Thanks everyone for providing device info regarding this problem. I'll give a quick update on where we stand right now, so that you can manage your expectations...
It still looks like the problem ONLY affects Dev Alpha A hardware. We have not been able to determine if it's a specific bad batch from the PINs, but we have confirmed that we have no hardware internally here that matches the same profile. The problem definitely looks like the multimedia processor (used by camera and playback) is locking up, most likely because it is outdated on this hardware.
I was able to RMA one unit so that we can do some post-mortem analysis on what the failure root cause is. There is insufficient supply of Dev Alpha units to do any exchanges though.
Given that launch is only a couple of weeks away, even if we were able to find the root-cause in the next week and work with vendors to get a fix developed, I don't know that there is another developer release planned or not. At that point, retail hardware would be available to continue development on.
I want to let you know though, that I will make sure that we root-cause the problem on the failed unit that we are receiving and convince ourselves that the official hardware is not impacted by the same problem. I've mentioned this before, but the most likely cause for the problem is due to constant advancements of certain drivers which outpaced support from the hardware vendor. (This is equivalent to how a company like Apple may discontinue support for older laptop hardware on their latest version of OSX. It is because the newer OS may require features that only their newer hardware supports.)
Thanks again!
Cheers,
Sean
