News

Something Buggy About This Update for Windows Phone 7

Microsoft removes recently released Windows Phone 7 update from circulation, citing problems with some Samsung phone users.

• By Kurt Mackie
• 02/24/2011

Microsoft withdrew the Windows Phone 7 update that was released on Monday, due to problem reports coming from owners of specific Samsung phones.

Microsoft discovered "a technical issue with the Windows Phone update process that impacts a small number of phones," according to a message posted on a Microsoft support forum. Complaints posted there from Samsung Focus and Omnia 7 smartphone users said that some phones were "bricking up" with the update.

Microsoft has advised those users to reboot bricked phones by reinstalling the battery, so that the phone resets to the original firmware state, but some respondents on the forum found the workaround still didn't work. The phones seem to require a sequence of button pushes to get the reboot started, as described in the forum.

Ironically, this first update to Windows Phone 7 devices was supposed to have been an update to the update process itself. It wasn't the update promised by Microsoft earlier this month at the World Mobile Congress event in Barcelona, Spain. At that time, Microsoft announced it would to deliver copy-and-paste functionality with the first update. A second update is planned for the second half of this year that will integrate Twitter social networking, the Internet Explorer 9 browser and Windows Live SkyDrive access for file storage.

Microsoft's Michael Stroh explained the purpose of Monday's update in a Windows phone blog post: "This first update for Windows Phone is designed to improve the software update process itself. So while it might not sound exciting, it's still important because it's paving the way for all future goodie-filled updates to your phone, such as copy and paste or improved Marketplace search."

It's not clear when the issue with this update will be resolved. A Tuesday post in Microsoft's support forum by moderator Patrizia R of Microsoft support suggested that another update will be coming this week with a fix.

"We would recommend at this time, not to retry the update, as subsequent attempts will fail similarly," Patrizia R wrote. "While we continue to investigate the issue, we would ask that you not attempt the update until your device alerts you of another update opportunity, in approximately 3 days' time."