[ianl]

While I appreciate the point of the video, it is easy enough to achieve such a Radio ROM upgrade now, provided you have an Internet connection (wifi or 3G) and an SDHC card with enough spare space. Also, different device brands have different requirements for SD card types that the bootloader will read.

It is more tedious with a full ROM upgrade because the nbh file is so much larger, but still the same routine. Download data cost is high too.

The real problem lies in the OEM section of the ROM. This section contains the files specific to the device and is initially supplied by the manufacturer as part of a ROM. It is this section that the manufacturer must update after Microsoft has released an OS upgrade of the kernel. For example, WM6.0 > WM6.1 requires a re-written OEM section before a new ROM is ready to flash.

For those with free devices (ie. not tethered to a specific carrier), this is still possible, but way too much trouble for a manufacturer and even revenue-threatening for them since the customer will defer purchasing a new device for a period. Still, the manufacturers could implement this and charge a reasonable fee for the download access. (BTW, this concept is the anithesis of the iPhone business model, so I can't see an economic revenue driver for WM device manufacturers - why should they, when their arch competitor doesn't and has no intention of ?)

For devices welded to specific carriers (ugh ! what a horrible idea), there is no incentive to do this at all, and a positive disincentive in the cost of managing the inevitable stuff-ups that large numbers of customers will perpetrate.

Conclusion ? ROM cookers are here to stay. I believe that the manufacturers actually loosely monitor the cooked ROM's (easy to do) because this supplies them gratis with a fertile source of innovation and beta testing with feedback.