Has Microsoft Finally Fixed Windows Phone Update Delays?

As the seemingly never-ending saga over GDR2/Amber being delivered to AT&T devices finally came to an end last Thursday, we’ve already received a subtle glimpse into how Windows Phone updates may be changing for the better starting with GDR3, potentially indicating that Microsoft is finally addressing long carrier testing delays once and for all.

In last week’s episode of What the Tech on the GFQ Network, Andrew Zarian demonstrated a live unboxing of a Nokia Lumia 520 with Paul Thurrott. When Thurrott was asked about the future update situation for the 520, which is sold by AT&T with GDR2 preinstalled, we were told that “there’s going to be some good news there.” However, he was unable to elaborate beyond that statement.

But when further questioned by Zarian about whether there is an enthusiast community providing ROM images for Windows Phone devices not receiving updates, similar to popular Android ROM communities, Thurrott elaborated, “we don’t have as big of a thing around those lines. But that’s not going to be an issue going forward. So, we’ll talk about that next week. But that won’t be a problem.”

We can speculate that this is the ultimate resolution Windows Phone power users have been awaiting since the 8.0 announcement last year, which told of an “enthusiast” program that would enable users to sign up to manually update their devices before general carrier distribution. As most of you likely know, this enthusiast program never materialized. Or perhaps Microsoft has finally worked out an Apple-like deal to uniformly update all devices on a pre-determined schedule? Maybe GDR3 has already reached RTM and it is now being scheduled for delivery in the upcoming weeks? Alright, I may be getting a bit ahead of myself with that last one.

Regardless of the details, from Paul’s statement we can surmise that Microsoft is preparing to make an announcement, or at least permit NDA-bound individuals to speak publicly on the matter sometime before the end of this upcoming week. Just as the Windows 8.1 upgrade reaches general availability in only six days, it appears more good news is slated for Windows Phone updates in the coming days as well. Let’s just hope it is a permanent solution to the update delays many of us would say have existed since the days of “NoDo.” I don’t know about you, but even as speculative as it is, I still feel optimistic about this.

Source: GFQ Network