Interesting. This may well be the right move for the long-term, but they're going to end up with a lot of angry early adopters right now. Android upgrades look nice all of a sudden.
They didn't have to! -- what they just did was screw themselves in the branding (and that's it).
They've created a new update, Windows Phone 7.8 that will rollout to current Nokia devices and other Windows Phone 7.5 devices.
It will include many of the new UX features, such as the new home page, etc.
But as WP8 is changed so much on a fundamental level, it makes no sense to port that to legacy hardware. They're reenvisioning the OS -- so the current Nokia phones won't support higher resolutions and multicore processors. That's ok! They don't have the hardware!
This is exactly what Apple does -- limited updates for legacy devices.
Only Microsoft was stupid enough to call it Windows 7.8 instead of Windows 8 (for legacy devices).
It's all in the branding and since they're bringing up the major features that legacy devices support, they should have just called it Windows 8. Consumers don't care about the distinction, if it looks like WP8, it's WP8.
No. WP8 introduces an entirely new API for app developers. WP8 apps will not work on WP7 devices. That is going to have huge and painful effect for existing WP users.
Legacy devices means devices from 3-4 years ago for Apple. If I buy a Windows phone today, it won't run the next major version of the OS. I'm just glad I didn't buy a Lumia 900 when my upgrade became available like I planned to.
My original iPad is now legacy barely more than 2 years after it's release. It's last available update is from June 6, 2011. So essentially about 1 year and 2 months of support.
Definitely agree about it being the right move for the long-term; Microsoft tends to have a bad habit of sacrificing performance and features for the sake of supporting old systems, glad to see this is changing.
As for all us ‘early adopters’, I for one don’t mind at all. There are some features of the new OS that simply aren’t supported by current-generation WP hardware or just wouldn’t perform well on it. I’d rather not get an update than get one that compromises the performance of my device (which I love as-is anyway) or one that seriously fragments the platform.
And, the way I see it, if WP8’s future is one of greater integration with W8 and Xbox, and Microsoft can really deliver on their ‘3 Screens & The Cloud’ vision [1], and this decision is integral to that (which it seems to be), then I’m fully on-board with it.
Also, they just announced that all existing Windows Phone 7 devices will get an update, to ‘Windows Phone 7.8’, which will bring all the UI changes and many of the new WP8 features. Most importantly, they’ve stated that all non-native code WP8 apps will work on WP7. I think that's the most important thing anyway and this approach makes for a good middle-of-the road solution. It allows developers to focus on just one platform and gives (the admittedly few of us) current WP7 owners continued access to new apps and features.
Moreover, applications for Windows Phone 7.x will automatically run on Windows Phone 8 with little or no changes to the code of the app. Apps coded on Windows Phone 8 will conversely run on Windows Phone 7.x as well, so long as they don’t use native coding (apps coded with native C++ won’t run on Windows Phone 7.x since they use different APIs).
They are bringing some features from WP8 to current devices (at least it seems so), like the new start screen, etc.
So besides support for NFC, dual core, new resolutions - it appears that most of the software based updates are coming to current devices in the form of WP 7.8
It's extremely unlikely, if it was the case WP7 devices would have just gotten WP8.
The opposite is possible because if Microsoft just immediately trashed all the work their far and few WP7 supporters have been doing to help the platform, literally nobody would be on their side at that point.
You can only throw out the drawing board so many times before people lose any trust that you will ever settle on something for any real length of time.
I have a HTC Titan. I'll get the new start screen feature and a few other updates in WP7.8. WP8 is really about supporting hardware that doesn't exist on my phone anyway.
That said, after WP8 goes out, MS really needs to step up there game with software updates. Having to get the carrier and manufacture on board to release an update has effectively made updates impossible.
I think cutting all the legacy is a good move -- start over from scratch. They have the wherewithal to round developer support (and also leverage their Xbox relationships), so cutting baggage is a good idea.
I have a Windows Phone (Lumia 710) besides my iPhone, that I bought two weeks ago. The phone itself was released in Europe in November 2011. And now it's outdated/legacy already?
It breaks trust. How would I know that if I buy a WP 8 phone that it will be supported with upgrades a year down the line?
Depends. No such criticism can be said of Android as an OS, but you could certainly make good arguments directed at the ecosystem in general. The interesting thing here isn't that the upgrade isn't compatible, it's that most people would expect Microsoft to support older systems. It's a break in their character. Maybe a good one? We'll see.
So it is delivering an update for those phones too. Additionally there is a promise to support OTA upgrade of all released devices for 18 months. What android phone has that commitment?
To the best of my knowledge, all pure Android phones have that, plus more in some cases (the Nexus line). Additionally, many of the higher-end ones from other manufacturers likely do as well.
Yes, but majority of users don't care about upgrades. Those who do care ... they usually go custom ROM route. Quite a few of my friends have cyanogenmod roms with newer android versions, since the manufacturer (htc, et al) dropped support for the device.
True from Microsoft's perspective but from a customer's perspective it looks like "Windows for phones" changes radically and entirely incompatibly pretty often.
Edit: On the other hand, most of the current market probably didn't know about Windows Mobile so perhaps that's mostly moot.
We could just as easily say "twice in 2 years, or once every year" since the first WP7 devices shipped in late 2010 and WP8 will be out by end of 2012.
How much legacy is there? It doesn't seem like Windows Phone 7 handsets have been out that long... and my impression wasn't that they were generally extremely low-specced.
Its not entirely a start over from scratch. Every WP7 app will work going forward. I do agree with the move though. Its better than having a bunch of old phones running WP8 with a poor experience.
Interesting. This may well be the right move for the long-term, but they're going to end up with a lot of angry early adopters right now. Android upgrades look nice all of a sudden.