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More Windows Phone Update Problems
angry tapir writes "Yet another problem has cropped up preventing some Windows Phone 7 users from getting two software updates, adding a new chapter to the update saga that started in February."
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>I get the M$ hate, but just check it - it's great thing. So much better than Android.
And Mussolini made the trains run on time.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
How did you type all that in less than a minute?
I wonder how many people it takes to read Slashdot and get first post defending Microsoft every time that windows shortcomings are mentioned
Wow M$ marketing is quick today....
wtf? What on Earth does that mean?
A software has compatibility issues on some specific hardware. Amazing and never seen before. So what?
My book: Friendly F#, fun with game development and XNA; my game: Galaxy Wars by VSTeam; my gamedev language: Casanova.
So MS are having issues with an update to some vendors devices - big deal. At least they are not waiting for Telco's or hardware vendors to possibly suppy the updates to their users like Android or Blackberry. And I'll give you even money that they will support older handsets for longer than Apple does.
Please don't throw a chair at anyone, Mr.B.
They may just be fanboys - you know the type that will never hear anything bad about their favourite thing but they've also never actually paid for a copy of it.
"If you have time to rigorously test only one component of your software platform, make sure it's the update functionality."
Words to live by.
It's quite obvious that Microsoft is astro-turfing heavily. They like to get a couple of these in early on every story. They're getting a little bit better, but phrases like "What is great about WP7 is its support for developers." are easily identifiable as marketing drone speech.
Most likely they have a bunch of evangelists and/or subcontractors whose only job is to monitor and comment on tech sites; the debacle when Vista marketing got run over by the realitytrain made it quite obvious how expensive it could be to lose control over the narrative.
And with windows phone being a warmed over windows mobile they certainly have their job cut out for them...
I pick the third option, fix the OS for that phone. I am running 2.3.3 on a Droid. WP7 won't be like that, it will be as locked down as apple without any of the upside.
Actually, dev support is possibly *the only* truly great thing in wp7...
A very interesting move is the integration between Silverlight and XNA: this will allow (I am developing such a game right now!) web-based 3D accelerated games that are also playable on wp7, the XBox and as a desktop Windows application. The framework, at least from the pov of an indie game dev, is truly exceptional and very little out there compares favorably. Unity, maybe, but then it's an engine rather than a framework and so it offers less generality...
My book: Friendly F#, fun with game development and XNA; my game: Galaxy Wars by VSTeam; my gamedev language: Casanova.
The words "Windows Phone" and "Update problems" are interchangeable, and mean the same thing. Windows Phone is nothing but problems and should be avoided at all cost.
The platform will soon be discontinued, as it is not selling. This happened before with Microsoft's Kin phones. Users got burned.
Jebsus man the shill factor on that comment went over 9000. You posted a press release style 3 paragraph comment the same time as the article (8:21). You set a preemptive attack on the hardware manufacturers. A strawman against Apple. Then out of nowhere a plug for developers on a developers forum again with the preemptive against 'haters'.
Is obvious shill obvious? Comment below!
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
Common man really? I mean really. Come up with some constructive criticism and stop with the bs. Those who program know that regardless of the platform it really is mostly the same. You might impress some first year CS student with a drag and drop programming model but eventually they will have to get deeper than that. All programming is different but sandwiching your opinion with take it or die make you sound not only like a shill as I mentioned above but a bad one. You are wasting our time please leave.
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
I have a Focus with AT&T. Update came through fine for me last week, and overall I am quite pleased with it.
One of the little publicized problems related to the Focus was its issues with music playback. You could start a playlist, turn the phone "off" (sleep mode), and some random number of songs into the list, there would be stuttering and sometimes crashing on a track change. This was a very annoying problem for someone who had come from a Zune HD and was hoping to migrate all my music over to my new phone and enjoy a seamless experience.
Well, that problem has been fixed, completely. I thought the problem was some hardware issue brought on by Samsung's use of cheap memory, or some such permanent issue, but apparently the engineers at Samsung and Microsoft (and perhaps AT&T) got together and fixed this major issue. So I am extending major kudos to MS and Samsung for taking this problem seriously and fixing it.
