Windows Phone 7 Update Damage Control: Fail

Windows Phone 7 Update Damage Control: Fail

Microsoft has shifted into hardcore damage-control mode over the Windows Phone 7 updates, claiming that "only" 10 percent of users' smartphones have stalled on the new software.

The update, originally described to media as a "smaller infrastructure update that will help future updates," began to enter the Windows Phone 7 ecosystem Feb. 21. Soon afterward, users took to the Windows Phone 7 help forum (among other Websites) to post comments about the update stalling their smartphones, if not bricking them entirely......

Microsoft has shifted into hardcore damage-control mode over the Windows Phone 7 updates, claiming that "only" 10 percent of users' smartphones have stalled on the new software.

The update, originally described to media as a "smaller infrastructure update that will help future updates," began to enter the Windows Phone 7 ecosystem Feb. 21. Soon afterward, users took to the Windows Phone 7 help forum (among other Websites) to post comments about the update stalling their smartphones, if not bricking them entirely.

In the wake of that, Microsoft decided to pull the update for Samsung smartphones. "We have identified a technical issue with the Windows Phone update process that impacts a small number of phones," a Microsoft spokesperson wrote in a Feb. 23 e-mail to me. "In response to this emerging issue, we have temporarily taken down the latest software update for Samsung phones in order to correct the issue."

But that didn't stop the "gloomy headlines," according to a new corporate blog posting, compelling Microsoft to break out some figures: 90 percent of Windows Phone 7 updates apparently went fine, leaving that aforementioned 10 percent to wrestle with the issue.

"Of the 10 percent who did experience a problem, nearly half failed for two basic reasons--a bad Internet connection or insufficient computer storage space," Michael Stroh, a writer for Microsoft's Windows team, posted Feb. 23 on the Windows Phone Blog. "Luckily, both are easy to fix."

I don't know about you, but a 10-percent failure rate is pretty bad. If Ford or Toyota released a new vehicle, and 10 percent of those vehicles exploded into a gaudy ball of flame when driven faster than 50 mph, the company would probably execute a recall. If Apple released a new tablet with a 10 percent failure rate, you'd have every pundit from New York to San Francisco braying that the company had lost its magic. It's not an insignificant number, or the sort of thing that can be easily dismissed as a statistical aberration.

The rest of the answer ("a bad Internet connection or insufficient computer storage space") sort of boggles my mind, too. I understand that Windows Phone Update needs space to create a backup image on one's PC, on top of actually downloading the update. I also know, from sad personal experience, that sometimes one's Internet connection isn't exactly the speediest or consistent. But I have a hard time believing that either of those two "culprits" could take such a substantial share of the blame for so many Windows Phone 7 devices suddenly deciding to become a paperweight.

And what about the rest of the affected smartphones? What sort of technical issue affected those? Why only Samsung devices? When are those Samsung devices receiving their update?

"Has the update process gone perfectly? No--but few large scale software updates ever do, and the engineering team here was prepared," Stroh wrote. "Of course, when it's your phone that's having a problem--or you're the one waiting--it's still aggravating."

Um, yeah.

As I mentioned yesterday, this is exactly the sort of problem that Microsoft needed to avoid in the early stages of the Windows Phone 7 rollout. I still believe the platform has a lot to like, but its position of relative newness in the smartphone marketplace means every systemic error, if not fatal, certainly has the potential for far greater damage than for a more established platform. Moreover, Stroh's posting--blaming the press for "gloomy headlines," implicitly blaming a subset of users for insufficient hard drive space--comes off as excessively defensive