First, we were correct in being the first member of the mobile media (that we can find) to report on this. We did an exhaustive search… but we won’t rule out that some have discussed this in the past. It certainly was not widely reported.

Specifically, the most we could find pre-dating our reporting was two blog postings discussing the update (on user’s personal blogs) and three or four threads on non-news mobile communities (forums).

Following our article however, several members of the mobile media have confirmed our news as a new development… by citing our reporting.

Further, sites such as PDAdb.net report that the update’s internal release to users date wasn’t until June. Even then, it was not announced by Verizon, HTC, or PCD. We do believe that it did start propagating on servers over a year ago, however.

I think the bottom line of this is that while perhaps the mobile media screwed up in not reporting this… it’s not our job to find this stuff out. HTC, PCD, and/or Verizon should have issued a press release, tweet, announcement or even a simple email to let us know and get the word out. I assure you none of that happened, at least in communications to PhoneNews.com.

The comments in my editorial after this post ring clear; the industry can’t even tell users about updates, how are they supposed to compete with iPhone?