HTC is a major force in the Windows Phone arena, with five out of ten actual devices that have been brought to market at the moment. That number doesn’t take in carrier branded derivatives like the HTC Arrive, a CDMA version for the Sprint network. We’ve already seen video of the Arrive, and it’ll ship with the NoDo [No Donuts] loaded. For the majority of Windows Phone owners though, somewhere between five and seven hundred thousand, who have access to ten thousand apps in the Windows Phone marketplace, the update hasn’t rolled out. In what has been a major public relations nightmare for Windows Phone 7, a pre-update, update, that was meant to prepare devices for the still not major NoDo update started bricking some Samsung devices, which halted the process and started alarm bells ringing.
Microsoft obviously have been scrambling to minimise the impact of their failure to deliver this first update, and what should have been the second NoDo, in a timely manner, and things are starting to look a bit more positive, although if you want an honest opinion about the state of the update now, you want to take a look at Paul Thurrott’s, of WindowsPhoneSecrets, post about the latest developments.
Basically, it looks like Microsoft have trotted out a fresh face, to give us a “State of the Update” address.
Who doesn’t love presents? Luckily, my new job at Microsoft is to deliver them to you. My name’s Eric, and I run the team responsible for sending software updates with new features and improvements to your phone. From time to time, I’ll be posting here to answer your questions or concerns—and tell you what useful stuff an update is bringing
Good start I suppose, but the information in the post by Eric Hautala on the Windows Team Blog, is cryptic at best. There’s a fair bit of bunkum, and illusion in the post, trying to assuage any of the ill feeling, and trepidation that people may be feeling about applying an update to their expensive devices, wondering if it will break them. Ignoring the smoke and mirrors in the post by Eric, there are two things that become evident, Microsoft wants you to know it’s not all their fault
This combination makes up our update, which we dispatch to the cellular carriers around the world that sell Windows Phones. The carriers then conduct their own tests to help ensure that the new software works correctly both on their networks and the Windows Phone models they sell.
We work closely with our carrier partners, and encourage them to test our software as swiftly as possible. But it’s still their network, and the reality is that some carriers require more time than others. By the way, this carrier testing is a common industry practice that all of our competitors must also undergo *
And
But I believe it’s important that we learn all we can from the February update. So I’ve decided to take some extra time to ensure the update process meets our standards, your standards, and the standards of our partners. As a result, our plan is to start delivering the copy-and-paste update in the latter half of March **
So we should be able now to expect an update for our HTC Windows Phones, sometime next week! The information is decidedly vague, and terribly sugar coated, but I applaud Microsoft for publicly addressing the matter, Windows Phone may not have a huge user base, but it’s the way forward in the mobile space for Microsoft, and they can’t afford to alienate any of their customers at this point. Now we do know that the update’s have started rolling out for HTC devices, as evidenced by leaked ROMs for the Mozart, and the HD7 on XDA Developers, but that is a quick fix that may have ramifications in the future. If you consider that fifty per cent of Window’s Phone users are HTC owners, it makes me wonder what is going on behind closed doors at the moment, when HTC have invested so heavily in the platform. SO we’ll have to wait, but as my friend Anton says
