Microsoft says FU to Mobile Operators regarding updates

[RagnarokDel]

good.

 

I think android has a terrible long term support and keeping devices up to date. if its not a nexus its not getting updates.

To be fair, it's not google's fault carriers dont update. Mind you they could change the way updates are made so it's independant from carriers/makers. Having a stock android OS should always be an option anyway

[The Benjamins]

To be fair, it's not google's fault carriers dont update. Mind you they could change the way updates are made so it's independant from carriers/makers. Having a stock android OS should always be an option anyway

 

it may not be their fault but it is their problem, and they should provide a solution. if i shoot you in the leg, are you going to say "I didn't do it so I don't need to fix it"

[Paranoid Kami]

It's good that Microsoft updates their phones and I like that Google updates their Nexus phones, which is why I have one. The only thing I don't like about a Windows phone is the app support. I bought a baby monitor as a present for someone a few months ago and you could only view the feed with a smartphone running on Android or Apple. It would have been useless with a Windows phone.

[patrickjp93]

Assuming their distribution platform is in any way sane, then it doesnt matter how many phones they have to support, the code base is the same, its just what its compiled to, and which drivers it has to include. Code up your distribution well, and you can cover infinite devices over infinite locales

Careful, facts confuse this community, especially where software support comes in.

But seriously, write everything in C/C++ and you can compile it to any platform as long as you have a compiler with support for the target instruction set.

[LAwLz]

Great move by Microsoft. Carriers should have no business controlling updates. All they should do is give customers a SIM card and then handle moving packets from and to the SIM card. That's it.

 

 

Assuming their distribution platform is in any way sane, then it doesnt matter how many phones they have to support, the code base is the same, its just what its compiled to, and which drivers it has to include. Code up your distribution well, and you can cover infinite devices over infinite locales

What Apple and now Microsoft is doing is the right way. Ideally it would have an update system like in Windows, but this is an excellent first and right step.

 

I hope that Windows 10 Mobile gain more traction to put pressure on Google and carriers that this crap has to stop, and updates are delivered properly to all users, as soon as possible.

Sadly it does not seem like this is the case with Windows Phone. I am not sure why but ARM just seems like a pain in the ass to make updates for.

Windows Phone has an awful track record of updates thanks to Microsoft just flat out dumping support for Windows Phone 7 devices. Not a single Windows Phone 7 device got updated to Windows Phone 8. They dropped plans for updates for Windows RT as well.

On top of that, you won't get the same OS and feature set when you buy a Windows Phone 8. I recently went though this list to see how true it is today (it was made in 2012 and has a lot of duplicates) and what I found was a ton of "it works on this phone with this update but not on other phones". I don't follow WP updates but from what I can tell, updates like WP Cyan were only for certain devices, not all Phones running Windows, and the same seemed to be true for a lot of updates.

I should mention that it seems like all WP 8 phones have or will get updated to WP 8.1 so that's good at least.

 

I would love if someone could explain to me why updates seem like such a huge problem for ARM devices when it has never been an issue for x86.

[GoodBytes]

Sadly it does not seem like this is the case with Windows Phone. I am not sure why but ARM just seems like a pain in the ass to make updates for.

Windows Phone has an awful track record of updates thanks to Microsoft just flat out dumping support for Windows Phone 7 devices. Not a single Windows Phone 7 device got updated to Windows Phone 8. They dropped plans for updates for Windows RT as well.

On top of that, you won't get the same OS and feature set when you buy a Windows Phone 8. I recently went though this list to see how true it is today (it was made in 2012 and has a lot of duplicates) and what I found was a ton of "it works on this phone with this update but not on other phones". I don't follow WP updates but from what I can tell, updates like WP Cyan were only for certain devices, not all Phones running Windows, and the same seemed to be true for a lot of updates.

I should mention that it seems like all WP 8 phones have or will get updated to WP 8.1 so that's good at least.

 

I would love if someone could explain to me why updates seem like such a huge problem for ARM devices when it has never been an issue for x86.

Yup sadly. But many Windows Phone 8 user, can get Windows 10 mobile. It is expected that the OS will be released in November, and in December the focus will be on upgrading Windows Phone 8 devices. Already, if you have a Windows Phone 8, you can beta test Windows 10 Mobile (if your phone is supported).

