Microsoft this week announced some changes to how it shares information about Windows Phone updates. One comment indicated that updates would be provided to carriers who requested it, suggesting that carriers could opt out of future updates. The expected Windows Phone user outcry did not take long.
Asked about the change by ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley, Greg Sullivan, Senior Product Manager on Windows Phone said that “Nothing has changed in regard to how we work with carriers to deliver Windows Phone updates to our customers.” Basically, Microsoft’s policies and procedures on how it develops and delivers updates remain unchanged. A carrier can still decide to hold off on a particular update. If it does, the next one would have to be deployed and would include the previous one as well (carriers can only skip one update).
As for Microsoft’s Where’s my phone update? page, the information was a response to difficulties with early updates. With recent updates being quite successful (the 7.5 update was essentially completed in a month), it has decided to retire the page. It added that the growing number of devices and carriers would make the page unwieldy to use in the future.
In the end, it appears that Windows Phone uses will have less information than they have had in the past but that the process itself remains unchanged.