No Windows Mobile 6.1 Upgrade For Any HP iPAQs

[Ed Hansberry]

http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=13948

"Mike Hockey, Hewlett-Packard's Worldwide Public Relations Manager, said: "HP will not be offering an operating system upgrade for currently shipping HP iPAQ devices beyond what ships on the device today -- Microsoft Windows Mobile 6. This decision comes after having evaluated the potential for delays in firmware and software updates, device recertification, and carry-over costs to our customers that are often associated with an operating system upgrade."

There was a time when iPAQ users could be assured of an upgrade to the next version of a Windows Mobile release. Yes, it costs the company providing it money, but they charge the users. Do these companies look at the cost of not making an upgrade available in lost customers? I know I'd be very reluctant to buy an iPAQ when other OEMs and carriers are announcing upgrades for their recent devices.

[Ed Hansberry]

http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=13948

"Mike Hockey, Hewlett-Packard's Worldwide Public Relations Manager, said: "HP will not be offering an operating system upgrade for currently shipping HP iPAQ devices beyond what ships on the device today -- Microsoft Windows Mobile 6. This decision comes after having evaluated the potential for delays in firmware and software updates, device recertification, and carry-over costs to our customers that are often associated with an operating system upgrade."

There was a time when iPAQ users could be assured of an upgrade to the next version of a Windows Mobile release. Yes, it costs the company providing it money, but they charge the users. Do these companies look at the cost of not making an upgrade available in lost customers? I know I'd be very reluctant to buy an iPAQ when other OEMs and carriers are announcing upgrades for their recent devices.

[unxmully]

So the Ipaq Smartphone I bought late last year is not going to get this upgrade.

Looks like I just spent my last money with HP.

[PdaAddict]

looks like i won't be buying ipaq 211 after all. i had my doubts but this news does it for me. besides, chances are 6.1 will be even slower than 6.0, which is the usual story with microsoft products. most likely it will be goodbye WM and hello Apple.

[iant54]

It would be nice if HP were to provide fixes for the problems that have been encountered with the 21x, and provide the accessories referenced in the literature, but it almost appears as though they won't be forthcoming either.

[alese]

Originally Posted by PdaAddict

looks like i won't be buying ipaq 211 after all. i had my doubts but this news does it for me. besides, chances are 6.1 will be even slower than 6.0, which is the usual story with microsoft products. most likely it will be goodbye WM and hello Apple.

I don't know about "classic" devices or iPaqs specifaically, but my WM Phone runs visibly better and faster with WM 6.1 than it was with WM 6.0

As for the news - they basically managed to kill the sales of their devices with this news - I guess this way they'll be able to save even more with reducing production cost when they stop it.

[Jason Dunn]

That really sucks...

[yildi]

We are a little bit used to it... The upgrade by HO for the Hx4700 was catastrophic while my of 4700 is now comfortably living under a cooked WM6 ROM (snappy and else!). I have accepted this risk when I have bought my new iPAQ 214 (the Hx4700 has beginning to have some hardware connection problems - the contact becomes random with the charger plug) but this is probably the last time...

[Inventor]

I bought the iPAQ 614c the day it came out and posted here on how good this machine works. I dont have any problems with it. The FlashROM date is Jan 29 2008.

I dont have any issues with the OS on it, no lockups or nasty restore problems so I never used the internet update for this. I have never had to do a restore yet, and the way the OS works I dont think I will every have to. The OS is rock solid. It also works super fast with no tweaking. Thats the reason why I didnt bother to update the OS on it in the first place.

I think that HP did this is for two reasons:

1) Price - the iPAQ 614c is full of features (Camera, GPS, 520mhz processor, 128MB ram etc) and the price point of this device is *very low* compared to other devices you see on the market today. This lowers the price of the machine and future machines.

2) It works! - the WM6.0 OS is soild and the most stable of any device I have used before. I use my 614c SEVERAL hours per day and when I do something stupid (bad DLL or testing a program) I just soft re-set the device and it 'self repair'. WM 6.0 soft re-set fixes everything.

No complaints from me, I upgrade every 1-2 years so I rather get a new and entire OS when I get a machine instead of having to update all of the time (come on 6.1??) and have problems, etc. with it. I dont like going into the "Updating ROM screen", worrying about my data becoming a brick.

If it works, dont fix it!

[Darius Wey]

I still remember the hullabaloo over HP's refusal to provide WM2003SE upgrades for several h series iPAQs. They lost a fair few customers that way.

5 years later, it's great seeing how much things have changed.

[paschott]

HP got my last $$ with the 2215. I was one of the many hoping for at least one upgrade to WM2003SE. I realize it wasn't built to handle WM5 (though that would have been extremely cool). However, the standard prior to the 2215 was usually one OS version upgrade for each device. Even the 3600 got that much and then some. The device worked fine for me and still works, but it pretty much showed me that HP didn't really care about me as a customer. They wanted my money, but only if I kept buying new devices.

I moved on to an HTC Wizard for my next PPC and am generally pleased with it. Add in the support from the XDA community and it's still going strong despite HTC and the carriers pretty much dropping support for it (for all of the same reasons as HP, admittedly).

Just another time that I wish MS would give a little more control of the OS to the consumers and let the carriers work on drivers/hardware support. Kind of like Windows works on desktops. Let us try the new version and upgrade the OS as we wish. Force a standard driver model that doesn't depend on the OS Version to avoid the recent scenario that Creative's going through with their intentionally crippled Vista drivers. I can dream. I seriously doubt that this is even under consideration from WM 7 or even 8. I wish MS would pick up on it, though and realize we don't want to be tied to the people who manufactured the hardware.