It seems that complaint report on the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD has finally paid off. Samsung just announced an upcoming firmware update that will address some of the issues the user community has reported. Unfortunately, the less-than-24fps video recording is not among them.

There are three changes that the firmware update will bring. The first is an improved browser, with faster user interface. The browser on the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD needed a kick in the pants for its real life experience.

The next update is the addition of kinetic scrolling, which the browser already has, but the rest of the interface doesn’t. Samsung spruced up the S60 5th edition UI with its widget happy TouchWiz UI, but changes didn’t go much further than the homescreen. At least now, the Samsung Omnia HD can catch up with the rest of the touchscreen gang.

Finally, there’s a new graphic engine, which increases the “the speed to access the multimedia content”. Notice the word “access” – this means better playback, but still no stable 24 frames per second for 720p video recording. When we reviewed the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD, the frame rate was our major complaint, after the audio recording issue has been fixed.

Nonetheless, these three things were mentioned in the report on the Omnia HD and Panashe Michael Ngwerume who wrote it can tick them off the checklist. Score one for the Samsung Omnia HD enthusiasts.

The new Omnia HD firmware should be available in January 2010, starting with the UK and then moving on with other European markets, Asia, Africa and the rest of the world. To install the update, you’re going to need Samsung PC Studio 7 installed on your computer. You can just download it from Samsung’s website.

It’s not only Sony Ericsson that is launching a new firmware update for one of its phones these days. T-Mobile is also planning to launch a firmware update for one of its Android phones. The Motorola Cliq is going to receive the new update which is supposed to fix a bunch of problems. Bluetooth, touchscreen accuracy, connectivity, accelerometer functionality and battery life are all going to get fixed by the new firmware update. Unfortunately for us, build 1.3.31 will not bring you a different version of Android OS so you’ll have to still deal with Android 1.5 so far. What about you? How is your Cliq treating you these days?

The Palm Pre is to get a UK update, a full week after the handset was updated in the US.

The WebOS 1.3.1 firmware update brings with it a number of feature improvements, but there is still no sign of the phone linking up nicely to iTunes.

What you will get is support for a range of business-orientated features, including LinkedIn and Yahoo.

These apps will appear in your contacts and calendar if you want them too. This is all part of Palm Synergy, which already boasts support for Facebook and Google.

There’s also a number of small fixes in video watching, security and music playback.

High-speed download

The download is 134MB so it will have to be done through a high-speed internet network, so if you are near one then switch to Wi-Fi and you will be updated.

If you are too busy using your phone to wait for the firmware to update then Palm will automatically pipe it to your phone over the next few days over 3G and when your phone is idle.

Palm is also noting that you will see some improvements to email and messaging. This includes better ‘copy and paste’ functionality.

Samsung has released a new firmware update for its i7500 Android Galaxy, helping to fix some of the inherent problems.

The new device has been roundly panned by reviewers as the battery life is woefully short, with an annoying lock system putting many off purchase.

However, the new I7500XXII5_VIAII5 firmware (say that three times fast) will apparently sort out the battery life and ‘bring stability’ to the phone.

Unlocking the problems

The lock screen will apparently also be reduced from around a minute (we’re exaggerating, but the phone very much frustrated us in our review) to under 0.5 seconds.

And to make it look like it’s not just fixing these problems, Samsung has also altered the compass settings to work more effectively with Google Maps and Sky Maps.

The update is available for users directly from PC software that comes with the phone, so we’ll be testing it out later today and updating our review if the problems actually are sorted.

Via Samsung Hub