HTC Magic ROM update looking unlikely for UK users

There have been a few angry posts on the Vodafone UK forums recently from HTC Magic owners who are getting frustrated at the lack of any sign of ROM updates for the phone. One disgruntled user emailed HTC and their response doesn’t make for pleasant reading for Magic owners-

hello

Thank you for your enquiry.

HTC own and make the magic, but the rom that is in the uk phones is owned by Vodafone this means that vodafone will have to supply the new rom(only if they wanted to) so this is to do with the legal branding of the htc magic.

when the phone is branded there is no legal way to unbrand the phone, if this is done then it will valid any warranty that you have.

If these steps have not helped, please let me know by responding using the link provided and I will be happy to check again for you.

Best regards,

lee
HTC

In general terms, what HTC are saying is, as the Magic is a “With Google” branded phone, it’s the operator, namely Vodafone, who are responsible for any update. However, the official response (also on the Vodafone UK forums) to the message above suggests that perhaps it’s maybe not as clear cut as all that-

Hi guys,

Firstly, it looks like there’s a grammatical error in the HTC response posted above – “it will valid any warranty” clearly doesn’t make sense as an english phrase. I can only assume they meant “it will INVALIDATE any warranty” going by the context of the sentence.

To clarify again, our only involvement in the firmware of the Magic is the splash screen and the link to Vodafone live – beyond requesting these to be included we have interaction with it or say in what is released.

As zzubnik mentions, this is being investigated to see what if any information we can get. We don’t want to stop people talking on the eForum, but until this bears fruit we cannot add any further information that what we have here. As such, I am going to close this thread as well, but this is being looked into and we will get back to you.

DaveN

eForum Team

So, it’s at the usual “It’s not our responsibility, it’s theirs” tit-for-tat stage between Vodafone and HTC at the moment. Hopefully things will be cleared up sooner rather than later.