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Vodafone has given HTC Desire owners the option of choosing a standard HTC version of the Android 2.2 software without any Vodafone 360 ‘bloatware’.
This serves as something of a peace offering to the army of angry HTC Desire owners who downloaded what they believed to be the Android 2.2 Froyo update, only to be bombarded with Vodafone 360 branded applications, a new restart animation and bookmark changes.
In a post on the company forum, Vodafone says it has listened to customer feedback and — for those who have already downloaded the 360 update — Android 2.2 will remove the applications and leave the homepage and bookmarks on their current settings.
Vodafone 360 services will still be accessible using Android 2.2 should you want them. The company plans to make the 360 apps available in a separate update for the HTC Desire, but this time give you the choice of downloading them or not.
Vodafone says the update should be available in seven to ten days’ time — subject to testing — and it will let owners know the delivery date. Formerly furious HTC Desire owners were united in praise of Vodafone’s move to rectify the situation.
Vodafone forum member ‘Kyokan’ posted, “Wow, this is really good news…! No, genuinely, it’s not often that a company will have the humility to admit that one of the decisions they made in the past was wrong, so Vodafone deserve real credit for acting on this.
“I hope that this will set an example for other companies to do the same, or even other departments within Vodafone (although they’ve acquiesced to us on the firmware, there are still other issues with data allowance, streaming etc).”
In the end, Vodafone had no choice but to engage in some serious backpedalling. HTC Desire owners were considering rooting their systems and potentially voiding their warranty to rid themselves of the unwanted updates.
There’s nothing like a spot of people power to stir a multinational company into action.
