
- Contact shortcuts were planned for home screen to be as launcher icon shortcuts. We decided to postpone that to until folder support for launcher items is complete. It's now complete, but there won't be enough time to complete the contacts side of the support for 1.2. Perhaps in 1.3.
