Windows Phone Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

"It's not news to say that we attracted some criticism for this on the X1 and we're not going to go there again with the X2. So, for the record, this is what X2 customers can expect in terms of software upgrades."

In an attempt to be upfront with consumers, Sony Ericsson has announced the software update schedule for the XPERIA X2. According to the company, March should bring a major update: Windows Mobile will be upped from 6.5.1 to 6.5.2, most applications will receive tweaks, and there will be added support for video telephony, an FM radio, and faster GPS fixes. Then sometime in May, it'll get the Windows Mobile 6.5.3 treatment. Of course, the value of all this is heavily dependent on the device making it into the hands of consumers in a timely fashion, which we're sorry to say, is not happening.

There's a fresh breeze going through HTC HQ at the moment. The company has opened up ROM updates to almost everyone. I say "almost", because you still need your device's serial number to download the updates, but that's a heck of a lot better than the notoriously flaky process of registering your device in the e-Club.

With ROM updates available in the Support section, the e-Club now serves as a hub for mobile content. While only twenty ringtones are up for grabs at the moment, they're surprisingly decent. Four of them are the tunes featured in the Touch Diamond promo videos. The rest are a mix of electronic, folk, rock, hip-hop, and new age beats. You do need to be an e-Club member to download them, but it's free for anyone (even non-HTC customers) to register.

Another interesting discussion came up on the private Mobius discussion list, and my response was a bit long so I thought it was worth sharing here. One of the Mobius group members made a comment about how it was time for something to be done to separate the firmware from the customizations that operators made - allowing for easy OS and application updates. My response, slightly expanded for public consumption...

We were at that point back in 2001 when some of the first generation Pocket PCs were denied upgrades to the new OS. This has been a sore point for Windows Mobile from the start.

iPhone = Two phones + one OS + one company = easy updates

Zune = Three devices + one OS + one company = easy updates

Windows Mobile = Dozens (hundreds?) of phones + two OS' + dozens of companies = nightmare update scenario

This issue has come up time and time again: because of all the different phone hardware, and the low-level software customization required for drivers and whatnot, OS updates and even simple patches are much more complicated than they could be if the underlying system was simpler. Every time there's a new version of Windows Mobile, we hear that updates are going to be made easier, but it never seems to translate into actual updates for users. Someone smarter than me can probably explain this, but on desktop PCs (at least with Windows) you have a hardware abstraction layer (HAL) that takes care of certain important things related to hardware and software talking to each other. Here's part of the Wikipedia definition:

"A hardware abstraction layer (HAL) is an abstraction layer, implemented in software, between the physical hardware of a computer and the software that runs on that computer. Its function is to hide differences in hardware from most of the operating system kernel, so that most of the kernel-mode code does not need to be changed to run on systems with different hardware. On a PC, HAL can basically be considered to be the driver for the motherboard and allows instructions from higher level computer languages to communicate with lower level components, such as directly with hardware." Read more...