Cellphoneforums have posted that official Nokia software is available to update the firmware on your mobile phone. Before you read on, just make sure you follow instructions step by step as doing something wrong does have the potential to break your phone. With the software being official, I decided to check out the Nokia.com website and sure enough, it is there. Excellent, time to check out my N73 and see what's on offer. From doing a quick check on my phone of *#0000# I see that I am on V 2.X. A search of the product code on my phone shows I can upgrade to version 3.0638.0.0.1. To upgrade it is a matter of checking the current version and your version and then downloading the latest version from the website for your phone. There are 2 ways to download the latest firmware. The first is OTA (over the air) and the second is a download to your PC so you can transfer it over. My Nokia N73 does not allow OTA, so I will need to download to my PC and transfer via USB.
Some good news is that the upgrade process is fairly simple. If your phone is branded (locked to a provider) then it might not update. However, the software that updates your phone will tell you if this is the case to prevent you from bricking it.
Why do you need to update your firmware? The latest firmware fixes bugs in earlier releases. My N73 has a few quirky things about it and the reason for my upgrade will be to test to see if it fixes it from freezing from time to time while doing too many things at once. Other reasons are upgraded applications and different connectivity.
Let us know if you run in to any problems with the updates.
Updating can be done via Nokia