[Killmeplsok]

Big assumptions: Nobody but Apple can assure that. Windows it's tiny in market share and also in the number of devices and henceforth hardware it needs to support vs Android which has to work on literally hundreds of different brands and tens of thousands of different hardware configurations if not more.

Well, phones are definitely different than PCs, but Microsoft had been able to support 

 

literally hundreds of different brands and tens of thousands of different hardware configurations if not more

 

on Windows PC, for years, it's probably not impossible to do so for them, they just have to find a way.

[DXMember]

Yes this work because of their tiny market share and number of different devices to support and carriers that officially sell them. Multiply this by about a fucking Billion and they'd be crumbling just like Google is.

 

Yet the solution is so simple: Fuck carrier permission.

not a problem,

Windows phones use standardized hardware across all devices

[LAwLz]

Yup sadly. But many Windows Phone 8 user, can get Windows 10 mobile. It is expected that the OS will be released in November, and in December the focus will be on upgrading Windows Phone 8 devices. Already, if you have a Windows Phone 8, you can beta test Windows 10 Mobile (if your phone is supported).

That (if your phone is supported) is the part I don't get about ARM devices. Android seem to have it the worst when it comes to updates but that's probably just because they are the biggest and most diverse, but all companies seem to struggle when it comes to support. I've never heard someone say you can't update Windows on a laptop because the hardware is not supported, but it happens all the bloody time on phones and tablets.

Maybe it has to do with them missing BIOSes.

 

 

 

not a problem,

Windows phones use standardized hardware across all devices

It is still a problem even with standardized hardware (which Microsoft has loosened up the requirements of a lot since Windows Phone 7). We already have different Windows phones get different updates at different times.

[GoodBytes]

That (if your phone is supported) is the part I don't get about ARM devices. Android seem to have it the worst when it comes to updates but that's probably just because they are the biggest and most diverse, but all companies seem to struggle when it comes to support. I've never heard someone say you can't update Windows on a laptop because the hardware is not supported, but it happens all the bloody time on phones and tablets.

Maybe it has to do with them missing BIOSes.

I could wrong, but from my understand it has to do that ARM processors are not standard like x86. It is only a genera, architecture, and each vendor CPU, or even model support different instruction sets, and technologies. Making that the OS needs to be adapted.

Similarly to the GPU, which only support a subset of OpenGL (DirectX for Windows Phones)

[suicidalfranco]

If you were buying PCs like people buy cell phones they would. Get your PC free with a 2 year bloated service contract from your ISP, you think they aren't going to FORCE bloat, security software, and decide what gets updated and when? What about TVs? Get your new 50" Smart TV for free or a 65" for 200 with a 5 year contract from Comcast, you think there aren't going to be cell phone style headaches whenever systems like that are in place? Heck just in cable boxes, smart TVs, and routers you DO have those issues, bad leases, no updates, security holes, bad hardware, bad service, bad support, etc.

 

Who here buys unlocked phones at full price and can legitimately say they have a phone with no update options?

 

Playing a little devil's advocate, but the problem is multi-tiered and it is unfortunately a fractured and faceted pogrom with no real leadership. Where does the buck stop? Carriers? Consumers? Manufacturers? OS designers? Cell phones may never reach the level of standardization and market wide interoperablility that PC's have attained. IS it really fair to hold them to that industry's standard? They are super advanced but cell phones are still in the Commodore, Atari, and Tandy phase. It's a melee. The PC industry had decades of upheaval, conglomeration, and development to get to this point. You kind of have to go through the bad old days of bespoke custom Compaq hardware to get to the golden age of ATX, PCIe, and interchangeable parts.

 

For other industries it often took even longer.

i bought my note 2 unlocked and i'm on 5.1.1, patiently waiting for marshmallow now

[LukaP]

Big assumptions: Nobody but Apple can assure that. Windows it's tiny in market share and also in the number of devices and henceforth hardware it needs to support vs Android which has to work on literally hundreds of different brands and tens of thousands of different hardware configurations if not more.

Intel/AMD x86 cpus. Qualcomm ARM CPUs. Imagination, Radeon, GeForce, Quadro, Adreno, Intel GPUs. 100 million different devices worldwide. I would call that one damn enormous range of hardware for one codebase, and yet they manage fine

 

Careful, facts confuse this community, especially where software support comes in.

