Windows Phone Update To Be Massive
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard this but let’s share some Tweets by Chris Walshie. He’s part of the team behind ChevronWP7 and that team has sources (in fact I’m still surprised we haven’t heard that Long Zheng works for MS yet after the time he spent on their campus recently):
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davidk
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Sweet, let’s see how AT&T can screw it up with a worse line up of devices than they currently have.
Sounds great, since i love the premise of Windows Phone but it definitely needs refinement.
seems pretty good if MS can ship out updates that could be equal to a 2nd gen version. speaks a lot about their commitment to their current customers, rather than screwing everyone over so quickly (*cough apple cough* – source http://mobilitydigest.com/apple-ipad-2-to-have-retina-display/).
Hopefully they can follow this up with some small, maybe meaningful, but maybe meaningless release that will force carriers to push the first update if any of them get stubborn for some reason. I know MS wants to trust their partners more, but letting them overly delay one update just sits poorly with me.
Awesome, hopefully it’s soon (early 2011?), as I’m picking up my device just before the Christmas holiday.
@Peter: If that’s the case then I guess I purchased my last locked phone. I won’t be tied to an uncooperative carrier.
So will this be an update or a ROM replacement? Better go receheck my disaster recovery plan. And I hope the update is at least as stable as the current release, and not rushed through to satisfy a handful of whining critics.
@jimski: I’m willing to give the carriers a little leeway – making sure that the phone doesn’t completely break or identifying any odd scenarios isn’t a bad thing. I imagine the first couple of updates will go through without too much delay. I’m more concerned about later updates – as new hardware comes out that uses a new OS release by default. The carriers haven’t been good at delivering updates to the OS in the past, but admittedly that was because the OS was only the start. That didn’t include drivers and everything else that was really needed for each model. WP7 is supposed to do away with a lot of that due to the abstraction layers. How the carriers perform remains to be seen.
This is an area where I’ll admit to being curious – what bits are set saying that has to approve the upgrade vs. getting it straight from MS? Is it possible to change those? Not planning to now, but definitely wondering.
And yes, I also hope that this update is stable. Though reading the above, it sounds like this has been going on for a while and not just to satisfy critics. MS knew that no Copy/Paste would be criticized. They knew that lack of real task-switching/multi-tasking would likely be criticized. I think they took a good first step and will wait for February (by then the upgrade should be out) to see what happens.
@soundman: ROFLMAO!!!! Hey I am down with the MS Goodness as soon as AT & Fuggen’ T get me a device I won’t feel bad about coughing up full price for. Ain’t happening with Shite they got now. I think SP1 (chuckle) for WP will be good, but I think David is dreaming when they say 1st quarter. Mid year best ETA.
@Doug Smith: well all we can do is to wait and see really. Tbh, I hope you eat your words :-P, and you know you’re only stick with at&t cause of your iPhone 😛
Hope it fixes the bloody alarm 🙁
I can’t see Microsoft releasing the update any later than MIX. I’m hoping for February but can settle for March.
Wow @adamUCF, he must go to one of the best universities in the nation. One most likely that so many people want to go there its prob the second largest in the nation. Maybe one that all of their studies are ranked top in the country. Also one that is of this day a ranked football team in the coach’s poll ( and the shitwhole in gainsville is not ranked, not even gets votes to be ranked). Man im so glad to be a Knight, cuz if i was at uf i would have to be a pot smoking asswhole or my girlfriend would have to be ugly and dumb as hell. GO UCF!!
@Matthew pshaw. People only go to UCF because it’s in Orlando.
Be nice if the update would allow me to directly sync my contacts in outlook. Worked before!
Must be able to fully sync outlook contacts, calendar, tasks and notes with WP7. (and I just don’t mean the copy solution people are misinterpretting as sync now) Also this means a local copy of Outlook not using exchange!
# MartiM. check ur stats. UCF is ranked 5th in the nation in international students. Only 17% of the student body is from Orange county. And to prove you even further in the wrong, from personal experience in from south florida and wait for it…. i go to UCF. I got into every college in florida. (usf, fsu, fgcu, uf, and UCF). Also UCF holds the record for the last 3 years for the most SAT scores and transcipts sent to by incoming freshman ( from the whole nation) by any school in florida.
@Mesonto: Face it, Outlook is dying as we know it. Microsoft wants everything pushed into the cloud and I would be surprised if we ever saw full Outlook sync again. Not sure what you are using but my calendar and contacts are syncing fine w/Hotmail Sync, although I almost never use desktop Outlook with this new phone. And Remember the Milk/WinMilk for task management is better than Outlook. That’s coming from someone who uses tasks a lot. Yes, I will miss my old Outlook, but its time to move on.
I thought MS got rid of databases in WP7? There definitely won’t be any task support, but outlook syncing may not work just due to how pim data is handled.
@FarTed: i don’t think they got rid of it, just not currently supported. they know that it will be needed, and others have gone to the effort to create their own database systems that can be used with windows phone 7 apps.
My biggest fear? That when the CDMA phones come to Verizon and Sprint that it will not only be AFTER this update but that this update won’t be released with those phones …
Don’t know Tjarren. Not sure if this is going to be released as WP7.1 and start fragmentation so early in the game. Probably more like your friendly Wednesday Windows updates, Although the GSM and CDMA core’s of the OS may be significantly different, I can’t believe that these tweaks will be all that hard to roll out across multiple platforms almost simultaneously. And these new carriers will be motivated to
make certain these phones can do everything their GSM cousins can.
@jimski
You’re probably right about the fragmentation concerns. MS has stated on more than one occasion that they are working to avoid exactly that.
I guess I was thinking more about the reasons why the enhancements that will make up the first update weren’t included in the initial release: they were trying to stabilize the OS to make the user experience seamless. As you stated, its unknown if formating the OS for a CDMA device will require the same care or if WP7.1 will launch with them. Anyone would be an idiot not to desire the latter.
Don’t forget that carriers only have permission to delay one update. When MS releases the next update after this one, the carriers can no longer block it. If I’ve read that correctly, that means that even if MS issues some really minor patch, this update would be released for people to choose whether or not to apply it.
I partly agree with this decision. It’s good to know that an official MS update won’t brick phones for a particular carrier, but at the same time I don’t have a whole lot of faith in the carriers. They haven’t been great for updating devices to date unless they have no control over those updates.
Actually after thinking about this a bit, with a 2 year contract requirement, carriers should have a “legal obligation” to push through updates for 2.25 years from the launch of a new product/phone (2 year contract + initial launch period). Anything short of that would be fraudulent as they have tied you to a phone but choose not to support it. Remedy would be early upgrade option (that’s OK with me) or pro-rata refund for phone purchase. I smell class action the next time they play games.
@jimski: I could not of said it better 🙂
Martim. Could u be anymore stupid or wrong. UCF beat uf ranked 16 in basketball last night. So thats the best record of any college in florida and second highest ranked in football!!! wow, yea but i only go to UCF cuz its in orlando. stupid. Knight for Life. GO KNIGHTS!!!!