Android firmware over-the-air live on MTN

MTN South Africa announced that they are collaborating with HTC to offer firmware over the air (FOTA) updates for HTC’s Android smartphones during early December 2010.

FOTA allows updates to be downloaded directly to the device through either MTN’s mobile network or a Wi-Fi connection. This lets people upgrade their phones directly without requiring a PC or going into a retail store.

Leaf International Communications, local distributors of HTC products in South Africa, have been promising FOTA since August 2010, explaining that arrangements to have the downloads zero-rated were causing the delay.

In the end MTN charged for the bandwidth required to download the firmware updates, as per the norm elsewhere in the world.

MTN’s promised launch date of 17 December 2010 for FOTA also came and went without the long awaited updates being pushed out to devices.

Then just as 2010 was about to draw to a close, South African HTC Desire handsets on MTN were able to detect and download the updates the rest of the world has had for months.

For those users who were among the first to buy an HTC Desires in South Africa and are running much older firmware versions, this means that they are finally able to officially upgrade to version 2.2 of Android, from version 2.1.

The whole update is four separate downloads.

An update in four parts

The first upgrades users from firmware versions as low as 1.15 to 1.21. This update already seems to improve the response from the user interface. It’s around 27MB big.

The second update is around 95MB and will upgrade the operating system of the HTC Desire from Android 2.1 “Éclair” to Android 2.2 “FroYo.”

It includes all the features you would expect from FroYo, such as moving applications to the SD card rather than storing them on phone memory, as well as the ability to turn your smartphone into a portable Wi-Fi hotspot.

A feature that’s unlocked with the upgrade is 720p video recording. While the Desire’s hardware supported HD video recording, it only became available along with the update to Android FroYo.

While the HTC Desire also supports H.263, H.264 and MPEG4 encoding, its new 720p camcorder function is only available when recording MPEG4 video.

Once upgraded to Android 2.2 yet another update becomes available. This one weighs in at just under 29MB and is described as an update for the Android Market application.

It seems to upgrade the Market application to the new version Google rolled out to older Android devices just ahead of the launch of the latest iteration of their mobile OS, Gingerbread (given the version number 2.3).

This version of the market was actually pushed out a few weeks ago to HTC Desire handsets in South Africa that still ran Éclair, or Android 2.1, so the update restores the Market to the version many users may already have become accustomed to.

After the Market upgrade, one last update is available. Compared to the other updates it’s minuscule, with just under 5MB of data that needs to be downloaded. Mysteriously labelled “Update: System enhancements,” the patch was first noticed in Europe last week and it’s still unclear what it changes and/or fixes.

Features and fixes

Other changes include an updated messaging app from HTC, which now shows the number of SMS messages between you and a contact, has an area at the bottom of a message thread you can tap to write a new message to a contact, and a button to attach media to messages.

Once anything is attached to a message however, even if it is a contact’s information in vCard format, it’s converted into an MMS.

A bug in the way the messaging app handles vCards also seems to be resolved, so Desire users that were relegated to using older firmware will finally be able to save contact information received by SMS/MMS.

Storm of updates after a drought

After being denied official updates for so long, those with HTC Desire devices from among the first batches that were sold in South Africa are treated to a bumper update.

According to MTN, users should be able to update their HTC Desires regardless of whether they purchased them from MTN franchises or not. Apparently the only requirement is that the device be connected to the MTN network.

Happy Android FroYo installations (and a happy New Year), Desire owners.

HTC Desire FOTA update << Have you noticed any improvements, or lack thereof?

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