In an embarrassing glitch for the world’s leading software maker, Microsoft has put an update for its Windows Phone 7 operating system on hold for users of Samsung devices following technical problems that damaged what it said was a “small number of phones.”
Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 Answers forum quickly filled up with questions and complaints on Monday and Tuesday as the company made the first update for the system available by connecting to PCs.
Time for an iPhone?
“So, I finally see we got an update today for the Windows Phone 7, so I dutifully upgrade my phone,” wrote user Carl M M of Canada, who has a Samsung Focus. “It fails on Step 6 of 10 with error code 80180080, ‘We couldn’t update your phone because your operating system might be corrupt.’ Then when I reboot it, I’m prompted to reconnect the phone and I get error C101002E, ‘An error prevented the restoration of your phone to its previous version.’ Any ideas? Besides buy an iPhone?”
Another user, LocoNinja, writes, “I have tried rebooting several times and removing the battery and I get the same thing each time. My [Samsung] Omnia 7 is now a brick. This is not good enough, Microsoft. It’s your first Windows Phone 7 update and you screw it up.”
The update was intended to pave the way for future features, such as cut and paste and more multitasking, by improving the update process itself, the company wrote on its Windows Phone blog on Feb. 21.
The next day there was no mention of the issue on the same blog, just a new post about using shake gestures.
In a statement Wednesday, Microsoft said, “We have identified a technical issue with the Windows Phone update process that impacts a small number of phones. We have temporarily taken down the latest software…