In the recent Why Can't I Upgrade? entry, I described the economics behind why you usually don't see upgrades from one major Windows Mobile version to the next.  But if you go searching around on the net, you're likely to find a few "unofficial" WM5 builds for earlier devices.  What are these, where did they come from, and do you want them?


How development gets done
A lot of this stems from the way we develop our Windows Mobile software.  We perpetually struggle with the following quandary: We need to develop software for devices coming out in two years, but none of them will be ready for a year and a half. 

That invariably means that we have to develop the next version of our software on the current version of the hardware.  We do this in various ways.  Sometimes we sign a special agreement with an OEM partner to let one or two of our engineers see their code and port it to the next OS version.  Sometimes we pay an OEM partner to do that work for us.  Occasionally we build a reference design that no one would ever consider buying, but that we can write the code for, and pay $3000 per unit manufacturing them.  We obviously shy away from the latter scheme, but we've done it in the past.


We don't call it "dogfood" because it tastes good
At Microsoft, we're strong proponents of "eating our own dogfood."  This means that we use the software we're building throughout the development process.  Pretty much, everyone on the Windows Vista team right now is doing his or her day to day development of Windows Vista on a machine running Windows Vista.  The Visual Studio people are using their own code to develop their next version.  The Office people are probably reading their email on the next version they're developing.  Etc.  And it's definitely true of us in Windows Mobile.  By and large, the only phones we carry are ones running some early development version of our software.  Sometimes it's very painful, especially during the invariable low stability times that any development cycle goes though.

But things are made more painful by the upgrade problem I described in the other blog entry.  If you'll remember, I talked about how expensive it is for an OEM to make a finished product.  Well, when we have an OEM port a platform to the new OS for us, or when we have one or two of our own developers do it, we don't spring for the fully polished product.  We just do the minimum needed to let us test our own software.


Are you sure you want this?
For the most part, the illicit images you might find on the web are leaks of these test builds.  (And I do mean "illicit."  If you're getting a device image from someone other than the MO who sold you the device, the OEM who made the device, or Microsoft, it's stolen goods.)  They're images where the OEM or Microsoft did 10% of the work needed to upgrade the device, and are only intended for people willing to put up with poor quality to help us ship a better product.

For instance, one of our OEMs was practicing the WM5 port on one of their WM2003SE phone devices so that they could get it right on their upcoming true WM5 device.  We needed to test some aspects of our software that our existing dogfood devices couldn't support, so we bought a bunch of devices from them and asked them to give us that test build.  It leaked out, and I've heard that it's available on the web.  But, in that build, the camera barely works at all, the battery life is terrible, and the cell radio frequently crashes.  These things didn't matter to us, because we were able to test our features and release WM5.  But a real user wouldn't want to use it. 


Lies, damn lies, and statistics
I've had people accuse me of lying to them.  "I know you can upgrade my device, because this web page has the upgrade on it."  Remember, I've flat out told you that every WM2003SE device is capable of being upgraded.  The upgrades don't happen because the cost of doing the upgrade divided by the number of people willing to do it is too high.  When you see an unofficial WM5 upgrade on a website, what you're seeing is an image where that cost was not paid.  It's a bare minimum effort, intended only for people willing to put up with a bad experience, and never supposed to be seen by actual customers.  Think twice before letting it anywhere near your phone. 


But some upgrades are legit
No, I'm not saying that every upgrade is going to give you a bad experience.  Official upgrades, where the OEM paid the full development cost and polished it until it was fit for customer consumption, are perfectly fine.  If you get your upgrade from the company that sold you your device, or from the company that manufactured the device, you have reason to believe it's legal and of sufficient quality. 

But avoid the "backdoor" upgrades.  They'll cause you more pain than benefit.

Mike Calligaro