Windows Phone Thoughts: Windows Phone 7 Update Saga Continues

"In a Channel 9 interview on March 25, Joe Belfiore made a few statements regarding the whole update mess that is plaguing Windows Phone 7 that saw quite a bit of backlash right across the tech blogosphere, including my post on the subject. It turns out that Belfiore has been reading many of those posts and comments; along with the Windows Phone management team, and as a result he left a long comment on the original Channel 9 post addressing what people had to say about his statements in the interview."

Microsoft planned for what it thought would be a relatively seamless update process for its Windows Phone 7 platform. Many users view this as a critical process as they want to have and see the latest and greatest operating system features delivered and available on their phones as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, there have been a few snags getting this working effectively. The update experience seems to be varying from "not happening at all" to "it didn't seem to go to well" to "it was great". Microsoft has been trying to figure out why there is variability in the process. Information has been unfolding, and parts of the blogoshpere are up in arms about what appears to be a significant amount of control the cellular service operators are having over the testing process. To make matters worse, Joe Belfiore, who is Corporate Vice President, Windows Phone Program Management, recently gave an interview that indicated his lack of understanding or knowledge of the extent of the issues customers have been having. Steven Hodson over on the siliconANGLE website has made a number of good points about the impact of Microsoft's platform updating procedure (we are at the mercy of the operators) and Belfiore's attempt to apologize for his misunderstanding of the situation. It is well worth reading. This is a saga that is going to play out for some time to come.