Windows Phone 8 Portico update: at last here in New Zealand

After waiting for ages we finally get the Windows Phone 8 Portico update in New Zealand. It's said it fixes some freezes and restarts, plus it corrects the SMS date problem.

Surprisingly, once the update was available there was none of that "staggered release" rigmarole. Once Windows Phone 8 Portico is available we just have to check for updates on the phone and it downloads over the air (OTA), ready to install. Install times will depend on how full your phone is, but in mine it took just around 25 minutes.

So, here is my score card for Windows Phone 8 update:

• Easy of install: 10/10
• Download speed: 10/10
• Availability: 3/10

All in all pretty good having it available now and easy to update too. But not good enough. Last week I was driving to town when the Bluetooth speakerphone in the car announced "Connection lost". I looked down and the phone was restarting itself. The Nokia logo showed up and it just stayed there. That logo stayed on the screen for five hours (hey, great battery!) until someone told me about the soft reset procedure. Until then I was thinking "great, just before the update that supposedly fixes these my phone crashes and needs to go away to be flashed".

Luckily the reset worked and the phone seemed ok after that. And today the phone got the update OTA so I feel a bit better about not losing the phone.

As usual manufacturers say Microsoft is the one to be blamed for timing, Microsoft says the mobile operators are the ones who decide if updates can be deployed, and so on. A loop of excuses, where consumers are the ones with no say on when or how.

Basically, as I said before,  Microsoft should separate app and UI fixes, new apps from network updates and delivery Windows Phone updates every month, instead of waiting for a twice a year release cycle. It's not like they have the leading mobile platform in the world and can do whatever they want. If they aren't good at this now, I'm sorry, they are toast.

Having said that, they do act like they have the #1 mobile platform in the world, and don't need users to download apps:

I know Apple and Android also do region locking. But they don't have to compete from the last position in the market.