All I can say for Motorola’s programming ability is, “Crap.” I’m attempting to update my phone, MPx220, with the latest version, 1.43, and I don’t think I’ve ever had so many problems. The page prior to the download page is horrible to begin with. In order to actually get to the System Update tool, you have to click the white arrow INSIDE the yellow circle. Way to go on that image link there guys. Then after I installed the software, which piggybacks on activesync, it takes literally 3 minutes for it to load. You double click on the shortcut, or straight on the executable, and you sit there for 3 minutes. No splash screen, nothing. If you open up taskmanager, you see that the program is running, but it’s not really doing anything. Then all the sudden you see something appear to continue.
Once you’re in the setup program, you have to install a different driver for the phone, but to do this, you have to remove the battery and then plug the phone back into the USB cable. Of course, it wasn’t as easy as that. Only one of the devices got installed when I did that. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize you needed the audio device for the modem that it installs also, so I kept progressing until it started to detect the phone. Well, of course it couldn’t, and can you go back? Of course not. So, I got the audio device installed, restarted my machine, and then waited another 3 minutes for the program to load.
At least the program gives you the ability to backup and restore your data before and after the upgrade. Granted, I don’t have much stuff on my phone. Heck, I don’t even know what this update fixes; good job on the release notes, err, wait there are none. However, it’s gotta fix some of the problems that I’ve been having, so it’s worth a shot. Plus I’ve heard there may actually be speed improvements.
**Update**
Turns out you need that extra driver because that’s how you get the update to the phone. You actually take the battery out and plug it in to do the update. Maybe it’s this convaluted to prevent the novice’s from doing this and wiping there phones accidentally.
**Update 2**
Well, even after the previous update to this post, it still didn’t work. The program just hung at “start deep sleep” or something along those lines. A little googling turns out that this is a common error. However, the good news is, I’ve found a solution. Turns out there’s an offline updater that can be found places. In fact you can grab all sorts of different ROMs from there too. And just in case you’re not sure what you’re doing, I’ve found a decent blog that tells you all about it. About 3 hours after I started, I finally got my phone updated. Honestly, I’m not noticing that much difference. Maybe I’ll try out the Asian 3.51 one?