Microsoft’s first Windows Phone 7 update isn’t going so well for a number of Samsung Omnia owners.

WinRumors reader Tom Granville writes in to say he is experiencing major issues with his Samsung Omnia device after the update. “Basically, after plugging in my phone to receive the update, the process gets as far as stage 6 of 10 where the phone goes through the reboot process but the phone hangs on the ‘connect your phone to your PC’”, says Granville. The Zune client displays the following error:

“RESTORATION ERROR

An error prevented the restoration of your phone to its previous version.

Your phone can’t be used in its present condition and there are no restore points for it on this computer. The phone might restart and return to normal if you disconnect it. For further assistance, contact your mobile operator.”

Granville says every time he turns the device on he’s presented with a “Connect phone to PC” screen and the device fails to initialize. Hard resets and trying it on multiple machines have not helped, he’s stuck. Granville isn’t alone however. A quick scan of Twitter shows that the picture is mixed. A large number of the issues stem from the backup process and its failure but only a small number of users are reporting that devices no longer boot-up correctly. Will Cahill, Michel Angelo and Steve Frolleau all report Samsung backup issues whilst Alex Roebuck, Mikael Petersson, Phil Williams, Garsim and  Evan Bronstein all report non-functioning devices as a result of the update.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone support team is trying to answer users according to WPCentral. It appears the team may be struggling with the number of issues though. One user, Alex Roebuck, who claims his device is “bricked”, was simply asked to return his device to the store by Microsoft’s support team. Some speculate that the problem is due to different Samsung firmware versions. JI9 and JJ4 both experience issues whereas JK1 appears to be ok. Others speculate that the issue may be due to 64-bit versions of the Zune client. Microsoft’s PR team hasn’t officially recognized the issue at the time of writing but its support team has offered up a couple of things to try. Microsoft points us towards two KB articles:

• The Zune software stops responding when attempting to back up Windows Phone 7
• Troubleshooting problems during software update for Windows Phone 7

If these don’t work for you and there’s no case on your device then you can try hard resetting your device with the volume down, camera and power buttons. If that still doesn’t work then please leave a comment below or contact Microsoft’s Windows Phone support team. We’ll update the story as soon as we know more.

Update: There’s an ongoing thread on Microsoft’s support forums regarding these issues. Microsoft has been in touch and will issue a statement shortly.

Update 2: A Microsoft spokesperson has confirmed the issue and says “We’re aware of this issue and are looking into these reports.”