Many owners of the recent HTC Touch HD2 bought their new handhelds with the expectation of a future upgrade to Windows Phone 7 when available.

However, users on blogs and forums cried out in unison today as their hopes were abruptly shattered by a statement from Natasha Kwan, General Manager for Microsoft’s Mobile Communications Business in the Asia-Pacific region: The HD2 will not be getting an upgrade.

But the reason is pretty obvious to this blogger… Microsoft has made it clear that Windows Phone 7 is taking drastic measures to cut back on the fragmentation and inconsistent user experience that current devices suffer from (too many different UIs and hardware configurations can make support, innovation and deployment extremely difficult).
In order to do this, Microsoft has had to tighten the control they have over the UI and be more specific about hardware requirements (which they admitted was difficult to discuss with OEMs).

One of the requirements shown off at the MWC event was the button layout- All devices need to have 3 very specific buttons on the layout: A Windows key, a back button, and a search key.

According the APCmag, the statement issued by Kwan was that the HD2 “doesn’t qualify because it doesn’t have the three buttons”, one of which needs to be a dedicated search key with the HD2 lacks.

Technically, since I’m not aware of any current phones have a dedicated search key, it was pretty obvious to me that there would be no official upgrades for current devices, including the HD2. However, many bloggers have been passing around rumors that the HD2 would, in fact be receiving an upgrade (some sources indicated the rumor started from HTC, however I have not yet found a reliable source of this information).

What surprises me, however, is that many bloggers are now spreading the rumor that the reason is because of the 5 button layout that the HD2 has, instead of sticking to the 3 mandated by Microsoft.

I assure you, that is not the reason. Look at the statement quoted on APC’s website. I don’t believe for a moment that a device would be disqualified for having EXTRA buttons. Microsoft simply dictated the minimum, and from Kwan’s statement, its pretty obvious that the culprit here is the lack of a search button. Nothing at all to do with having more keys than the minimum.

Glad we could get that sorted out.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 at 2:27 pm and is filed under Microsoft, Windows Mobile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.