Also, the rest of the update is good too: Copy & Paste works great, the Marketplace is improved, and the unit just feels more responsive. While I was once a despairing user of WP7 and the Samsung Focus, I can now fully recommend this product to anyone who wants a powerful yet easy-to-use smartphone.
developers, developers, developers, developers, developers....
consumers? fuck 'em.
developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers.
---
sigh, ok, positive comment to beat /. filters: its no good giving developers everything they could possibly want if no-one wants to buy the stuff they make. Its no good saying how great a phone is if those poor fools who bought one end up with a brick at the first update. Android or iPhone - they work, are very popular, have won the battle. If MS didn't have huge pots of cash from their monopolies, they wouldn't even think of entering this marketplace - no way would any other company do so.
Well, for example, have you ever tried to program for Symbian? It *so much* pain in the ass. I transferred directly from that. Just making project and getting everything so easily (both debugging and actually stuff running) was so easy. You might not like WP7, but I had to go thru mobile programming in the early 2000's. And it was *not* nice. What WP7 and Apple offers now is 1000x better than it was.. just ask any mobile programmer. If they still have their brains working :D
Is it really a web-based game, or is it merely a web-delivered game? Because I see Flash and Silverlight developers confuse these all the time. Is the game based on the fundamental technologies of the web - e.g. are you delivering human-readable code, or are objects in the game discrete resources served via HTTP, or are levels addressable via URI, or is the environment represented by a DOM? In short, does it look anything like this? If not, you aren't basing your game on the web, you are delivering the game via the web. Just because you can get a chunk of non-human-readable code to execute and display something in a browser window by use of a plugin, it doesn't make it "web based". The only thing you are doing is streamlining the obtain->install->run cycle for a non-web-based game.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
If these kind of update-related problems persist for Nokia's W7 phones... Elop better start looking for a new job.
And to that MS astroturfer who blames it on Samsung...let's see how you're going to push the blame to Nokia.
Nokia has had a long and prolific history with smartphones. In some parts of the world, Nokia is synonymous with a cell phone.
http://gizmodo.com/#!5737002/the-problem-with-android-updates-part-seventeen-or-why-samsung-galaxy-phones-are-stuck-in-the-past
http://androidcommunity.com/samsung-fascinate-users-report-froyo-update-problems-and-solutions-20110422/
http://www.bgr.com/2011/02/24/sprint-pulls-epic-4g-android-2-2-froyo-update-data-connectivity-sd-card-issues-reported/
http://www.digitalhome.ca/2010/12/samsung-users-complain-android-2-2-update-is-bricking-phones/
By the way, since Slashdot seems to deem update problems with specific phone models newsworthy, where are the Slashdot posts on these Android update problems, and how come that isn't a 'saga'?
So you just happen to work for a marketing company?
No one mentioned open or closed, more MS has changed marketing BS in your post though.
Nice way to leave out the real competition. Programming for android is nice as well by the way.
Oh yeah? Well just you wait. Eventually the carriers will make them the default "giveaway" phones for new accounts, and when that happens, bang, zoom win(ce)7 will be everywhere. For a few months, anyway...
Caveat Utilitor
for older phone platforms, and have myriad issues that never go reported here.
I got my update just fine weeks ago. It took about 5 minutes and I was up and running with all the latest. I think people have problems when thy try to do an update and their hard drives and/or micro SD cards are completely full.
I don't work for Microsoft in any way shape or form. I work for an IT company in the medical industry, which has had its fair share of problems with MS in the past.
I'm seriously just trying to report an objective truth.
Thanks for trying though. Please carry on with your regularly scheduled Slashdot anti-MS FUD.
Microsoft can't seem to get a handle on updating phone firmware, and Sony can't create a secure network for their game systems to save their life. Both of them have areas of their business at risk from the smartphone and tablet revolution. Perhaps the two of them should team up on a phone/game system hybrid for MASSIVE DAMAGE!
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
While I agree with this.
