[G705] New Firmware R1FA035

[StevenC]

I've just heard that R1FA035 has just been released this week for G705/W705/W715. I googled that but there's only a few people knows about it. It features Google Maps v3 with Latitude.

Anybody know what else is new in this firmware?

[yjwong]

Yes, I'm one of those who got R1FA035 on my G705 after it was sent to a Service Center. In general, this is a great upgrade for me.



Several key differences I've observed:

1) Performance

Performance in general seems to have increased. Time it takes for the phone to do a cold boot to a usable interface seems to have been reduced significantly. In the past it took a whole two minutes for my phone to be usable, and now that figure seemed to have been halved.

Opening contacts list (mine has 548 contacts) seems to be much faster, around 1 second for first opening (as compared to around 4 seconds previously and ~15 seconds in the SMS UI).

2) The "Search" UI

The "Search" UI, accessible via the left key by default, seems to have changed its appearance. The spacing between each item has reduced (which means more addresses on the "Search" screen, and for long addresses, the ticker-like scrolling is now faster.



3) Conversations UI

The Conversations UI is not enabled by default. You need to have it enabled via customize_upgrade.xml. If you have that, you can observe that the entire conversations UI has been revamped to match that of the C905 (the green and white Clarity-like bubbles, as opposed to the black-only bubbles that I had in R1DA038).



The speed for opening Conversations UI seemed to have been increased rather significantly too. Previously it took around 5 seconds to open the UI. But now takes less than a second with roughly 131 messages.

4) Per-network Network Sharing

The Network Sharing feature now allows you to configure it on a per-network basis. Means that you can turn off sharing in public WiFi networks, but turn it on in your home network.



5) Streaming settings

The streaming settings no longer allow you to choose which local connection (i.e. Bluetooth/WiFi) to use. This means that streaming applications will use whatever WiFi network you're connected to.

6) Google Maps 3

Google Maps 3.0 with Latitude has been included.



7) Tracker

A new application, called "Tracker", has been included into the "Location Services" menu. Haven't tried it out yet, but it's description says "Tracker is a GPS based sports application".




8) AccuWeather

The previous AccuWeather was pre-installed as a Java application. Now it seems to be a Flash Lite application, and sits above the Sony Ericsson link in the "Applications" menu. The UI has received a complete overhaul and now looks rather nice. You can now schedule AccuWeather updates, and during weather updates, a new cloud icon will be shown at the status area.




9) Service menu

The "Service info" in the service menu seems to have added a new menu item called "Slider count". Presumably should be the amount of times that the slider was opened/closed. However, on my phone at least, the number is permanently stuck at 0.



Under Service Tests -> GPS, there is a new menu item called "Clear receiver cache". The "Reset NVRAM" option available previously is now gone.



That's all I know for now (: will post screenshots if possible.

[StevenC]

I have upgraded from R1EA033 to R1FA035 a couple of weeks ago. Other than Latitude, it already had the changes yjwong mentioned but I think it is a little faster. R1EA033 was already very responsive and stable.

[Pariah]

Hello all,

any of you know where I can download this firmware (R1FA035)? My SEUS is broken and a new installation brings nothing.


I want make a Firmware-Flash with A2-Uploader and need the "*.mbn" and the "*.fbn" and customfiles.

MfG.

[darth_jusoh]

..and where is it? download link please.

[seenjhon]

Thanks for sharing...

[kate0313]

hi, where can I download the files for this one? thanks

[quake]

hi,. do you have the main file, fs and cust pack for g705? can i have a copy? you can send it to suyagidkoya@yahoo.com

[satch1234]

You can find it on OMNIUS in download section.