FOTA Mobile Phone Software Updating

To address the growing challenge of providing higher quality and more reliable mobile phone software for mobile devices and avoid expensive recalls, a technology known as "over-the-air" (FOTA) mobile phone software updating is gaining broad acceptance in the mobile telephone industry. FOTA software updating enables mobile device manufacturers and carriers to remotely update the mobile phone software and firmware that controls the function of the handset wirelessly. New versions of mobile phone software that patch flaws in the software originally installed on the handset are delivered FOTA, eliminating the need for the user to bring the handset to a service facility.

FOTA mobile phone software updating consists of three primary stages: generating the update, managing the delivery of the update, and performing the update.

Generating the FOTA Mobile Phone Software Update Package

The initial stage in the process involves generating an FOTA mobile phone software update package containing bug fixes or new features. In order to make this package as small as possible, and therefore suitable for FOTA delivery, the update package includes only the changes between the version that already exists on the mobile device and the updated version of the mobile phone software.

Managing the Delivery of the FOTA Mobile Phone Software Update Package

Once generated, the update package is published to a distribution platform. This FOTA distribution platform manages the various versions of the software update packages and handles the actual FOTA delivery (download) of the software packages to the appropriate mobile handsets.

Performing the Update of the FOTA Mobile Phone Software Update Package

In this third stage of the process, the downloaded software package is used to perform the actual update (re-flashing) of the original mobile phone software image. The software update package and the utility necessary to perform the software update occupy a small amount of memory allocated within the mobile phone handset. This stage also validates that the correct FOTA mobile phone software update package has been received and that the update process has been successfully completed.