Bill, "I'm pretty sure the ACCC told telcos they had to warranty devices for the length of the contracts"
Complete bullhonky there mate. Telco's can have whatever length of contract they like, the Hardware warranty isn't anything they can control. You can pay extra to the telco and NOT get a 24month play, you get the luck of the draw getting a phone on contract. The ACCC tried to enforce it, but the ACCC didn't have a leg to stand on. As for the commentary on whether 1st & 2nd gen handsets would get the update, let's have a discussion about this. Take a step back and look at your Lumia 800/900 "new" device for a minute. The silicon running that device is 2+ years old, single core, no expandable memory, 16GB of flash, with 512MB of RAM. As for the reason why existing devices couldn't be upgraded, you only need to look at the "Shared Core" features to realise that WP8 Core has been "re-written" from the ground up. Basically putting existing gen 1 & gen 2 device manufacturers & Microsoft in a position, where they need to create new bootloaders to support "Secure Boot" & bitlocker encryption, even if they could magically do that, they've then got to repartition the NAND which stores the OS, RIL firmware, and even the separate update partition. Try bundling that up into an update and pushing it out to existing devices. Short answer is you can't. To repartition the NAND you need to supply a complete device image (FFU), inside the FFU the partition maps are picked up by "updatewp" aka Zune and your device is repartitioned ready for the update. One little tidbit, you've just lost your ENTIRE OS image, data, SMS messages and the Plants vs Zombie saved games you were hanging onto because you'd gotten past the first level. And we all know that you can't backup anything with WP7+ devices :) Now that you've got a device image, you have one, there are 15+ devices out there, each device has the possibility of having a DIFFERENT image for each Mobile Operator, with 300+ MO's out there, you are looking at creating 4500+ complete device images. Do you have any idea how long it takes to create complete device images? Even once you've created one, the MO needs to TEST the image, they find an issue, it's sent back to the handset maker to fix, if it's Microsoft issue, then it goes back up the chain to fix a core issue, then another image is created, and you repeat the process, over & over & over again. Miraculously the MO's have tested and approved the update, you have to cross your fingers, legs, toes & basically anything else when the END USERS are performing a COMPLETE device re-flash. If there was one little stuff up, the user failed to download the update correctly, user was updating his/her device with a shitty 3rd party microUSB cable, they've now got a brick, a brick that can't be recovered. The only possibility of a recover is if they didn't stuff up the bootloader flash, which is generally the first thing that gets flashed, which if something was to go wrong, is the first thing to break. Even having the ability to JTAG a device, it won't recover it (if you are lucky to have a device that it's JTAG isn't locked). Now, you've got a bricked device, that's out of warranty, but bricked because Microsoft & the Handset manufacturers decided to push down an update, even though you ticked a million boxes saying updating it was your fault, the end user still has a whinge, complains to 10+ people about shitty company X & Y because they bricked their phone, they'll also complain to the MO and most likely move to another carrier. If the update was somehow successful, how many people was that end user tell and phrase Microsoft to? Your answer is 1-2. But you are still going to whinge about losing your Plants vs Zombie game saves! Now you've got a commercial issue which is really a cluster f**k of a decision and I've got no idea on how they make those. Make sense? -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Bill McCarthy Sent: Wednesday, 27 June 2012 9:13 PM To: 'ozDotNet' Subject: RE: Windows Phone 8 announced Hi Stephen, Yes phones will be out of date, the question is whether it is months or years. In Australia, typical contracts are 24 months, and I'm pretty sure the ACCC told telcos they had to warranty devices for the length of the contracts. So two years is fair to expect to be a current lifetime; obviously there will be hardware improvements in that time, but the software and apps available you'd reasonably expect to be current. Apple deal with that by controlling the release dates of devices to a new device a year and OS support roughly of +1: hence you can be sure to get two years of being current. Android has been all over the place, but the big players such as Samsung are also moving to give that period of currency by providing OS updates (eg Galaxy II). For Windows Phone there isn't that. Personally the thing about this I dislike the most is not the fate of my own phone (I do like my lumia), but that I can no longer recommend to people they currently buy a windows phone. This is the real shame. It'd be a lot better if people could upgrade: would probably still be worth waiting for the newer devices for NFC. The sooner they get the new devices out the better. |-----Original Message----- |From: [email protected] [mailto:ozdotnet- |[email protected]] On Behalf Of Stephen Price |Sent: Wednesday, 27 June 2012 8:29 PM |To: ozDotNet |Subject: Re: Windows Phone 8 announced | |Why don't you two get a room? :) | |In an attempt to throw petrol onto a cooling fire, Microsoft don't have |to make |new devices backward compatible. Or forward compatible. |They make decisions, like any project, on what new releases mean. I |don't think |that assuming people will be happy to upgrade their phone for a newer improved |one is a bad one to make. These days the majority of phones end up in a draw |somewhere in less than three years. The phones cost almost nothing (if |you are |on a plan where you got your phone for $0 and you get to the end of the contract |period, they don't make your plan cheaper for example.) You get the |option to |upgrade to a newer phone. If your phone is older than 2 years old then phones |are not that important to you (or you're money priorities lay |elsewhere) and no |amount of new features would compel you to upgrade. | |I, for example, have three phones. Android, Iphone, and Windows phone 7. Thats |just the phones I carry in my bag, I have no idea how many phones I |have at home |in the draw somewhere. | |Your phone will be out of date. Its just a question of how long that |will take. I'm |kinda stunned that's news. | |As for you two fighting over what information was available, and what |assumptions people made about if they can upgrade their new phone or not. |heheh... it really really must tick you off. I'm not taking sides, I |don't care. It's |been too long since anyone's butted heads on this list so, good times! We'll all |look back on this and laugh. If you have any sense. Take a deeeep |breath, and |step outside. You know, outside where there's sunshine and people |walking about |without computers n stuff. :) We're all in this together, ya know. | |And.... Go. | |On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 6:15 PM, .net noobie <[email protected]> |wrote: |> what you not happy to basically call me a liar on the list? |> |> you want meet face to face now... what to have a fight? |> |> over a telephone??? |> |> I am not the one who has the problem bill, i am fine thanks |> |> |> On 27 June 2012 15:03, Bill McCarthy |> <[email protected]> wrote: |>> |>> Hi David Thiessen, |>> |>> |so... no not after the fact, as much as your ego would like to |>> |think it |>> is.... |>> | |>> |seriously, get over it, you act like a child who's mummy will not |>> |buy him a |>> lollie in |>> |the supermarket |>> | |>> |yeah and you can't read, thats what i said i assumed |>> | |>> |you need to get over your self mate, have a cry mybe |>> |>> |>> Okay, that's EOC here. If you want to email me of list or discuss |>> this face to face feel free to email me directly at |>> [email protected] |>> |>>
