Windows Phone 7 'NoDo' updates start in Europe with unlocked phones

On March 22, Microsoft began trickling out the first of its major Windows Phone 7 operating-system updates, codenamed "NoDo."

“We’ve begun to gradually roll out the Copy & Paste update, starting small with open market phone customers in parts of Europe this week. More to come," said a Microsoft spokesperson, when I asked about the company's planned timetable for the rollout.

NoDo includes, as the spokesperson noted, copy-and-paste functionality. It also includes, as expected, improvements to Marketplace Search, improvements in app performance, wifi performance, messaging improvements and overall OS performance tweaks. (MobileTechWorld.com has an itemized list of all the updates that are part of NoDo.)

Microsoft originally planned to roll out the NoDo update earlier this year. After a rocky "minor" update to WP7 handsets, company officials decided to postpone the NoDo update until the latter half of this month. I had heard from my contacts that NoDo's rollout finally would kick off this week.

It sounds as though Microsoft and its carrier partners are going to take possibly as long as four weeks to roll out NoDo to all existing phone customers.Microsoft officials have said the company has shipped two million WP7 handsets to its retail partners to date.

New WP7 handsets, like the recently announced HTC Arrive on Sprint, are shipping with NoDo preinstalled. Verizon users still don't have any WP7 handsets available to us, but there has been talk that Verizon might finally get the HTC Trophy WP7 handsets on their network -- or at least announce intentions to do so -- before the end of March.