But seriously, write everything in C/C++ and you can compile it to any platform as long as you have a compiler with support for the target instruction set.

Exactly. Even higher level languages pose no problem, as long as they have a compiler for the given instruction set. And since MS have finally decided to update their compilers, Im sure they wont have any problem compiling into any of the above mentioned ISAs

 

Great move by Microsoft. Carriers should have no business controlling updates. All they should do is give customers a SIM card and then handle moving packets from and to the SIM card. That's it.

 

 

Sadly it does not seem like this is the case with Windows Phone. I am not sure why but ARM just seems like a pain in the ass to make updates for.

Windows Phone has an awful track record of updates thanks to Microsoft just flat out dumping support for Windows Phone 7 devices. Not a single Windows Phone 7 device got updated to Windows Phone 8. They dropped plans for updates for Windows RT as well.

On top of that, you won't get the same OS and feature set when you buy a Windows Phone 8. I recently went though this list to see how true it is today (it was made in 2012 and has a lot of duplicates) and what I found was a ton of "it works on this phone with this update but not on other phones". I don't follow WP updates but from what I can tell, updates like WP Cyan were only for certain devices, not all Phones running Windows, and the same seemed to be true for a lot of updates.

I should mention that it seems like all WP 8 phones have or will get updated to WP 8.1 so that's good at least.

 

I would love if someone could explain to me why updates seem like such a huge problem for ARM devices when it has never been an issue for x86.

Well im talking about this from an assumption that MS plan to synchronise their updates to W10 across every device. Meaning every device running W10 will get every update that ever comes (in the support period i assume, as to not bother with 5 year old phones being updated, apart from security).

 

And why phones have been so notoriously slow to get updated (namely android here) is because every update needs to go through the Carriers test people or something like that (thank you america for that one). Meaning each carrier delays the update. or even sends it back to get improved or something. Couple that with the immense fragmentation of android hardware (compared to one ISA for x86, and basically 2 ISAs for the GPUs in PCs, and even that is abstracted these days), which makes the slow updates quite expected. sadly

 

Also, android phone manufacturers seem to be adamant on supporting as few generations as possible

[werto165]

 

 

And why phones have been so notoriously slow to get updated

 

 

[Misanthrope]

Intel/AMD x86 cpus. Qualcomm ARM CPUs. Imagination, Radeon, GeForce, Quadro, Adreno, Intel GPUs. 100 million different devices worldwide. I would call that one damn enormous range of hardware for one codebase, and yet they manage fine

 

Also over 25 years of time to slowly incorporate and refine everything and no adverse outside interests like mobile operators.

[LukaP]

Also over 25 years of time to slowly incorporate and refine everything and no adverse outside interests like mobile operators.

That wasnt your statement. your statement was that the Windows codebase doesnt run on many different hardware combinations (basically).

 

I have proven you wrong. (also it was i who said the things about mobile operators)

[Misanthrope]

That wasnt your statement. your statement was that the Windows codebase doesnt run on many different hardware combinations (basically).

No. That was not at all my point: I said that the windows meant for the motherfucking phones which HAS NOT ALWAYS BEEN the same version hasn't. Stop building straw men.

[LukaP]

Big assumptions: Nobody but Apple can assure that. Windows it's tiny in market share and also in the number of devices and henceforth hardware it needs to support vs Android which has to work on literally hundreds of different brands and tens of thousands of different hardware configurations if not more.

Literally your quote here. Youre saying Windows doesnt have to work on alot of devices. "windows its tiny in market share, and also in number of devices" I have proven you wrong on both accounts. even compared it to android.

 

No. That was not at all my point: I said that the windows meant for the motherfucking phones which HAS NOT ALWAYS BEEN the same version hasn't. Stop building straw men.

So stop changing your mind and *sunshine and rainbows* because you are *sunshine and rainbows*

[MoonSpot]

Great move by Microsoft. Carriers should have no business controlling updates. All they should do is give customers a SIM card and then handle moving packets from and to the SIM card. That's it.

