Will WP8 devices get WP9 (or Blue)

ryan.kruger

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The iPhone 3GS runs Apple's iOS 6. The device is years old. I see WP8 sticking around with .1 and 1.1 updates for a while. Hoping so, at least. It would be lame to have an outdated OS in a year.
 

Jupast

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Having just bought my 820, i would bloody hope so. If their policy is to ditch every generation for the next, then a lot of users will head elsewhere.
 

tungha

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no news for WP9 yet but seems like Microsoft wants to release updates like "Blue" for their ecosystem, so i hope there'll be the updates and no more upgrade the OS
 

a5cent

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The iPhone 3GS runs Apple's iOS 6.

Yes. The thing is, Android and iOS have been around long enough for their update procedures to be fairly well understood. This is what people base their expectations on. However, although everyone realizes iOS has a completely different approach to updates than Android, and visa versa, few can imagine that WP too might have it's own and entirely unique approach to major version updates. It does.

Microsoft, Apple and Google have different ideas about how an ecosystem is best maintained and what types of fragmentation are tolerable. These differing views are what each OS developer's unique approach to major version updates can be traced back to.

WP devices won't update to major new versions like iOS does.

What complicates matters somewhat, is that version numbers are nothing more than arbitrary labels. Microsoft can decide to call WP8.1 WP2013. Instead if WP8.5 they can call it WP-Blue, or instead of WP9 they can call it WP8.9. Version numbers don't really mean anything. My point is, there will be a cutoff point that coincides with the introduction of new hardware, and that point will come far earlier than it does on iOS.
 

smoledman

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WP devices won't update to major new versions like iOS does.

What complicates matters somewhat, is that version numbers are nothing more than arbitrary labels. Microsoft can decide to call WP8.1 WP2013. Instead if WP8.5 they can call it WP-Blue, or instead of WP9 they can call it WP8.9. Version numbers don't really mean anything. My point is, there will be a cutoff point that coincides with the introduction of new hardware, and that point will come far earlier than it does on iOS.

Stop spreading FUD. All WP8 devices will receive WP8.x and WP9 updates.
 

a5cent

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Stop spreading FUD. All WP8 devices will receive WP8.x and WP9 updates.

lol, and how do you know?

BTW: was talking only about major version updates, not 8.x

I had to deal with comments like yours back before WP8 was released as well. Most expected WP7 to update too.

If you don't like it, fine. Just consider it food for thought.
 

conanheath

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MS can't have another 7 to 8 fiasco. If people are going to deal with fragmented OS they will just go Android and at least get the features they want. 8 was a step back from 7 in most regards. People won't go through that again. The OS is already 2 yrs from being on par with a+a. If MS is going two steps back, one step forward, they might as well get out of mobile.
 

sentimentGX4

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Any input right now is pure speculation. The answer is that it's all up in the air. Even though none of us can see why Microsoft might abandon WP users AGAIN at the moment, it could certainly happen.

WP9 should be two years away, though. First there should be WP 8.5 and WP8s would likely get that.
 

jhoff80

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MS can't have another 7 to 8 fiasco.

The thing with 7 to 8 is that it was a complete architectural change. They switched from a WinCE core to something much more modern. From here on out, they'll be refining the kernel, but it seems unlikely that they'll have to do any major overhaul for the underlying core. On top of that, another part of the problem was that they decided to use a UEFI bootloader for WP8, including TPM hardware, which none of the previous devices had. We should be more set up for the long haul with WP8 devices than we were with WP7 devices. That being said, anything can still happen; it just seems very unlikely.
 

fardream

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The thing with 7 to 8 is that it was a complete architectural change. They switched from a WinCE core to something much more modern. From here on out, they'll be refining the kernel, but it seems unlikely that they'll have to do any major overhaul for the underlying core. On top of that, another part of the problem was that they decided to use a UEFI bootloader for WP8, including TPM hardware, which none of the previous devices had. We should be more set up for the long haul with WP8 devices than we were with WP7 devices. That being said, anything can still happen; it just seems very unlikely.
arm to arm is not an architecture change. Also wince is still developing and widely adopted. From a user perspective it is a fiasco - almost nothing new, a lot of new bugs and missing functionalities
 

fardream

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Any input right now is pure speculation. The answer is that it's all up in the air. Even though none of us can see why Microsoft might abandon WP users AGAIN at the moment, it could certainly happen.

WP9 should be two years away, though. First there should be WP 8.5 and WP8s would likely get that.