The gp's point that the Microsoft stack is really well integrated where code written for the desktop and the web and the Xbox and WP7 and Silverlight can all be shared quite easily is also spot on.
Yeah, because Symbian was what you were complaining about in your origina-- oh, that's right, you were talking about Android, which is also 1000x better than "it was."
By the by, lying by omission is still lying, and pretending innocence is morally corrupt. What does that say about the company that employs you to write this stuff?
Yes, I get the point, but in my experience this is one of the worst things about the Microsoft stack, by far. I've got no problem sharing infrastructure at the CLR level, but once you go beyond that to try to make applications written for one paradigm fit anywhere the CLR is, you end up with an unholy mess. The "integration" doesn't make things easier, it just forces you into one colossal fuckup instead of a more sensible approach of platform-specific front-ends over a portable base.
Microsoft's approach to web frameworks is an ideal example of this. They tried to make developing a website like developing a desktop application; and web forms, postbacks, and all of that gigantic mountain of failure was the result. ASP.NET development is about as far away from the architectural principles of the web as you can get without dumping the technology altogether and using plugins instead. They tried to abstract away HTTP when it's one of the most fundamental parts of the web, they did a shitty, incomplete job because the architecture of the web and traditional desktop applications are entirely different, and they ended up with a failure that they are now attempting to replace altogether.
So when somebody comes along and says that they are making a game that can be "web-based" because Silverlight's integration lets them do that easily, my immediate reaction is that it's not "an interesting move", it's a continuation of the same terrible fucked up attitude that Microsoft don't show any real signs of shaking. Hence the question - is this actually a web-based game - i.e. does Silverlight's "integration" really deliver, or is it the same old fuckup they always come out with?
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
By the by, lying by omission is still lying, and pretending innocence is morally corrupt. What does that say about the company that employs you to write this stuff?
No one is employing me. I employ myself. And what I've wrote is just my own experience with several mobile programming languages.
By the by, lying by omission is still lying, and pretending innocence is morally corrupt.
In my book, there is nothing worse that a paranoid, tin-foil hat wearing faggot like you. Slashdot users aren't limited to the shrimp-dicked FOSS zealots and Linux knob gobblers you associate with. Deal with it.
Desperate to stay competitive against iPhone and Android mobile devices, Microsoft has released a two-pound lump of actual cow faeces that they claim constitutes a phone.
Windows Phone 7, in development for several years, strips the mobile telephone down to its fundamental essence: futility, annoyance, malfunction, inconvenience and a socially unacceptable odour. Confounding analyst expectations, the turd is in fact shined.
US mobile carriers hailed the turd as the perfect physical complement to their world-famous customer service. "This powerful product will promote our growth!" said John Harrobin of Verizon Wireless. "We're marketing them as edible."
"We think we can really work the brand equity," said Steve Ballmer, modelling the optional shoulder-length rubber gloves. "Everyone works with our stuff all day every day. They know who Microsoft is and what we do."
"How about making our customers actually swallow our bullshit physically?" said John Harrobin. "Windows Phone 7 was my idea."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Well obviously one of them will be along presently to point out that "nobody knows" how well WP7 is doing since release because Microsoft won't tell us. Since I know, I may as well nip that one in the bud: Abysmal is not an exaggeration. Panglozz has been scraping the Facebook user statistics weekly since November for all the major phone platforms, and has assembled that delightful analytical spreadsheet that tells us week-by-week how it's doing relative to other platforms.
Facebook user stats may not be perfect, but it's a huge sample and lines up perfectly with other reports, which seem to be bending over backwards to avoid stating the obvious truth. The phone is not selling. After six months WP7 total facebook users don't add up to two days worth of increase in iPhone and Android platforms. The user base is not there, and ultimately that's what developers care about. They don't care if it's fun to write apps for the phone. They care if there are users to use the apps - and there aren't enough to speak of. The trend is clearly in decline, so not only are the users not there, they're not ever going to be there. Writing Windows Phone apps is not going to be profitable for nearly any developer, and it's not going to make them famous either. Nokia can't save this.