 

 

Well if we think back a bit it would seem the carriers have already accomplished their initial greatest goal and killed off the VOIP efforts that we're going on several years ago and have supplanted them with their own or other more costly alternatives to the almost free ones that the pioneers we're letting loose.  It was never about security and always about gimping the customers product and pigeon holing us into their services.  The only security carriers/ISPs have ever done is their own financial security.  They don't care about handset makers dealing directly with end users for software nearly as much anymore now that they've bought the time they needed to consolidate the infrastructures, IP, and resources they wanted.

[LAwLz]

Well im talking about this from an assumption that MS plan to synchronise their updates to W10 across every device. Meaning every device running W10 will get every update that ever comes (in the support period i assume, as to not bother with 5 year old phones being updated, apart from security).

 

And why phones have been so notoriously slow to get updated (namely android here) is because every update needs to go through the Carriers test people or something like that (thank you america for that one). Meaning each carrier delays the update. or even sends it back to get improved or something. Couple that with the immense fragmentation of android hardware (compared to one ISA for x86, and basically 2 ISAs for the GPUs in PCs, and even that is abstracted these days), which makes the slow updates quite expected. sadly

 

Also, android phone manufacturers seem to be adamant on supporting as few generations as possible

I thought they intended to synchronize updates with Windows Phone 7, and then I thought it again with Windows Phone 8. Both times it has turned out that did not work.

 

Carriers are not the only reason since they are slow in countries without carriers getting in the way as well (which is why a lot of countries often get updates several weeks before the US does).

We only have 1 ISA for phone CPUs as well (or well, two if you count ARMv7 and ARMv8), and if you are referring to OpenGL and DirectX as abstractions for the GPU then yep, we got that on ARM as well.

But even with a very very limited set of hardware, like with Windows Phone 7, and the massive resources over at Microsoft they still couldn't update all phones and in the end just dropped support completely and moved over to Windows Phone 8.

 

It doesn't seem like "hardware is fragmented so therefore updates are slow and in low quantity" is an explanation. To me it seems like the entire software model on ARM devices is extremely rigid and everything has to be custom made for each individual phone, while on desktops it's more like the software adapts to whatever hardware you got.

[LukaP]

I thought they intended to synchronize updates with Windows Phone 7, and then I thought it again with Windows Phone 8. Both times it has turned out that did not work.

 

Carriers are not the only reason since they are slow in countries without carriers getting in the way as well (which is why a lot of countries often get updates several weeks before the US does).

We only have 1 ISA for phone CPUs as well (or well, two if you count ARMv7 and ARMv8), and if you are referring to OpenGL and DirectX as abstractions for the GPU then yep, we got that on ARM as well.

But even with a very very limited set of hardware, like with Windows Phone 7, and the massive resources over at Microsoft they still couldn't update all phones and in the end just dropped support completely and moved over to Windows Phone 8.

 

It doesn't seem like "hardware is fragmented so therefore updates are slow and in low quantity" is an explanation. To me it seems like the entire software model on ARM devices is extremely rigid and everything has to be custom made for each individual phone, while on desktops it's more like the software adapts to whatever hardware you got.

i said im talking about this under the assumption of it being a thing now

 

No you have an ARMv7 ISA. Then you have 2 ARMv8 ISAs, namely ARMv8 AArch32 and AArch64. Then you have many different implementations of that, from an A7 core, to a Denver or Krait core. Those all require altered compilation flags and such

 

For GPUs i meant drivers mostly. Those are lowerlevel than DX/oGL. I simplified it with NV/AMD, actually every arch has a slightly different instruction set and with it drivers. Then you get the Mali/Adreno/etc mobile stuff, which sometimes dont even support a shader pipeline (instead relying on WLIV tech... That is something that needs to be coded for.

 

I do agree with your last statement. for some reason it does seem so. I am hoping project ARA (even if it doestn get released) will actually take android into the hardware agnostic route now, or atleast help it get there

[Misanthrope]

Literally your quote here. Youre saying Windows doesnt have to work on alot of devices. "windows its tiny in market share, and also in number of devices" I have proven you wrong on both accounts. even compared it to android.

 

So stop changing your mind and *sunshine and rainbows* because you are *sunshine and rainbows*

I almost consider your intentional misrepresentation trolling at this point. Needless to say we're done here.

[Nowak]

I thought they intended to synchronize updates with Windows Phone 7, and then I thought it again with Windows Phone 8. Both times it has turned out that did not work.

