The NYPD has to scrap the 36,000 smartphones it gave cops over the past two years because they’re already obsolete and can’t be upgraded, The Post has learned.
The city bought Microsoft-based Nokia smartphones as part of a $160 million NYPD Mobility Initiative that Mayor Bill de Blasio touted as “a huge step into the 21st century”.
In 2014. They bought these in 2014.
In 2014.
I bet they had to wait a couple years just to avoid even bigger shame.
Not really, the scheme actually worked very well for them. Read their actual statement below;
“Our smartphone initiative is 45% under budget. Based on current rate of spending, we expect to stretch what was initially budgeted at two years of spending to more than four years.
The smartphones have made our cops smarter, faster, and more agile in their response to 911 calls, with response times down more than 8 percent. Whether it’s the parent whose child has gone missing, the driver who needs a copy of an accident report, or a domestic violence victim whose life may be saved by a faster emergency response, the smartphone program has made the NYPD, already New York’s Finest, even finer.”
You show me an government IT rollout of similar size that was that much UNDERbudget AND delivered an 8% improvement in performance.
I know its popular to bash MS, but this scheme was an unmitigated success.
I have Lumia 640, it came with Windows 8.1, it got an update to Windows 10 Mobile, which, as I have read somewhere recently, is supposed to be supported till the end of 2018. Maybe getting rid of ’em Lumias 640XL is a bit premature?
Would be a hoot if they replaced them with some Android phones not getting security updates at all or for long (and I guess they would get such phones if they went for something in the price range of Lumias 640XL).
(I want a phone for under 250 euro with security updates provided for more than 2 years, HALP!)
Nokia 5 🙂
Nokia indeed seems to be a good choice. Nokia 3 is supposed to cost around the same as Lumia 640 two years ago (around 150 euro) and HMD promises at least 2 years of security updates.
Thanks for letting me know.
Heck I’d take a phone for 250 Euros with security for two years only. That sounds like a deal.
This the current list for the past year of phones with good security updates, read it and despair.
https://www.androidcentral.com/these-are-phones-receive-regular-secu…
They are replacing them with iPhones. Whenever you see a major contract change like this you just have to look at who in the approval process owns stock in that company. I mean come on, what kind of smart phone does a cop need anyways? Contracts like this raise the stock of apple thus indirectly profiting the stock holders, i.e. The politicians.
The phones aren’t useless, you can make phone calls text with them and do some basic functions. It’s this very mentality that is creating piles of electronic junk, that some of the very environmentally minded smart phone users seem to overlook.
It pains me to say as an ASP.NET developer, but who could ever trust Microsoft again in the mobile space with the shabby way they’ve treated mobile support? I hope they do unveil a category-defining mobile product soon, but unless it runs Windows apps out of the box or emulates Android apps, I can’t see them attracting any major developers.
Which again are we talking about? This is what, the third or fourth time Microsoft have totally failed to get into the mobile market and then abandoned the handful of users they did have?
Ill be the first to admit that I don’t pay much attention to the Microsoft mobile ecosystem. However, from a quick google search it seams both of the phone models in question are upgradable to Windows 10 Mobile and are supported until at least 2018…
I don’t get what the problem is exactly. These phones are no more obsolete than an iPhone 6 would have been if they had bought those instead. This all sounds fishy to me.
I mean I get that Microsoft has very low market share and maybe buying them wasn’t the best decision in hindsight – but they are making it sound like the phones are the problem and getting iPhones will “fix” things.
It sounds to me more like the real problem is they took 3 damn years to distribute 36,000 phones! I don’t think the type of phone is particularly relevant – any modern smart phone is close to EOL in 3 years.
Am I missing something???
Edited 2017-08-31 00:32 UTC
I’d be willing to bet some police commander high up the chain found out there’s no official Snapchat app for Windows Phone and he can’t get any more nude pics from his mistress without it.
Joking aside, moving to iPhone makes sense if they’re worried about security, and availability of updates.
You sure that’s a joke? Sounds plausible to me.
Not only are the phones old, they got them for free, according to their head of IT.
They were also very decent phones in 2014, and I’m sure that their batteries already have a horrible performance, since they’re used around the clock.
That is almost certainly why the phones need to be “replaced” – the batteries have either gone dead, or are dead enough that it’s no longer holding a charge through a single shift. Now you can get replacement batteries, but a quick check shows that batteries for the Lumia 830 (one of the phones in question, and an older model) are no longer made and have very low stocks available any more. They simply can’t get thousands of them.
I wonder who will get product placement commercial in that show now that MS is out of favour …
MS is advertising the hell out of its Surface devices on UK TV at the moment. They use so called designers etc that people probably have never heard of to show glossy over saturated pictures of ‘stuff’ and say ‘I could never do that on my Mac’. Mac’s could never do pen annotation but hey, this is marketing so anything goes.
I am beginning to wonder if this is their final fling before pulling the plug on the whole surface thing?
So Thom posted this a few days later than everyone else and didn’t link to the follow up article
Thom’s headline: NYPD needs to replace 36000 useless smartphones
NYPD spokespersons response: This Sunday, while a Post reporter was writing her story, NYPD officers used their smartphones to help respond to over 25,000 911 calls; ran 18,000 searches; and viewed 1,080 flyers of missing or wanted persons. Sunday is a slow day.
source: https://www.windowscentral.com/nypd-deputy-it-commissioner-defends-d…
Thoms snarky comment: “2014 (3x)”
My analysis: So they used these basically free devices for real work for over 3 years to get real work done and are now investigating how to replace them with more modern equipment while these devices are still actively supported and receive security updates all the time….Hats off to whomever is in charge there!
Any justification about this urgent need “to replace them with more modern equipment” if the installed “free devices for real work for over 3 years [] get real work done” ?
Actual Toys.
I have an iphone 4s in my hand now. It makes calls just as it used to. It is sturdy and satisfyingly solid. I can view the BBC NEWS site, read a book, navigate offline using Navmii, use it a GPS, view the nightsky and stars, check my mail, use facebook, messenger and skype. I can ebay, use dropbox, google drive and buy from Tesco/Amazon and gumtree!, it wakes me in the morning and plays my music. Those are just a few of the apps that still work on IoS 7.0 The base browser is a bit crap but that’s the same on all screens the size of a playing card…
A phone is a phone is a phone. We should be thankful it can do more. We should shepherd our old kit and use it! We should castigate the suppliers for leaving us out in the lurch.
The iphone 4s is a great bit of kit. Now. Today.
Her grandfather co-founded a huge and successful business. She can’t POSSIBLY not know what she’s doing!
Please note that I’m NOT making fun of her because of her gender. I’d rip on a man in this position at least as badly. Too many privileged little snowflakes are put into positions they can’t handle simply because of who they’re related to. But that’s the job market (for the top positions): who you’re connected to, where you went to college, and how much money your family has… pick any two. Don’t have at least two of those? You’re screwed.
I believe that most phones only have 2 years support from vendors for updates unless the device is delivered as some kind of expensive enterprise solution.
The exception is the iPhones which has a very good reputation for supporting older devices where the iPhone 4 is still supported with updates (2010 – 2017).
I would expect they will migrate to iPhones.