n a Channel 9 interview on March 25, Joe Belfiore made a few statements regarding the whole update mess that is plaguing Windows Phone 7 that saw quite a bit of backlash right across the tech blogosphere, including my post on the subject.

It turns out that Belfiore has been reading many of those posts and comments; along with the Windows Phone management team, and as a result he left a long comment on the original Channel 9 post addressing what people had to say about his statements in the interview.

Here is his comment in its entirety:

Many of you are making critical comments here which are certainly fair.  First, I was wrong when I said  “most people have received the February update.” There are many of you who have yet to receive it, and I don’t blame you for speaking up and pointing out my mistake. Second,  I referred to our updates as “complete” because I was thinking of the internal process where we pass completed software to another group who delivers them – but of course no update is complete until you all have it.  Plus, at the time I did the interview we had started the NoDo (“march update”) delivery process and I knew “it was going well” from our perspective:  people were officially getting it, the success rate of its deployment on real-world phones was looking good, and we were happy that the process had STARTED well.  Still—these are NOT the same as all of you getting it and I’m sorry that I came across as insensitive to that fact.

I am a very, very big advocate for all our end-users and developers, and it bothers me a lot if I sounded out of touch.  I wasn’t as prepared for this interview as I should have been—I walked into the studio with an informal state of mind, thinking about MIX and what we WILL be talking about, and I didn’t have the right up-to-date information to give a good explanation on updates which I know to be a very high-interest topic right now.

I have read all of the comments here (and many of them on the other blogs) and so has pretty much everyone in our management team.  We know it’s been frustrating to wait for features/fixes and (probably worse) to hear little from us on specific dates. We are sorry the process has been rocky. The “where’s my phone update” table is our first step to try to remedy this in the face of technical problems that have made our first wave of updates take longer than we expected.  We know the table would benefit greatly from more detail, and we are hoping to add more to it by working with the Operators who own the “testing” phase to get more clarity.  If your phone is shown in “scheduling”, it’ll be worth checking the table next week.

In the spirit of “MIX as a conversation” – I will make sure that when I show up in Vegas that I’m well prepared to give an update in person and to try to answer your questions as best I can.  You folks are obviously a very important audience for us and it’s right for you to expect us to communicate and execute better. I know at this point it’s our actions that matter… The main thing we are trying to do is to get the updates out to everyone in a way that is reliable and works,  and then make our process better and more transparent in the future.

Thanks,
Joe

As good as it was to see Belfiore step up and address much of what had been said regarding his original statements, there was a part of his comment that doesn’t bode well for Windows Phone 7 moving forward. While Microsoft, and the Windows Phone team might be trying to be more transparent with things like the “Where’s My Phone Update” page the fact is they are still reliant on the carriers actually pushing out the updates in a timely manner (emphasis mine):

We know the table would benefit greatly from more detail, and we are hoping to add more to it by working with the Operators who own the “testing” phase to get more clarity.  If your phone is shown in “scheduling”, it’ll be worth checking the table next week.

Excuse me, but the whole purpose of Microsoft going against the grain and demanding a common set of hardware specs from all Windows Phone 7 handset OEMs was so that this testing period could be kept to a minimum. As commenter Warnie said in a comment reply to Joe’s comment:

Thanks for the response and it’s fairly clear that it was sincere. I appreciate reading and look forward to hearing more during MIX. However, your response identified the major problem that many of us have been harping on – specifically this quoted section:

“…and we are hoping to add more to it by working with the Operators who own the “testing” phase…”

The Operators SHOULD NOT OWN THE TESTING PHASE. By allowing them to “own” this critical phase, you have effectively given control to every carrier that operates a Windows Phone 7 device to determine the progress, and fragmentation, of the Windows Phone 7 platform. AT&T can just drag their heels forever, and there’s little you can do about it. That seriously cannot be what is desired. AT&T isn’t going to show due diligence towards any smartphone other than iPhone; Look at how they still treat the Android platform like a step child.

Am I missing something here or just being really naive? We have a common set of hardware specs across all handsets; which Microsoft and handset OEMs can easily test against, and we have exactly two specific types of wireless networks, CDMA and GSM, that need to be tested against.

What exactly is the delay point here?

It’s not like Android where you have an almost countless number of handset OEMs each with increasing variations of hardware guts.

It’s not like we have more types of wireless networks than we can count – there are two, in the U.S. and Canada at least.

Just two.

So tell me please – exactly what is so hard about testing an update on a limited number of handsets, all of which have a common set of hardware specs that is well known?

This isn’t rocket science here folks and the idea that the Operators own the testing phase is nothing more than an appeasement to the carriers; who, as it has been pointed out many times, have no incentive to push out updates – there’s no money in it for them.

Yes, it was good to see Joe Belfiore step up and try to clear the air some more after his gaff and hopefully this incident will lead to some more transparency regarding Windows Phone 7 and its future roadmap. However, as long as the carriers are the last mile deliverers of any updates you can be assured that this won’t be the last time we travel down this messy road.

[Cross-posted at Winextra]