Windows Phone 7 (WP7) update 7.0.7392.0 is out. Security is the agenda.

Today I got a surprise, a WP7 update! I did not expect mango updates so soon. So to get more information I visited Microsoft's official web-page for windows phone updates and found it is not mango but a small yet critical security update, I doubt if we can taste the mango this summer as it is the biggest WP7 update announced till date, thus should take more time.

The important thing about the 7.0.7392.0 update is it confirms what I said earlier 'Microsoft is serious and proactive about security'. This should please business users more.

I got this update as soon as it was available, now imagine this with an android where multiple versions coexist in the market and updates has to go through heavy OEM customizations.

WP7 has certainly scored +1 over Android in this regard.

Buying Windows Phone 7 (WP7) in India? Consider This.

While I am in love with my HTC HD 7 Windows Phone 7, and the updates went buttery smooth, there is a pain point that might not go well with many, ‘The Market Place (App Store) is not yet functional for India’. I will tell you a work around for this in this post.

Before buying the phone, I had done my research and was sure that app store will work properly. Following links suggests that:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/india/marketplace-for-windows-phone-7-apps-now-working-in-india/435
But there is a catch, the zune market place on PC shows prices in INR until you connect a WP7 with live id registered to India. Marketplace just disappears from zune once such phone is connected to PC.

So I changed the regional settings of my PC to US and connected my phone to Zune on my PC as expected the marketplace was visible again with prices in USD. But when I tried to install free apps I got an error message saying ‘The location setting for your Windows Live ID doesn't match the setting for your computer’.

To overcome this issue, I tried to change the country to US for my existing live account (To check yours: log in to live account >> options >> Email Account >> Account Information >> Country/region) but it did not help, because I believe the country settings are imported only once and changes done later won’t affect the location setting in phone.  I was still facing the country mismatch issue mentioned above.

Solution:
Now, only way out was to create a new live id with country as US to use with your WP7. To change the registered live account from WP7 one has to reset the factory settings, this will remove all your contacts and apps however the phone updates remains intact, and then use this new live id to log-in to your phone.

This wasn’t a big problem as I did not have a lot of things on my phone. Following link gives you steps to change live account on WP7. I suggest instead of creating new live id with US as country try changing country to US for your existing live id before you log in for the first time this might save you from creating a new live id just to get access to market place.
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/winphone/forum/wp7-wptips/how-do-i-change-the-windows-live-id-that-i-signed/56f83660-6ea7-4c4b-979b-ebdaa3b24a8c

It is important to note that changing the country to US will make it very much impossible you to buy the applications, you can only install free apps on your phone, and right now I am not keen on buying applications so it works well for me.


Conclusion:
It would be interesting to see how much efforts it will take to back up and restore contacts and settings when the marketplace is functional for India.

This isn’t certainly coolest thing to do but I am living with it, isn’t a deal breaker for me as I can see Microsoft is silently working on marketplace for India.

Windows Phone 7 (WP7) Updates in India

This was something I was most worried about when I decided to buy WP7. Will my phone get updates in India? I was worried because the WP7 ecosystem is still growing and no updates means missing out on some necessary and some existing features.

The good news is, yes it does,I could update my HTC HD7 without any hassles, I just connected it to Zune on my PC initiated update, I got both WP7:
1. Update for making updates smooth
2. NoDo update with copy paste and performance improvements

Now I am waiting for Mango update, this will enable developers to write more existing applications for my phone including multitasking.

The phone also indicates if there are updates available. This can be verified in settings >> phone  update.