Gah. We love what Microsoft have done with Windows Phone 7, we really do, but the whole data-hog story refuses to go away. Earlier this week Microsoft were pushed into admitting that the Windows Phone data drain was Yahoo! mail. It all started last month when Windows Phone 7 customers noticed a large amount of data flowing through their handsets. Microsoft then admitted that there was a problem but didn’t tell anyone what app was causing it or how to get around the issue.
Days later, and after some investigation by blogger Rafael Rivera, Yahoo! mail transactions were identified as the culprit. Microsoft finally caved in and named Yahoo! Mail as the source, only then telling customers how to work around the issue. Their statement was carefully worded and told us that “Microsoft and Yahoo! have worked together to identify a fix”, but there’s a public statement today from Yahoo! which seems to point the blame squarely at Microsoft…
“Yahoo! Mail is widely available on tens of millions of mobile phones, including those running on Apple iOS, Android, Nokia Symbian, and RIM. The issue on the Windows Phones is specific to how Microsoft chose to implement IMAP for Yahoo! Mail and does not impact Yahoo! Mail on these other mobile devices. Yahoo! has offered to provide Microsoft a near-term solution for the implementation they chose, and is encouraging Microsoft to change to a standard way of integrating with Yahoo! Mail, which would result in a permanent fix.”
Ouch. To add fuel to the fire Paul Thurrott – the guy that wrote a book about Windows Phone 7 – has stated told how Microsoft probably knew about the issue before the OS was ready. It seems that they put some “special measures” in place to try and tacle the problem, but it ended up being more “work around” than “fix”. He states..
“You can configure different kinds of mail accounts on Windows Phone, as you know. But the Yahoo! Mail account, curiously, is more limited than the other branded and named email account types supported by Windows Phone (Gmail, Outlook, Windows Live). I considered this so unusual that I called it out in the book Windows Phone Secrets.”
The Yahoo! Mail account, when setup in Windows Phone 7, has a 2 hour “poll time” as default. This seems to indicate that MS were well aware of the issue before the OS was done.
Again, I have to call on Microsoft to floor the accelerator and get an update out now to fix these issues. However, we’re becoming increasingly worried that this won’t happen for a while yet.
Link – WindowsPhoneSecrets.com