Has your Windows phone gotten an official upgrade?

[Phil Nickinson]

The following comment was posted yesterday on the "Windows Mobile 6.5 and 7, and their tag-team match with Android and iPhone" story.

... if you want a device that you are sure will have periodic upgrades look no further than Blackberry or IPhone, because you will not ever have many chances to upgrade Windows Mobile. The reason I believe this is because I have had at least 9 WM devices with not a single rom update available anywhere but XDA's hacked roms.​

That got us thinking. We're not going to ask the commenter to back that up and list his nine phones, but let's start a list of phones that have received official, carrier-sanctioned ROM updates. Gonna have to dig back, people. I'll start.

Treo 750 (Cingular/AT&T) - Windows Mobile 5.0 to Windows Mobile 6.0.
Motorola Q9h (AT&T) - Windows Mobile 6.0 to Windows Mobile 6.1

 

[Tim Ferrill]

Samsung Blackjack (Cingular/AT&T) - Windows Mobile 5.0 to Windows Mobile 6.0
Samsung Blackjack II (AT&T) - Windows Mobile 6.0 to Windows Mobile 6.1
AT&T Tilt (AT&T) - - Windows Mobile 6.0 to Windows Mobile 6.1

 

[buddyholly02]

palm treo 700wx for verizon winmo 5.0 to 6.0

 

[xd1936]

Verizon and Sprint HTC Vogue (Original Touch): Windows Mobile 6.0 to Windows Mobile 6.1

 

[cplush#WP]

Verizon Q9c-windows mobile 6 to 6.1
Verizon Omnia-GPS unlock and various other improvements.

Nothing from the windows update utility tho

 

[Muirwoody]

Verizon XV6800: Wm 6.0 to 6.1

 

[matthewclaussen]

If the person that made that comment was referring to the over the air updates then I believe that hasn't been made use of and definitely Andriod and iPhone have us beat.

Now for normal official carrier updates that you download to your computer, those do come, just not as often as the iPhone.

 

[simbadogg]

i think the only date most winmo phones have ever received have been in the last year or so....going from 6.0 to 6.1. There are the occasional hot fixes from mftrs such as HTC w/ their bluetooth vulnerability, but even they were reluctant to quickly get that taken care of. I was gonna say blame the carriers, but it would be nice IF winmo was continually making improvements to their OS in the same way that apple/google does. And then periodically releasing these updates which carriers/handset makers would HAVE to make users aware of.

 

[Dave Blake]

I have never gotten any updates on any of my WM PPC's

 

[dougsyo]

8525 (predecessor to Tilt) - from WM 5.0 to 6.0
http://www.wireless.att.com/businesscenter/8525/

Doug

 

[tersoth]

out of the phones ive had:

sprint mogul
sprint touch
sprint diamond

they have all had official ROM updates...

but who uses them? when i load the stock ROM on my phone i get tired of it within 15 minutes and have to flash my own custom ROM. In my opinion the only thing official updates are good for are new native xip. here's hoping they update the sprint pro with a native 6.5 xip. although I'll probably have the pro2 before the original gets a ROM upgrade...oh well

 

[wreiad]

T-Mobile Wing & T-Mobile Dash: Windows Mobile 5.0 to 6.0

Htc Touch Pro 2 & Htc Touch Diamond 2: Windows Mobile 6.1 to 6.5 (Announced)

 

[d-signet]

o2 xda orbit (htc artemis)

updated from wm5 to wm6 from o2 website
(now running 6.5 from xda-devs)

 

[badersk]

Palm treo 750 wm5.0 -6.0
At&t tilt WM6.0-6.1
Not a phone but Dell axim X50 mid WM2003-5.0

 

[j2inet]

If the person that made that comment was referring to the over the air updates then I believe that hasn't been made use of and definitely Andriod and iPhone have us beat.

To date the Samsung Epix is the only device that has used Windows Update Services for the Slog Dump problem.

 

[murphyr64]

First WinMo Device: Sprint Moto Q9c = WM6.0 to WM6.1
I had to download Motorolla's Update Software from their website to receive this update, nothing OTA.

 

[myrandex]

Here is an old one...

Cingular 8125 (HTC Wizard) WM 5.0 - WM 5.0 (new AKU).

I don't remember the specifics but yea I know that there was an official ROM upgrade for that one.

I do believe that my old Motorola MPX200 and MXP220 never received any updates.

But still to draw a conclusion...most WM phones might receive 1 update from their carrier, the original iPhone already is on its 3rd major software update, which gave it a ton of new features. My Cingular 8525 Hermes back in the times of the original iPhone, only received one, from WM5 to WM6. And look at the Pre, out of the gate it is receiving nice live updates over the air, something a WM phone has never done. I love WM, but it really should be more supported by the providers.

I'd rather run a plain vanilla ROM provided stock my Microsoft that could receive updates with Microsoft is finished testing them, rather than have AT&T have to decide if it is worth their time to invest their resources in adding crapware and bloatware to the rom, test it, and then 1 year later, allow it to be released.

Jason

 

[j2inet]

My personal thought on this matter is that historically hardware only OEMs haven't had much of a financial incintive to keep updating the firmware over a long period of time. Creating those updates is going to cause them time and resources but not bring revenue to them. They want you to replace your device every now and then.

There are other devices for which an OEM continues to make revenue off the device after it is sold through the sale of media, subscription services, software, and other content. The iPhone, Zune, Xbox 360, PS3, and PSP all fall into this category of devices. And in all of these cases the device OEM hs continued to make updates to the device's firmware. The cost of updating the firmware can be recovered through the customers continued use of the device since that use will occasionally involve the purchase of more content.

I can't make an assessment of Android devices yet since from past to fairly recent times there has only been one Android device. The G1. This year there are several more Android devices rolling out so over the next couple of years the picture of the Android update story will start to take shape.

 

[snowbound]

I'm a bit disgruntled that the Sprint Touch Pro hasn't gotten any updates, and I'm in the very sad process of migrating back to my centro. Then again, I would probably be asking too much for an update, given that I see not only bugs but some core usability issues.

 

[dougsyo]

I don't know that you'll see more than one update for many phones - if that. Carriers want you to get new phones instead, because it gives them another two-year lock on your account. The iphone is an exception, because ATT doesn't need to sell new iphones to keep customers.

Doug