AT&T Deliberately Breaks Samsung Focus HSUPA? Not So Says Carrier

The Samsung Focus ended up being our unofficial pick of the first-wave of Windows Phone 7 handsets, not least because of its brilliant display and speedy uploads. Now, it seems, AT&T wants to take 50-percent of those abilities away, with the accusation that the recently-released NoDo update actually disables HSUPA.Updated after the cut with AT&T comment

It seems that, for one reason or another, AT&T doesn't want its users to hammer the new HSPA+ network and so has been systematically blocking HSUPA uploads from each of its devices. The Focus was the one handset which didn't have the artificial limitation.

Ironically, while it's taken AT&T months to get this blip of success in their otherwise dreary HSUPA line-up addressed, it's only taken days for a fix to emerge from WPCentral. AT&T is yet to comment publicly about the move; we'll update if we get a comment.

Update: AT&T tells us that the accusations are incorrect: the Focus never had HSUPA to begin with. We're not sure where that leaves users who, after applying the WPCentral tweaks, have seen significantly higher upload speeds following the installation of the NoDo update.Update 2: AT&T suggests that, if users have rooted their Focus prior to the NoDo update and enabled HSUPA themselves (the hardware is capable of it, even if AT&T released the phone with it disabled) then that might account for the change in speeds observed after the update is installed.