T-Mobile UK quietly retracts Pulse's buggy 2.1 update, Huawei says it was non-final anyway
Remember T-Mobile's money-saving, finger-friendly Pulse? You know, the Huawei Android handset that received a 2.1 update in Hungary back in May? Earlier this month (on the 6th, to be precise), said phone's British counterpart also received its share of cream-filled pastry, but perhaps one with cream gone sour. How so? T-Mobile UK didn't explain when it quietly pulled the plug shortly afterwards, but some users were reporting problems with SMS and 802.11x enterprise WiFi authentication. Pretty serious stuff, especially for the former.
A few developers from MoDaCo got in touch with us as they struggled to get a reply from T-Mobile about the retraction, which got us curious. After all, a working 2.1 update would make the Pulse -- now priced at £99 ($153) on pay and go -- a pretty good buy, so we tweeted the carrier on Tuesday for an update. Coincidentally, the next day T-Mobile finally caved in and let loose on what happened:
"After receiving feedback on the recent T-Mobile Pulse Android 2.1 software update we've decided to suspend it temporarily. We're working with the phone's makers on an updated version which is expected in October."
Yikes. But just you wait -- read on for the juicy part.
By chance, we stumbled upon Huawei's official forum, which had a sticky Chinese post -- published just three days after the 2.1 update release -- advising users to avoid the offending download. Brace yourselves:
"The TMO-U8220 Android 2.1 firmware being circulated around the web is actually a test version from the UK, and has not yet been signed off. This version still contains a lot of bugs, so there's no guarantee on its features and stability."
Meow! So, here's our theory: chances are some broken English from Huawei -- as evidently seen on its forum -- gave T-Mobile the wrong gesture, which consequently led to the premature update release. Regardless, it's pretty unacceptable for T-Mobile to have taken over two weeks to basically repost Huawei's warning. Here's hoping that the fixed 2.1 update won't take as long to code -- assuming the Hungarian version's not suffering from the same bugs (as it's still up for grabs), we can't imagine this being a huge operation for Huawei.
[Thanks, @flibblesan and @wideawakewesley]
