New N95 8GB firmware

Nokia has released a major firmware update for the N95 8GB, v15.0.015 to replace v11) and is available now from Nokia Software Update. This new update adds Flash Lite 3 video support and the Web Run Time engine (Widgets).

Changes so far (from allaboutsymbian):
* The likes of Gallery and Search are now both faster and also kept resident in memory (even after pressing 'Exit'), in the same was as Contacts, so that they're much more responsive when needed.

* Speed of access to the integral 8GB flash memory disk has been improved. Doing an 'Image store' from PC Suite only took 30 seconds to scan my device, rather than several minutes on v11 firmware.

* Bugs have obviously been quoshed under the hood. In particular, the one that was stopping lots of third party themes working has gone - PiZero's New Gold, here I come.

Updates and additions:

* Flash Lite 3 and Flash video is now fully supported, I just watched native YouTube content - although emTube gives a better overall experience. Other web video sites using Flash technology, such as Daily Motion, are also fully supported. The newer version of Flash Lite also gives much better support for Flash web sites generally.

The Web Run Time (WRT) has been added. This is the run time for Nokia's new Widget platform. Widgets are applications that look like normal S60 applications but are powered by the same engine as the Web browser. They are written using HTML, CSS and Javascript (web technologies traditionally used in writing web sites).

Widgets appear as regular applications with icons in the launcher. Above are some of the early examples of Widgets that developers have made available: a Tic Tac Toe game, a Teletext reader (Finnish).

In summary, this is a very worthwhile update that has me more impressed than ever with the N95 8GB. The apps use the huge RAM to good purpose, Web has taken another huge leap forwards, and there are very few irritations left, other than the lack of mechanical protection for the camera glass.