Yes to NoDo – No to the Process. Has Microsoft stopped caring about Anna and Miles?

After I finally got notified on my phone about an Update being available, I immediately plugged it in to my USB port and let the Zune software take-off.  The download started and told me it would take 10 minutes.  After waiting for about that long, I got the error code:

Microsoft recommends that anyone with this error should download their Windows Phone Support Tool.  After installing the tool, I followed the instructions of putting my phone into an update mode and then choosing [Recover].  Less than 30 seconds later, it was finished.

I re-ran the February 2011 update and that succeeded this time.  Then I continued with the NoDo… and a total of 25 minutes later, I had my phone updated.

This begs me to ask why couldn’t Microsoft add the smarts from the Support Tool into the normal update?  I guess the Tool download was 15MB, but a lot of the logic that ships in this tool would also be in the Zune update binaries already.  They can already detect error codes that require this extra tool, why couldn’t they make the upgrade experience smoother by just rolling it all together.

Microsoft’s original “story” for Windows Phone 7 is to target Anna and Miles who represent a “Life Maximizer” audience that demands their phone to be great.  If I were Miles, I would not want to deal with such an unpolished update process.  I would want to plug in my phone and come back 20 minutes later with it updated and working.

The update process really needs to be more streamline because that would allow for WP7 to get more updates more often.  It took over 6 months to get the first update out to my phone.  And Microsoft is talking about “Mango” not being released until the end of 2011 at the earliest.  Considering that it took 2 additional months from the time Microsoft released NoDo until it was available for my phone, I would not be surprised if Mango is not available from AT&T for my phone until early 2012.

Apple releases updates for iOS almost every month. So many of those updates includes those small features that make their phones a little more perfect.  These are the kinds of updates WP7 needs.  I was an iPhone 3G owner and I did have update issues from time-to-time.  But many of those I also brought on myself by always applying the newest update as soon as possible.  Within a short time, another update would be available that fixed the problem as if it never existed.

WP7 is a new phone OS and a pretty good one.  But it still has a lot of rough edges that need to be smoothed out before it can be great (missing features, experience annoyances, small bugs).  If Microsoft is only going to be releasing updates every 6-12 months, this phone will not gain traction.  Current users will start to fade and grow tired of missing features that they see in the other smart phones. 

Personally, knowing that I have to wait 1 year before I see any chance of a fix or new feature… if I lose or destroy my phone (knock on wood), my replacement will be a more mature smart phone.  I would rather wait for WP7.5 or even WP8 then to be stuck with a 7.0 product for another year.  As decent as WP7.0.7390.0 is… I really wish and thought there would be a WP7.1 or 7.2 or 7.3 or 7.4 by now.