If you could upgrade to Windows Mobile 2003...

[Guest morpheus2702]

Would you be prepared to pay for the upgrade?

(This thread is N&V if it is not possible to upgrade SPVs/E100s/etc!)

[Guest kyrkesmith]

I think it would be fair enough to pay for an upgrade. After all, you don't get an upgrade of Windows on your desktop for free.

Compaq charged a small fee for upgrading to Pocket PC 2002 from Pocket PC 2000 for their iPaqs, which I was perfectly willing to pay.

[Guest morpheus2702]

OK not many votes have been cast yet, but I am surprised at the lack of votes for the 1.6 update!

[Guest drblow]

I dont have a problem paying for it ... within reason of course & if it's actaully worth it. I totally fail to see why anyone could possibly think for even a second that Orange should/would provide it free.

[Guest stevewright]

Do most people still upgrade after a year anyway? If so, then it hardly seems worth it.

Surely all you people out there waiting on the edge of your seat for an E200 aren't even considering it...

[Guest Bazz]

It depends on a number of factors:

* How much better WM2003 is - I wouldn't pay for only minor improvements and, unlike msmobiles, I don't particularly care about .Net.

* Whether it runs sufficiently well on the SPV. The SPV can barely handle WM2002 so not sure if it will be able to cope with anything more.

* What new phones come out. The SPV's too big, with no integrated camera and is as slow as a dog. Changing the OS isn't going to help that much I don't think.

On an aside I dropped my SPV and screwed up the screen and have been on my old Nokia 8210 for the last week (must get round to phoning Orange Care). Anyway I'm amazed at how good it is. Light, dependable and with a battery life that's amazing. I do miss some things about my smartphone but not as much as I thought I would - I think a lot of it was the initial novelty factor. Seriously tempted to duck out of the Smartphone beta program for a while until there are some major improvements. Anyway that's a whole other conversation...

[Guest mattscholey]

My contract doesn't run out till August, so I won't be getting a new phone until then, so I'll happily pay £50 to make my phone a little bit newer (and better).

Matt

[Guest kyrkesmith]

I would pay £50, but I would hope that Orange would come up with a more reasonable price than that. As far as I recall, the Pocket PC upgrade was about £40, and I get the impression that that was a bigger update than Smartphone 2003 is going to be. £30 would be my ideal price. (Although, I wouldn't mind being given it free).

[Guest morpheus2702]

I think I paid £30 for my Ipaq update to PPC2002, which was reasonable enough.

Any more than that, and I think they risk people taking the quick and easy path and getting a pirate copy.

[Guest FY666]

it depends on whats inside and other new features..

[Guest kyrkesmith]

I am really hoping they do make it available – apparently HTC have to make a decision before Orange can – perhaps Mr Orange will discuss this on his upcoming visit?. It seems that almost all of the improvements on the E200 (obviously apart from the extra memory, bluetooth, and built in camera) are down to Smartphone 2003. Not everyone has a requirement for bluetooth or a built in camera – after all, if they did, why would they have bought an SPV in the first place?

I gather that it is estimated that Orange/HTC are paying about £1 for the OS on Smartphones, so if they got a similar rate with MS for the upgrade, they could easily charge £20-£30 and it would definitely make commercial sense.