On tethering, hidden SSID and Visual Voice Mail, where art thou in Mango?

On tethering, hidden SSID and Visual Voice Mail, where art thou? (Image - 0)

For those who managed to become Mango on to your phones in the last 24 hours, congratulations. It seems like so far everyone is really liking the new OS--in fact, folks are ecstatic over it. All the same, some features seem to be "missing" from various phones and we want to shed some light on why that is.

This information comes way of Microsoft themselves, who we met with prior to "Mango day" and gave us the details. Ars Technica has also published some of this info recently.

On tethering

Ii things volition determine if information technology is bachelor--the chipset of the device and if the carrier wants it. The chipset in question is the Broadcom 4329 which is found in the newer Windows Phones. Specifically, drivers are need for information technology to work with that chipset. Only ah! you say, what virtually that Samsung Focus we saw? A lot of our older hardware as well has the Broadcom 4329 on board, but non the correct, tested drivers. Why?

Microsoft had to brand a selection: delay Mango to test the drivers on older devices, or ship at present and release a patch later to enable. They obviously went with the former. But fifty-fifty Vodafone is aware of this when they said recently on their blog "Regarding Wireless Hotspot, it isn't integrated in the initial release of Mango nonetheless it may be deployed at a after date." That's exactly the situation--information technology's basically up in the air at this point for certain phones.

On visual voice mail

This is easy: it's carrier choice, dependent on their organization i.e. is it uniform with Windows Phone. What nosotros heard from Microsoft on this was AT&T: no visual vocalization post, just yes on tethering; T-Mobile: yes on visual vocalism mail, but no on tethering. That is subject to change.

On hidden SSID

This besides is dependent on some drivers/chipset combo. Microsoft was a fiddling fuzzy on the details on why it is device specific, only that was their explanation at the time. (For case, our Dell Venue Pro (unlocked, AT&T) does not take hidden SSID, but our Sprint HTC Get in does.)

Now some of these things, like tethering and subconscious SSID may come later in some revised updates for specific phones. Things like visual vocalism mail are more complicated and require restructuring on the carrier'due south backend. For what it'due south worth, we saw some of these features enabled on an AT&T Titan. Still, we hope this helps in explaining where these features are on your new Mango-ized Windows Phone.

Thanks, Marin S., for the link; Prototype credit: Pocketnow