Some of the numbers we've seen for WP7 are totally bogus. Obviously if nearly three times as many people downloaded the software development kit for WP7 as use WP7 for Facebook, something is amiss. Phone software development is not a 3x more common activity than Facebook posting. Somebody is trying to make it look like the thing is more popular than it actually is - perhaps by including the WP7 SDK with some other tools.
Which makes me glad that Panglozz is keeping track of this for us. It may be a little bit OCD, but it's helpful.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
this update problem seems to be as much samsung's as msft's.
The trend is clearly in decline, so not only are the users not there, they're not ever going to be there.
Not sure how you got this from the data, which clearly shows monotonic growth in WP7, either looking at the native app or the facebook app.
3,368 new users per day for period ending 1/24 is not equal to 1,711 new users per day for week ending 4/26 - and seasonal adjustments aren't going to let you rationalize the decline. That's not monotonic growth - it's declining growth. Given the expansion of the market overall it's also rapidly declining share. On the third tab, "Chart of Delta MAU/Day" there are graphs that will help you visualize the rate of declining growth versus the longer term average.
With Android and iOS each adding over 140,000 monthly active Facebook users per day and trending up - not down - it's a disaster both in raw units and in market share.
Stack these numbers up against the number of "points of sale" and it's easy to imagine that it's not every day somebody comes in and buys a WP7 device.
Of course if you really want to know what's going on you can download the data and crunch the trendlines yourself.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
It's just a very cheap way to make my users try a full, free (ad-supported), on-demand version of my game by using the same assets of the Desktop/Windows and Xbox versions. Also, I can let paying users access the SL out of browser system to let them install the application and use it offline, without even having to build an installer package. Development time is very costly for an indie team, and for us this is already making a large difference, especially given how happy our publisher is about this opportunity...
My book: Friendly F#, fun with game development and XNA; my game: Galaxy Wars by VSTeam; my gamedev language: Casanova.
So much better than Android.
Yah. Right
This is beside the fact that its not really common to expect any updates at all from your mobile phone manufacturer.
Sure. That's because Samsung has a habit of abandoning their OS releases and their customers. That's not the case for, well, pretty much everyone else. And so far as I'm concerned, I run a third-party Android ROM and get better support from an open-source group than any of the big boys including Microsoft.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I pick the third option, fix the OS for that phone. I am running 2.3.3 on a Droid. WP7 won't be like that, it will be as locked down as apple without any of the upside.
I agree with you 100% except for the upside.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Ironically, on WP7 it wouldn't be web-based in any sense, because, while WP7 apps are written in Silverlight (or XNA), WP7 browser does not support Silverlight as a plugin.
Obviously if nearly three times as many people downloaded the software development kit for WP7 [knowyourmobile.com] as use WP7 for Facebook [allfacebook.com], something is amiss. Phone software development is not a 3x more common activity than Facebook posting.
Not necessarily. Many developers on MS stack have downloaded the toolset simply because it's free, and they wanted to see what's it all about - maybe write a hello world app. Most of those likely didn't have a WP7 phone when they downloaded (heck, the toolkit was available for download long before the first phones shipped!), and many probably never got one. So that number obviously doesn't correspond directly to the number of active developers publishing apps to the Marketplace.
Shutdown, what are you doing? You know better than to argue with me. You've been around here long enough to know that I don't make definitive statements unless I have the high ground. Your team must be growing desperate.
Out of respect for our friendship I'm going to let this one go unless you try to spell that as some concession of your point.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Ballmer was overheard screaming, "Mail the damn users an update CD or something!"
Actually I don't use my WP7 for facebook, I use OneNote, the calendar functionality which is great because its intergrated with the hotmail calendar, watching pre recorded tv shows, some business accounting stuff in an excel spreadsheet that I've set up on my desktop and put on my phone, e-mail, weather, stock trading. Facebook is something I update and read when I have some idle time at a desktop PC. It could be that facebook junkies tend to be more likely to use an iPhone and the Android clone of it.
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
3 out of 5 smartphone users don't do Facebook on the device.
Help stamp out iliturcy.