Puleen Patel

Rogers HTC Magic & Dream

This past weekend, Rogers made available an update to the Android 1.5 OS which powers both the HTC Magic and Dream devices. This update supposedly resolved the 911 / GPS bug which was identified several months ago. Why it took Rogers so long to provide a fix for a bug which they were informed about almost 4 months ago and was patched by various other wireless providers is a whole another story. But I am mentioning this to set some context on the reason for this new update.

The gist of the bug was that users of the Magic and Dream would be unable to dial 911 if they had their GPS turned on. This was an error in the Android platform, which Google (and other providers) had patched within the Android 1.6 update. Rogers and their line up of Magic/Dream devices still run on the 3 generation old Android 1.5 platform. Only after pushing hard through various avenues (blogs, message boards, twitter) a group of individuals (android diehards) were able to convince Rogers to provide an update. But not without a fight.

Coming back to the present situation, the week old update has crippled many a magic and dream devices. Customers have reported odd behaviour ever since they’ve applied the new update. So much so that some of the capabilities (ability to root, voice dialing and handsfree bluetooth calling, etc.) which users had prior to the update are no longer there. Post update a lot of the capabilities are nowhere to be found. To a certain extent in comparison to pre-update, the post-update Magic/Dream devices are essentially BRICKED!

To better understand this, I’ve asked @RogerMary (via twitter) for Rogers to provide a feature list of all new capabilities which were part of this update. In addition to the capabilities which were either dropped, blocked or entirely removed. It has now been five days and still there is no update on whether such a list will be provided or not.

My gut feeling is that such a feature list does not exist. This brings me to my primary cause of concern. The reason provided by @RogersMary for the update was to “make sure that customer safety is addressed” by ensuring that customers are able to make 911 calls without any interruption. This is what does not make sense to me, because this “customer safety is first” is simply an illogical and asinine reasoning provided by Rogers (via @RogersMary).

If customer safety is of concern to Rogers, then how is it that an update was made available without providing a list of features as part of the update? Why is it taking Rogers over 5 days to come up with this list. My personal opinion based on the evidence (the delay in making this list available) is that such a list simply does not exist. Rogers simply took what HTC gave them and took that as “word of God” and passed it along to the customers in the hopes that foolish customers don’t know any better. And this my friends is how Rogers defines Customer Safety!

Having worked in the software development space for 10+ years, every software and/or related updates which we release is always accompanied with a list of enhacenments and/or fixes. Such a list is usually provided along with or prior to the update. This allows for the companies to implement the update in a test environment in order to verify the credibility of fixes against known defects and that it works as intended. In the case of Rogers, this is absolutely not the case. Because if it were the case, then customers would not be reporting problems after having done the update. These problems would’ve been identified ahead of time during testing period and would either have been published as known issues or fixed prior to release.

The more and more I look back at how this started and the path that this update issue has taken, the more I realise that corporations and more specifically Rogers, 1) does not understand Android, 2) does not care about their customers and is primarily concerned about being and staying profitable by any means necessary and more importantly 3) they lack the simple understanding of technology and the many facets of successful implementation there of.

In one simple sentence, Rogers has failed miserably many a times and have most definitely lost any credibility as a responsible corporation to do business with both as a customer and as a business partner. In either case, I would be extremely cautious and hesitant to recommend anyone to any Rogers branded product and/or service.

Update: (Feb. 05, 2010) Here is the feedback received from HTC after my email to them in regards to making the feature list available to Rogers and in turn to the users of Magic and Dream devices.

Hi Puleen,

Thank you for your note and apologies for the brief delay in our response. We are working to provide you with a feature list and the necessary details to answer your questions. I will be out of the office next week, but Rickey (Cc’d on this note) can provide you with this information next week in my absence.

Thanks again and we will connect with you soon.

All the Best,
Jessika