 

Carriers are not the only reason since they are slow in countries without carriers getting in the way as well (which is why a lot of countries often get updates several weeks before the US does).

We only have 1 ISA for phone CPUs as well (or well, two if you count ARMv7 and ARMv8), and if you are referring to OpenGL and DirectX as abstractions for the GPU then yep, we got that on ARM as well.

But even with a very very limited set of hardware, like with Windows Phone 7, and the massive resources over at Microsoft they still couldn't update all phones and in the end just dropped support completely and moved over to Windows Phone 8.

 

It doesn't seem like "hardware is fragmented so therefore updates are slow and in low quantity" is an explanation. To me it seems like the entire software model on ARM devices is extremely rigid and everything has to be custom made for each individual phone, while on desktops it's more like the software adapts to whatever hardware you got.

Wasn't part of the reason why Windows Phone 7 devices weren't upgraded to Windows Phone 8 due to the switch from Windows CE to NT and Microsoft was somehow unable to write drivers for the older phones to help make the transition from CE to NT smoother?

[LAwLz]

No you have an ARMv7 ISA. Then you have 2 ARMv8 ISAs, namely ARMv8 AArch32 and AArch64. Then you have many different implementations of that, from an A7 core, to a Denver or Krait core. Those all require altered compilation flags and such

Okay fine. ARMv7 and the two ARMv8 instruction sets. I don't really see how the different implementations can play a big role though. We don't have that issue on desktops despite the architectures between different CPUs being very different on the low levels. Besides, most phones share the same SoC and despite this you still have to put in a lot of work and develop separate builds for each device. It's not like you can take the ROM for the M9, tweak it a tiny bit and then make it run on a Z5 for example. It requires a ton of work (at least that's what it seems like).

 

 

For GPUs i meant drivers mostly. Those are lowerlevel than DX/oGL. I simplified it with NV/AMD, actually every arch has a slightly different instruction set and with it drivers. Then you get the Mali/Adreno/etc mobile stuff, which sometimes dont even support a shader pipeline (instead relying on WLIV tech... That is something that needs to be coded for.

Yes GPU drivers might slow down development a whole lot, but why not just make a generic video driver and then allow drivers to be installed from inside the OS? You know, like we do on desktop Windows. From what I can tell you need to re-flash the entire OS if you want to get a new video driver.

 

 

I do agree with your last statement. for some reason it does seem so. I am hoping project ARA (even if it doestn get released) will actually take android into the hardware agnostic route now, or atleast help it get there

That would be great but I kind of doubt it. Besides, Android is already incredibly hardware agnostic... If you are willing to put in a bit of work you can make it run on pretty much anything. Just seems like that "bit of work" has to be done for every God damn update.

 

 

 

 

Wasn't part of the reason why Windows Phone 7 devices weren't upgraded to Windows Phone 8 due to the switch from Windows CE to NT and Microsoft was somehow unable to write drivers for the older phones to help make the transition from CE to NT smoother?

Yes I think that was the explanation given.

[Doobeedoo]

As it should be. Good

[LukaP]

Okay fine. ARMv7 and the two ARMv8 instruction sets. I don't really see how the different implementations can play a big role though. We don't have that issue on desktops despite the architectures between different CPUs being very different on the low levels. Besides, most phones share the same SoC and despite this you still have to put in a lot of work and develop separate builds for each device. It's not like you can take the ROM for the M9, tweak it a tiny bit and then make it run on a Z5 for example. It requires a ton of work (at least that's what it seems like).

 

 

Yes GPU drivers might slow down development a whole lot, but why not just make a generic video driver and then allow drivers to be installed from inside the OS? You know, like we do on desktop Windows. From what I can tell you need to re-flash the entire OS if you want to get a new video driver.

 

 

That would be great but I kind of doubt it. Besides, Android is already incredibly hardware agnostic... If you are willing to put in a bit of work you can make it run on pretty much anything. Just seems like that "bit of work" has to be done for every God damn update.

Different implementations require different drivers for optimal usage (think of it as a dialects of a language, youll be much faster to communicate if both of you speak the same dialect). 

 

Drivers in Android seem to be compiled directly into the OS, that is why its so hard to do any hardware change without lots of software work. Im guessing that is what the Android Ara is running is trying to fix. Make it easier to change drivers on the fly