Nokia Lumia 2520 VZW Power Keyboard Update

The issue with the non shipping keyboards for Verizon Lumia 2520 tablets has annoyed me to a fair thee well. Yesterday I sent an email to Stephen Elop at Nokia. Cutting to the chase, the end result was a phone call from Matt Rothchild, who heads sales operations for Nokia (who actually called me from Barcelona and gets extra points for that).

Here is the situation:

1. The keyboards WILL work with the Verizon 2520’s

2. There is currently a bug where sometimes (he estimates one out of three times) where on waking from sleep, the keyboard does not work. The fix is to restart the 2520.

3. A firmware update to correct the above has been submitted to Microsoft and Nokia is hoping that it is approved by Friday. (The update will NOT be OTA.)

4. Nokia will release the keyboards for VZW units when they know the firmware is approved and the keyboards will ship with a note explaining this.

This means that VZW users will receive the keyboards but that a firmware update is required to fix the defect above.

Timing of firmware – my opinion is that it is not likely to be released until the next patch Tuesday cycle which is March 11. Microsoft HAS released firmware for their own devices “out of band” but my opinion is that this is unlikely to happen. When will shipments start? My best guess is next week. But that is MY guess.

I’m certainly hoping they ship sooner rather than later.