Microsoft details latest Windows Phone update

Microsoft has shed light on its next Windows Phone 'Tango' update, which will see the smartphone OS gain the ability to import and export contacts to and from the Sim card, and attach multiple files to a single message. The new version of Windows Phone, which is already shipping on the European version of Nokia Lumia 900, is 7 …

[Khaptain]

How contemporary

>Import and export contacts to and from the Sim card

This is a joke, right...

[Bakunin]

Re: How contemporary

Welcome to the world of software driven consumer electronics. Now we can release products long before they're ready for the market and add the basic functionality later.

But that's not to say it's a Microsoft thing as they've all been doing it for some time now. May have started when it was cool to have your product in "beta" or perhaps with the startup mentality of launching at the minimum viable product stage (hype over functionality).

But then it could just be a fast as possible land grab for a new and growing market sector.

[Annihilator]

Re: How contemporary

Yup. Remember when iPhones couldn't send MMS? Slow and steady wins the race... apparently...

[JDX]

Re: How contemporary

>>Import and export contacts to and from the Sim card

less and less a big deal as everything goes cloudy.

[Miek]

"The reveal appeared on Microsoft's WinPho update page, but was later removed for reasons unknown." -- They had trouble working out how to do the primitive things other phones do, such as read and write to the SIM card and attach multiple files etc. etc.

In the next update: a web browser capable of reading web pages, an email client capable of sending emails as well as reading them. ad infinitum ...

[Anonymous Coward]

WOW

I'm sure the 4 genuine Windows Phone owners will be overjoyed with this update when it arrives. Their Lumias will be rocking a featureset from 2009.

[JDX]

Re: WOW

How original.

And the iPhone was behind the competitors on 'basic' features for years... doesn't seem to have hurt it too much.

[Gerhard den Hollander]

1991 called

import and export contacts to and from a SIM card ?

1991 called ... they want their new features back

Seriously ...

I used to have an old winpho phone (cannot remember the make or the model, but it had one of those stylus things which were (for me at least) really convenient ) that could do this.

I think if nokia looks in their basement they might find one of their old radiolinja phones that could already do this.

[Annihilator]

Re: 1991 called

"I used to have an old winpho phone (cannot remember the make or the model, but it had one of those stylus things which were (for me at least) really convenient ) that could do this."

The O2 XDA? Seem to recall that being relatively popular for a while.

In a flash of nostalgia the other day though, I saw someone in an M4 service station with a massive laptop connected via serial port to an old (pre-HP) Compaq iPaq with a mobile/data "sleeve" to do dial up. Man it took me back!

[druck]

Re: 1991 called

As every other phone* has been able to do these things since the dawn of time, maybe Microsoft are waiting for the patents to expire before implementing such basic features. What a joke.

* Except early iPhone's.

[phlashbios]

And yet...

Still it can't play Flash or deliver content via HLS. They might not consider that significant, but many consumers do.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: And yet...

Not really, people looking for problems with a phone, in order to slag it off however, they do think it's a really big issue. Massive, it'll kill the platform, dontchaknow?

[cocknee]

Re: And yet...

Not crApple fanboi's - they don't need Flash either - so said St Smaug

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the import feature has been there for a while, the export feature isn't on the Lumia 800 I'm using.

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF is Nokia Smoking?

And NOKIA thought this piece of **** is better than the software they were running before?! And they can't even import contacts from a sim with WinPhone 7.5 which by the sounds of it WON'T be upgraded for certain existing phones

[rahul]

not be available in all markets or for all phones

"not be available in all markets or for all phones"..

and therein begins the fragmentation of the platform.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: not be available in all markets or for all phones

The fragmentation problem for Windows Phone just got a gazillion times worse...

LOL, at the handful of genuine Lumia owners...

[Hckr]

OMG! Copy contact from/to SIMcard? How many updates until it can receive and make calls?

[get off]

I'm not trying to be funny right, but........

Forgive me if it's my version of CM7 GM 2.3.4 (and prior ones) but I'm not sure I can import AND export to SIM either. To a file yes, but not like I could with a very old Nokia.

Equally and I don't have one of these but I remember a friend who bought her new iPhone 4 but I seem to recall she had to seek tech advice to get 'stuff' off her old iPhone, wouldn't do a BT transfer or anything. It may not been purely SIM data were' talking about here.

I too thought "Wow! that's some advance MS" and then had a think.

I swear one could do that on WM6.x though....

Perhaps we're all rather more back to the future than we believe we are...