New software leads to fresh new experiences.

Except when you don’t get any new software updates.

I’ve had my Nokia N86 (from 3) for three weeks now. And there’s not been a single update.

Those experienced Symbianers readers will chuckle at that last statement.

“Three weeks!” you’ll exclaim, “More like 3 YEARS!”

Because this is how it is with Nokia.

Update schedules are, for I’m sure, valid reasons, super-slow.

But if you put an icon on my phone’s Application desktop — a good looking little green arrow — what do you expect me to do? I’ll click it.

And .. well.. ok so there were no updates when I checked on the day the handset arrived.

Annnnd then a week later, no updates.

Two weeks later, I checked again.

Nothing.

And this morning? Heck, just for the fun of it, I tried again.

Nothing.

This is bad news. Because I associate ‘good’ things happening with updates. For what seemed like years, I railed at Nokia for making the handset firmware upgrade process excruciatingly difficult.

Now I’ve got a handset that does update over-the-air, I’d like to see it actually do that.

I’m not asking for big things, necessarily.

I’d just like to see stuff happen. See that somebody at Nokia actually cares.

Couldn’t the N86 product manager roll out some deliberate updates, even if they’ve got nothing big to send? Update an icon. Change a menu name. Anything.

So that when I click ‘update’ I get a response.

Right now I feel that, as a consumer, nobody at Nokia gives a stuff about my N86 or my experience with it.

Which is a real, real shame.

This kind of consumer connection is very important, especially on the top-end (and wholly capable) devices. I’m accustomed to getting my iPhone refreshed on a regular basis with helpful new additions. Likewise with my desktop software. I really like it when TweetDeck, Mailplane or any of my applications pops up with ‘update notification’. Sometimes I have a read at the changelog to see what’s been updated, other times I just hit update without bothering. But each time, I feel better. I feel good. I feel like someone’s alive behind the curtain — that the lights are on.

It would be simply amazing to read a regular changelog from one of the Nokia N86 product managers.

e.g. “Thanks everyone for your feedback about [SOME MENU]. We’ve now updated that to [WHATEVER]. This modification is available today so please do run the update.”

I think consumers would feel a lot more engaged with their device as a result.

Is it just too difficult for Nokia to do anything like this for their OTA-updatable handsets?