Sony Ericsson S710a
Who actually writes Cingular's firmware?
1. The firmware (FW) will be Cingular branded
2. Firmware is the reason for the delay
Assuming these two things are true, which they may not be, who writes Cingular's firmware? Does Cingular have a software team, do they give specs to the manufacturer and have them do it or do they contract it out to a 3rd party? Whatever the answer is, I'm really starting to worry about the quality of the firmware, and hence the phone. I think we can all agree that regardless of the phone's feature set, if the firmware is bad, the phone is bad.
Think about it, the S710a is based off the S700i ...
(continues)
Cingular makes suggestions and requests, and the manufactures are the ones that implement those changes. I don’t know the complete ins and outs of the process, but it’s a big misconception that the carriers are the ones that are responsible for the delays, where its really a shared blame between both parties.
I heard (gotta love unsubstantiated hearsay) that is was a problem with the BT stack intermittently powering off and affecting other BT devices within its radius, and that didn’t make any sense to me, since the s700 has been released long ago with no such issues, and that the foundation of the s700 and s710a (you would think) are primarily the same.
Who knows
As for the BT bug, I agree. Why reinvent the S700i wheel? Also, BT is an open standard that has been implemented in many, many SE phones. I belive that Ericsson was (and maybe still is) the industry leader in BT implementation when SE was formed.
I second your Who Knows