Honestly speaking, given the pace of things being fixed, I doubt if there will be any users left to upgrade to 8.5
 

Chregu

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Today I thought about the not continued Whatsapp support on the iPhone 3G, because two of my friends were affected. One of them bought recently an iPhone 5 to replace it, and my thought was: "Well, now his phone will be supported for years and years to come, so that's okay." This was then followed by a: "I have no idea what will happen to my 8X, maybe Microsoft decides it would be funny again to make new apps not working on my phone in 2 years..."

I don't want to think like this when using my phone, honestly. I don't know what will happen, but Microsoft doesn't have my trust. They did this twice withing 3 years, from Windows Mobile to Windows Phone and from Windows Phone 7 to Windows Phone 8.
 

sentimentGX4

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From here on out, they'll be refining the kernel, but it seems unlikely that they'll have to do any major overhaul for the underlying core.
Move to x86 processors. Bam. Microsoft doesn't have an OS solution to unite ARM and x86 for non-smartphones as of the moment. We have Windows 8 and we have Windows RT, which are two different OSes with completely stripped down functionality on the part of Windows RT. This suggests that any move to x86 will obsolete current Windows Phones.

Now that I think about it, regardless of what happens, Microsoft is practically guaranteed to accommodate x86 processors in the future and that will inevitably create a fork between x86 Windows Phones and ARM Windows Phones. (Think of it as a true Windows 8 Phone, based on x86, vs Windows RT Phone, what we currently have.) Akin to Windows 8 and Windows RT, not all the features from one will be in the other. The question is more of a matter of how Microsoft will go about it. Microsoft can support both ecosystems or they can only support x86 or they can only support ARM and experiment with one or two x86 devices.

Basically, what I'm saying is don't expect your Windows Phone 8s to have iPhone length support. They might be supported for a long time; but, there will highly likely be new Windows Phones with radically different feature sets than those currently available in the future.
 

a5cent

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@conanheath

I think you make some good points.

MS can't have another 7 to 8 fiasco.

That bares the question, what exactly do you mean by "fiasco"?

At the height of the WP7/WP8 nerd-rage, people were mad because they felt they would miss out on all the new WP8 features. However, just like you mentioned, there really aren't any "killer features" in WP8 beyond what WP7 could already do. Some even suggest that WP7.8 is better (here). As it turns out, this fear was completely baseless. WP8.0 was only about bringing the WP7.x feature set to new hardware. Not much else. Going from WP8.x to WP9 may be similar.

The angry mob also feared they wouldn't get a single app update, not to mention a single new app, after WP8 was released. This too turned out to be completely baseless. WP7.x doesn't get every single app, but they get a lot, including the good stuff like the latest version of Nokia Drive and Skulls of the Shogun. Both run great on WP7.x devices. App Updates? My old Lumia 800 still gets those almost every day too. What happened? Many devs just haven't yet made the switch to WP8. Many are still targeting WP7.x and those apps also run on WP8.

It certainly was a fiasco however. Not a fiasco in the way people expected though. Nobody was cheated out of anything. It was a PR fiasco. Driven mainly by Microsoft's complete failure to communicate what they were doing and why. Unfortunately, that continues to this day.

If people are going to deal with fragmented OS they will just go Android and at least get the features they want.

Fragmentation occurs when a developer must explicitly take differences in hardware or software configurations into account. With too much fragmentation, developers have no chance of testing their app under every possible configuration their app may encounter "out in the wild". That introduces a lot of risk (undiscovered bugs), which is when consumers also notice the negative side effects of fragmentation. However, this isn't the situation we have with WP7 and WP8 today:

If your app requires the more powerful hardware > target WP8
If your app doesn't require any specific hardware > target WP7.8 (provided you follow the rules, it will also run on WP8)

In both cases, the developer has exactly one hardware and one software configuration to program against. Nothing else needs consideration. That isn't fragmentation.

8 was a step back from 7 in most regards. People won't go through that again. The OS is already 2 yrs from being on par with a+a. If MS is going two steps back, one step forward, they might as well get out of mobile.

Absolutely agree! Like I said elsewhere, if WP8 was more ubiquitous, Microsoft would now have a Vista level PR nightmare on their hands.

However, without the low level kernel overhaul, I see no reason why we should see such problems again. I expect that WP9 (or whatever they call it) will also be mainly a hardware update. That is fine by me. Just the step backwards in OS features and stability must be avoided, otherwise it's "game over".
 
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clbarker10

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I don't think there will specifically be a WP 9 until there is Windows 9...I think we are looking at 8.x For a while. Just my thought. After they released both phone and desktop version 9's in tandem and having apps to be cross platform...I can only see them making revisions and prolonging any new release.
 

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