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< Esato Forum Index > Sony Ericsson / Sony > Software, Firmware and Drivers > The letter I sent to SE CEOs about firmware - Incident closed! Solution! Bookmark topic

Well... as topic; here it is. Hope you're with me on this one!:
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Good evening;

The reason why I'm writing this is quite sad, since it's about your politics / usability of newly released firmwares. Let me explain myself:

I bought a month ago a w800 (which, I must say, is a piece of art of electronic / informatic engiering). It came with R1L002 version of the software, which worked quite well, except for minus glitches.

Then, I started the upgrading road to perdition... first, to R1N035, which introduced (among many other bugs) the primary "Memory Stick File" bug which rendered useless most of the capabilities of the phone, since every file I copied over the provided data cable was corrupted / deleted.

After a couple of weeks, I was really looking forward to the next version, R1A005, hoping it will fix the bugs the previous updated gave me. Sadly.... again, it didn't, and only introduced more bugs.

So... as I was an active participant of the SE related forums among the Web (mainly ESATO), I noticed hundred... thousands of people around the globe that were suffering the same problems, and even some more (specially those who upgraded from K750).

That's what I'm writing to you. To let you know about this, to make you consider what you're doing, releasing untested firmware for a nice piece of equipment such as this one; ruining it's original functionality... I don't know, I went speechless from that.

Consider the position of your great enterprise... by releasing software like this you put users down; we, that considered adquiring your brand in many areas (phones, MP3, audio, video, chargers, whatever) are being underconsiderated.

Don't you have a lot of people working in the software section? Testers... developers... what for? If you release firmware that will, instead of fixing bugs that shouldn't had been there in the first place, introducing new ones? You sure are damaging your image and affecting future buying consideration of your products, since most of us are just angry at this situation.

For the record, I tried using the technical support right here in Argentina... first; the call center is located somewhere in Brazil I think, since they speak portuguese, so they really helped me not at all. And the repairing points in here all that did were "upgrading" the firmware to the same version I left the phone in (at that time... R1N035): they couldn't tell me which version they would update since they didn't know (I found out myself when picked up the phone), neither could they roll back to the R1L002 since they told me they didn't have it. So... do you consider this to be an actitude from a serious enterprise? I understand I'm in Latin America where things doesn't go that right, but I met other people in the Forum that were from USA, China, Japan, even from Switzerland, where the support was as bad as here.

Hope you will do something to fix these issues and gain our trust again since; as I said before, this product was a great buy... up until you "improved" out software.

Here is the link where I, with help of other participants, are compiling all the bugs we find in the firmware versions:

http://www.esato.com/board/viewtopic.php?topic=107062

Feel free to explore it and test them on your own.

Hope this message made a difference for you, that you'll consider what I've told (because I've had spoken for everyone that bought these telephones) and that you will try to help us out.

[ This Message was edited by: Dan_Aykroyd on 2005-11-11 00:04 ]
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Posted: 2005-10-28 04:10:03
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just hope it won't be redirected to his junkmail...
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Posted: 2005-10-28 04:35:49
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dude excellent penmanship Let us know if you get a non-standard reply
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Posted: 2005-10-28 04:42:56
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Hehe, thanks yeah; it came out good! I was inspired during work today!
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Posted: 2005-10-28 04:46:01
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Well put, mate. Keep up posted of developments, if any. This message was posted from a K750
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Posted: 2005-10-28 05:36:58
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Would the CEO have time to reply? Dont think so, but i would that they did and consider seriously all the problems the users are having and release some real quality products from now on.
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Posted: 2005-10-28 06:46:00
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Dan_Aykroyd
Good on you!
Wery well put! Can i use this to mail the SE people in my country, Sweden?

Have you gotten the mail-list that Leviath and i got from cloroforme?

Gracias amigo!
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Posted: 2005-10-28 08:57:18
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Quote:
On 2005-10-28 06:46:00, BlueQuill wrote:
Would the CEO have time to reply? Dont think so, but i would that they did and consider seriously all the problems the users are having and release some real quality products from now on.



Maybe not, but he will hand it to one of his assistants to sort out.
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Posted: 2005-10-28 11:34:48
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Just a side note. Most people don't even know it can be updated. You have to be aware of the fact that you usually only search for forums like this one once you start having problems.

This means that most people probably haven't come across the memorystick corr. issue. Us, "techies", usually update to a new firmware even if were happy with what we got. This means we have to accept the fact that even the programmers are humans.

Do you write angry letters to mainboard manufacturers or microsoft when your computer restarts och gets a bluescreen?

Keeping ourselves in the fronline of technology has its quirks. Software development is a trial and error business and the best way to test a new firmware is to release it. Usually programmers are responsible for a particular feature in the phone. Like the radio for example. A guy rewriting the radio section might affect other parts of the software not noticed until released.

Anyways, I'm not saying that I don't want SE to test their firmwares better just that you have to understand the process. Stop updating to the latest firmware until you know its safe.
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Posted: 2005-10-28 11:50:33
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Quote:
On 2005-10-28 11:50:33, Firefreak wrote:

This means that most people probably haven't come across the memorystick corr. issue. Us, "techies", usually update to a new firmware even if were happy with what we got. This means we have to accept the fact that even the programmers are humans.

True, but R1N035 is supposed to be a refined version of previous firmware - but the fact is it's worse in more ways than it is better. I'm on R1L002, which has terrible bluetooth problems, and would love to fix these with R1N035 - but dare not for reasons we all know.
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Posted: 2005-10-28 12:10:39
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