Just wanted to give this news a bit more visibility to those how mightn't follow the thread on mailing Huawei.

We got replies from Huawei which basically confirms Android 2.0 for the Pulse: 



Great news. Even if T-Mobile uk don't approve the firmware we should be able to get hold of a 2.0 ROM from somewhere. 

great news! who gives a s*** if t-mobile will approve or not? most of us are already using the rom from u8230 which doesn't have the t-mo ugliness.

Awesome, thanks for this! I recommended the Pulse to my boyfriend as a budget Android handset and I was afraid it was going to be stuck in the past forever, I felt so bad... I've installed Paul's custom ROM on there though, of course... so the phone is a damn sight better than it was. ;D

That's brilliant news!

This is actually no news. T-Mobile Netherlands have said since last december that 2.0 would come in Q1 2010, this merely confirms what we already knew.

This is not from T-Mobile, this is from Huawei. T-Mobile UK have not confirmed that they are releasing anything for the Pulse. 

It's new - it's news.

As long as Huawei release Android 2 for any of its U8220 products I am sure Paul will be able to cook up a rom!

Well I've put their response in the wiki so that makes it official

Good to know, but April feels like a long time away! Another iteration of v2 will be out by then I bet!

I think I can safely say that we don't really care which version of android we get - as long as we get a working 2.6.29 kernel. This has been the major barrier to rolling any custom 1.6/2.0/2.1 roms - they pretty much require 2.6.29.

Of course android 2.next might move on to 2.6.32 - but we should be able to cook up until 2.1 ourselves, as long as TMO or Huawei bake us 2.6.29!

Well, I've taken this one step further and have contacted T-Mobile UK directly asking for confirmation that they will indeed be approving the now confirmed 2.0 update Huawei are producing for the u8220.

I now await T-Mobile's probably useless and generic reply.

I've asked the Hungarian T-Mobile as well Maybe some of us will get lucky with an answer.

Edit1:
They've answered: they know nothing about any new firmware yet. ("Szia! Jelenleg még nincs infó erről a frissítésről.")

Seems like a pretty weak reply.

I personally don't see the pulse ever getting an eclair build, by official channels at least.

The other day, I asked them about unlocking the phone, they said it's about 25000 HUF= 110 EUR
T-mobile in Hungary sucks like hell and they no nothing. They only care about money...

April isn't that far away. Even mainstream handsets like the hero won't get an update until mid Feb.

This is fantastic to finally have confirmation from Huawei.

Even if T-Mo were discontinuing the Pulse and ceasing updates (which is a rumour going around, but not confirmed by T-Mo) then Huawei could release the update themselves for "U8220"/230 customers, and we could just use it sans the T-mo customisations.

As others have said, I just want the updated kernel (or the kernel source, as they are required to give as part of the GPL, since the Linux kernel is GPLv2, they have to contractually make it available to those who are using the kernel.)

They're only obliged to release the kernel sources if they distribute a binary. They can muck around with them all they want, as long as they don't distribute, and we don't have to see anything. That's why it's been slightly odd to see people emailing to ask to have the kernel sources in advance, as though Huawei are obliged to do this. Worth a shot I suppose if Huawei truly want to make it a community effort! I think we just have to watch not to annoy their customer services department too much!

Hopefully we'll see a leak before April!

Exactly, the kernel source would not even be too useful either, because the extensions are not gpl'd (Apache 2) meaning they don't have to do zilch.

Now begins the agonizing wait...

As far as I know, they were all polite requests (certainly mine was). What I'm finding odd is the pessimism I'm seeing in this thread! It's all good news as far as I can tell.

Dave