Are patches now becoming acceptable for Smartphone as well?

[Guest Kajjy]

First we have software companies telling us that "it's OK, the next patch will fix that issue" - now it seems like we're willing to accept the same for our Smartphones. Now before someone thinks that I'm being a bit of a wuss - it's a Smartphone so it's expected, let me explain why.

I've had an Xphone for just a little over a month now. As soon as it became officially available in Thailand, I got it. Within the first week, I encountered the SD card problem with the Xphone - I couldn't write or modify the data on the SD card - I could only read from it. Attempts to write or modify data on the SD card results on the Xphone hanging and in some instances corrupting the data structure, and hence the data, on the SD card.

I'd initially bought a Kingston 256MB SD card with the yellow lock tab, i.e. Toshiba OEM, multicell 256MB SD card. I then later discovered that Xphone has incompatibility issues with the 256 MB SD card with the yellow lock tab. This fact was supported by the fact that I am now using an Apacer 256MB SD card with with the white lock tab - at the time of purchase, I'd tried both Apacer 256MB SD card with with the white lock tab and Apacer 256MB SD card with with the yellow lock tab - needless to say, the Apacer 256MB SD card with with the yellow lock tab doesn't work with the Xphone.

My point is that even as we speak, O2's official website still doesn't list this issue as "Known Limitations". Why? Are they waiting for the next "patch" to come out in the form of a ROM update to fix this problem? What about people who unknowingly bought a 256MB SD card with the yellow tab and experienced the same thing I did? Wait for the ROM update? And only read data? I'd informed O2 (Thailand) of this problem as soon as I knew about it a month ago - and when I spoke to their tech support yesterday, he told me that thing I told him about a month ago may have something to it as they are now getting some inquiries regarding which SD cards are compatible with the Xphone. What makes it even worse is that the Xphone was released elsewhere before Thailand and as far as I know, this issue was also expereinced by the earlier users, so the time frame in which O2 had in order to resolve this issue is much longer than a month.

Even now, I am experiencing occasional signal losses and some other people are experiencing Xphone "lock ups" and here we are scratching our heads trying to find out what is causing all these issues. The answer I got from O2 (Thailand) is, and I quote "It's probably something to do with network incompatibility". Does that then read "Wait for the ROM update?". As we speak, I lost the signal on my Xphone again and you know what I did? I asked my colleague, who is using the same cellular service provider, DTAC, sitting next to me to try to call me on my US$400 Xphone, using his sub US$100 Sony Ericsson T100 only to get diverted to my voice mailbox. Signal Strength? Check! SIM card? Check! (I got a new SIM card last week) Flight Mode? Nope! What the heck is causing all this? No one knows....wait for the ROM update.........Is this now acceptable to us?

[Guest peekie]

not really but these companies advertise their products in shows with a date of the release and rush to get it out on time,good example was the motorola mpx 200 it finally came out 3 months late due to software problems and these were not all sorted out.plus companies know they can upgrade the roms in the future if the problems are large,its not a good way to work but its the norm in the microsoft world ( see how many updates xp has had ( compared to that the smartphone is nearly perfect ) :wink: :wink: :wink:

[Guest Kajjy]

As much as Peekie's reply is true, I still find it irresponsible of O2 not to publish or acknowledge even the possibility of incompatibilities such as the SD card issue. I know a few people who have bought the Xphone and posted on the board that they are having issues with their SD cards, and I'm guessing they're yellow-tabbed and 256MB . Like me, they will have to sell their perfectly functioning SD card at a loss and get a compatible card. Or if he/she really feel energetic, I suppose they can go to O2 and demand a swap-out until O2 can give him/her an Xphone that works with their yellow-tabbed 256MB SD card, because, officially, the Xphone has no SD card compatibility issue and therefore, if it's not working with the SD card that works fine in say, a Pocket PC, then the Xphone at hand must logically be defective?

I'm not trying to be a pain here but I just think they should at least have issued a warning to the consumers regarding this issue - that the consumer should be aware of this problem and try to read and write any SD card that they plan to use with the Xphone because there are compatibility issues. And that's just the tip of the iceburg here. May be it's because I've just sold off my Pocket PC and mobile phone and gotten the Xphone so I don't know what is expected in the Smartphone industry - may be it's the norm for companies to keep quite about any issues and then release a patch, whoo ha, look what we fixed, bet y'all didn't even know about the problem, now we've identified it and fixed it for ya? If so then I apologize for posting this topic at all.

As we speak, I have complained to O2 about this through their website's feedback. It's been 2 days now and I've had no respond from them. The last time a friend of mine complained to HP, the respoind was immediate - I guess customer's complaints have higher priorities at HP than O2.

[Guest FRiC]

I notice that Transcend's 256 MB SD cards also come in white and yellow tabs! I wonder if they'll also have compatibility problems...

(Currently looking to upgrade to 512 MB from 256 MB.)

[Guest Kajjy]

FRiC, there are basically only 2 types white and yellow. Yellow ones are Toshiba OEM while the white ones are either Panasonic (rare) or SanDisk (more likely) OEM. Toshiba uses Multi-Cell - this, for some reason, appears to affect only 256MB SD cards. I've read elsewhere that 512MB Kingston (don't know what colour the tab is) works perfectly fine but you can't hot swap it - you have to turn off the Xphone and only then can you take out the SD card.

My advice is that you try read and write test (copy and paste files to and from the SD card) and try to hot swap the SD card as well - honestly, try it yourself before forking out as we can't rely on the manufacturer, O2, to be considerate enought to provide us with the necessary information regarding this.......