No Windows Mobile 6.1 Upgrade For Any HP iPAQs

[Ed Hansberry]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=13948' target='_blank'>http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=13948</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"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."</em></p><br /><p>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 <em>not</em> making an upgrade available in lost customers? I know I'd be very reluctant to buy an iPAQ when other OEMs and carriers are <a target="_blank" href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/news/show/88400/microsoft-unveils-windows-mobile-6-1-new-version-of-internet-explorer-mobile.html">announcing upgrades for their recent devices</a>.</p>

[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]

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... :mad:

[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. :rolleyes:

[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.

[Mikey]

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. :rolleyes:


I was one of those that had the then high end "iPAQ 5550" that was less than 6 months old. No more HP for me after that lesson! HP screwed up Compaq & has been awful at customer service ever since they merged!

[John London]

I was going to get the iPAQ 211 if HP showed they are going to do upgrades. Well this is sad as I known HP to care, although different division, about their customers. Must be part of the CEO Herd cut backs! Time to figure out a different hardware vendor, HTC , E-Ten or some other company that will provide updates. Bye Bye HP! Might as well give up on these devices like you did with digital cameras. HP can even save more money for their bottom line!

[tendomentis]

I guess it's somewhat telling of HP in general when this bit of news no longer comes as a shock. I held on for so long hoping for a WM6 upgrade for my trusty 6915, and it never came (even though they had beta WM6 roms, but they already expired).

[trepine]

This alone was one of the significant motivating factors for me to buy an iPhone. I had many different PPC PDA's and phones. I found it extremely annoying that I had to essentially buy a new device each time I wanted a software upgrade to the latest and greatest. Also, bug fixes were few (if at all) and far between.

This is one thing apple has done well, that hopefully (but doubtfully) the rest of the smartphone makers will start doing. These companies need to better support the people who have invested in them. I would even have been willing to pay some fee, say $20.00-30.00 for a software upgrade on the device.

Lastly, why are PPC not like regular windows. Why can't we buy the OS from MS, and have manufacture produced drivers for the devices. This way the consumer can have a longer life than 1-2 years on a given device.

My $0.02

[alex_kac]

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.

WM6.1 is faster than wm6. Not by much, but its actually more optimized.

[nic]

They didn't offer any upgrades from WM2003 to WM2003SE. When has HP ever offered upgrades to an Mobile OS? I know I won't be purchasing another HP Pocket PC/Smartphone product.

[whydidnt]

This is disappointing, but not unexpected. HP has become decidedly slow when it comes to OS versions ever since they acquired Compaq. Often releasing devices with a soon to be out-of-date OS on them, and then not offering upgrades. It's too bad, because some of the hardware they produce is decent. When considering an HP device at this point you have to account for the fact it will most likely never receive an official OS upgrade.

At least they have been up front about this, and haven't given us the old "we don't comment on future releases" line or something like that. However, like many US corps these days, HP has fallen into the trap of making nearly every management decision based upon this quarter's profit potential, never caring what long term impact it has on the on the success of the company. Let's face it, releasing WM upgrades is an expense that most companies can't hope to recover within the same window the expense occurs in.

[Darius Wey]

They didn't offer any upgrades from WM2003 to WM2003SE. When has HP ever offered upgrades to an Mobile OS? I know I won't be purchasing another HP Pocket PC/Smartphone product.

They did offer a Windows Mobile 5.0 upgrade for the hx2000 and hx4700 series, but that was after much delay. And as I recall, performance on the latter was anything but stellar.

[Russ Smith]

I was about to write what others had about my last HP purchase being my last HP purchase when I started wondering why I thought it would be any better with any other manufacturer. Would it? Is there another manufacturer who currently offers updates to the new OS?

It would be nice if updating your mobile device were as simple as updating your laptop or desktop system is now. Even that has some issues, but it isn't anywhere near as dependent of your manufacturer or some cleaver ROM cooker. In a way it's like having to buy a new car because you want updated maps on your GPS. It seems like there should be a more generic upgrade path.

[Kacey Green]

They didn't offer any upgrades from WM2003 to WM2003SE. When has HP ever offered upgrades to an Mobile OS? I know I won't be purchasing another HP Pocket PC/Smartphone product.

I think my 2215 was upgraded, I may be remembering wrong, but it was an SE device when I stopped using it. I honestly don't know if it was a free or paid upgrade. (or if it came with SE, there was at least one ROM upgrade though)

[christak]

I was an iPAQ fan for quite a while and I still have the 3rd most "points" on the HP iPAQ forum - even though I no longer participate on that forum and haven't bought from HP since my 2210 days... HP doesn't get it. They want folks to spend top dollar for their devices, but don't provide the support that most folks would expect (for that money).

I switched over to a Dell Axim x50v about 3 years ago and have had an HTC 6800 (Sprint Mogul) for the past 8 months... HP lost me as a customer quite a while back for this "limited/no upgrade" stance... If they aren't going to offer these upgrades, that's fine... but they darn sure ought to drop their prices...
:cool:

[bkerrins]

I've been a big supporter of HP through the years. Owned a few Ipaqs, countless desk tops and laptops...but it's getting harder and harder. Support is none existant. Upgrades just don't exist or work. (Anyone try to use the Daylight Saving Time Patch? - How hard can that be to fix?)
I refuse to by Sony because of their memory stick madness, but it's looking like I'll have to ditch HP too...they are just too expensive to be a disposible commodity.

[Hosidax]

Compaq was a good company, HP is not.

I was a huge iPaq fan back in the day -- them I realized I was actually and HTC fan (they made the first iPaqs).

So there it is. Just because HP ate Compaq doesn't mean that the iPaq lagacy has any meaning, and HP seems to be doing it's best to kill the brand.

HP is one of the companies responsible for the low expectations that make the iPwned seem so "feature packed"... :(

[DaViD_BRaNDoN]

Geez! This is ridiculous! I got my HP iPAQ 112 not long ago and was hoping to get a Windows Mobile 6.1 upgrade (either free or paid). Looks like HP won't be in my list for future device purchases anymore :(

[txa1265]

I was one of those that had the then high end "iPAQ 5550" that was less than 6 months old. No more HP for me after that lesson! HP screwed up Compaq & has been awful at customer service ever since they merged!

I agree - having been around since pre-release of the 'Pegasus' based Palm-sized PC's, and since the early days Compaq was a great innovator and supporter, whereas even early on HP had cool stuff but was much more 'locked up'.

I had been out of the handheld game for some time until a recent job-change, and have been living off my iPaq 4355 once again and loving it. Had been thinking of something new ... but this news tells me I should just be happy with what I have ...