Rogers/HTC Sense UI update for Magic users #FAIL

Rogers. Rogers. Rogers. You poor bastards.

Strike one: Rogers Magic and Dream customers wanted the 1.5 OS update. Rogers and HTC said nope. The customers said now and voila!, 1.5. But it came with a warning that the Dream would receive no further updates to it’s OS. Rogers offered Dream owners a free upgrade to the Magic and let them know the Magic would eventually see 2.1. Smiles all around.

Strike two: With 1.5 came a huge bug that stopped Magic and Dream owners from being able to call 911. Rogers rolled out a mandatory update accompanied by the threat that if customers did not apply the fix to their handsets within 24 hours, their data service would be disabled. Rogers apologized for the inconvenience and promised the fix would come with the HTC Sense UI for Magic owners. C’mon guys, you were just asking for trouble there. I believe I even called it a curse in my previous post. But with 911 calls going thru and the promise of another upgrade, smiles again.

Strike 2.5 (because I’m waiting for the “fix” to make it a full 3): With the 911 bug fix and Sense came more bugs. And when I say more bugs, I mean like a post-apocalyptic locust swarm of bug reports and once again, angry Rogers customers. Did somebody forget to test the Sense UI update first? Bad HTC, bad. No fix yet. No smiles.

C’mon, Rogers and HTC. What do you guys think this does for the Android image in Canada? Get it right and make our poor Canadian friends happy so they can have the same beautiful Android experience the rest of us are having.

Here are some of the issues being reported:

– VoiceDialer is GONE (you will need to DL a 3rd party app) It will be returned in 2.1.

– Bluetooth activation of Voice Dialer (even using 3rd party) MIGHT not be working. So far it sounds like BT activation of 3rd party voice dialers does NOT work.

– Fido Roaming: Fido customers report their phones now constantly say they are roaming (data I believe)

– Force close: Some people report various FCs and spontaneous reboots

– Photo gallery (some users report only photos in the 100MEDIA folder show in gallery, unlike in previous version which only required photos to be in any sub-folder of the DCIM folder) Can we please confirm?

– Freezing, etc: Twitter user XBrav is having problems with freezing, buzzing, and calls not completing.

– Battery issues: possibly draining faster for some users.

– App availability: Some apps previously available in the marketplace are now not available. This appears to be an issue with Google needing to “approve” the Rogers/HTC update for the marketplace.

– Call forwarding: Some users report inability to get calls to forward properly. Has been reported to tech support.

– French Keyboard: User Valliant reports that his keyboard switched from QWERTY in “portrait” orientation to “AZERTY” (Euro keyboard) in “Landscape” mode. This has been confirmed! Landscape keyboard appears to be QWERTY, but actually acts as AZERTY. Only on Magic, and with language set to French.

– Weather: Some users report inability to delete or add cities in the weather widget. Is this a setting issue? Can anyone please confirm?

– Brightness: Users report inability to change screen brightness using widgets. Can only be changed from Settings screen.

– Brightness Cont: GBD reports: “The first time that I used quick settings app to adjust brightness my screen went completely black and i had to shine a light on it to get the brightness back up. Now tonight I was playing with the screens and the same thing happened. It was repeatable but not every time switching, only maybe 25% of the time.” Can we please have someone else try to confirm?

QUESTION: Can people who have updated please report the difference in available RAM & ROM space on your Dreams and Magics now compared to previously? I have seen some reports that there is now a lot less space on the internal memory for installing apps.

Microsoft Exchange: Many users report it is working fine. Users encountering problems should verify settings and check with your network admin. If anyone else still has problems with MS Exchange, please let us know.

Voice Dialer: RogersMary and HTC confirm native Voice Dialer will be returned in Android 2.1 for Magic. Status of BT activation of Voice Dialer still needs to be confirmed.

Bricking: Some users report their phones are “bricked” or otherwise inoperable after completing the Rogers Update.