What are the chances MS changes their minds and WP7.8 gets NT Kernel

[Rocketdan9]

I have honestly never seen so many people upset , about the start of a new OS. I can`t blame some of them either. You buy a new phone and expect at least it will be able to endure three major OS upgrades over a 3 year span.

For people who recently bought a Lumia 900 for example, they have nothing to worry about for the rest of this year. Perhaps even a good chunk of 2013. But thereafter, slowly no apps, games (or popular ones) downloaded work or are unavailable for the phone. So that would mean paying 500 bucks outright or be tied to a 3 year contract now, and getting maybe 1.5 years of being able to use the phone fully (being able to work supported apps).

MS surely hires people to read through these kinds of forums and get feedback, as to how people feel about the lack of wp 8 update. I mean its 3 to 1 ratio, of people angry vs being excited.

Anyone feel MS could have a change of strategy or mind and change WP7.8 to have NT Kernel? (has it been said official that Wp7.8 won`t have NT kernel?)

This still does not mean you get functions the phone can`t support , but it would be a huge boost for wp7 owners now and have the current sales of phone continue to roll.

I`m not an expert on this CE vs NT Kernel, but if Android uses NT Kernel and some new low end devices that come with single core, can support it, there is no reason for example a titan or focus s, couldn`t either. (someone correct me if i got this wrong)

The only other solution would be that, MS makes it mandatory or gives incentive for developers to create apps and games for wp 7.8 on top of wp 8 for the next 2 to 3 years. That means having games run on 480 x 800 while also on hd.

Just trying to see if anything positive can come out of this uneasy situation. Feedback? Opinions ?

 

[oldpueblo]

Gingerbread ran well and like **** on multiple devices. Same with honeycomb and even ICS. I think MS doesn't want to go down that road of whether or not your phone works really well is a roll of the dice. I loved the fact that no matter whether it was a launch device or the latest Lumia 900, ALL of the phones were smooth and fast. If they had to bastardize WP8 and to get it to run on lower end hardware, then I guarantee you some OEM would intentionally make dirt cheap phones that barely function. It's just a theory, but it has market precedence. Look at all the cheapo Android tablets out there.

Now whether or not they allow us to unlock our devices and let XDA make up the difference, that would be awesome. To do it you'd have to know what you're doing and the average consumer would never hear of it.

I also agree that it's entirely likely that some developers will realize there's still good money to be had for everyone on WP7. Just because we think everyone will move to developing for WP8 doesn't make it true.

 

[jdevenberg]

to answer your question in the title. Zero.

 

[AngryNil]

The devices would have to be fully reset for such a thing to happen, and I'm guessing it's just not worth the effort. This might be an easy way for them to break from legacy without completely screwing over existing customers. I'm guessing that all the OEMs would need to rewrite their drivers for 8.0 too, and with players like LG and Dell out of WP8 I can see that being a pretty poor outcome as well (half the devices might end up unsupported anyway).

It would be like flashing a new ROM onto your device. All your data will be erased, so it will either require a crazy backup procedure or you have to start fresh. Then, we don't know if say first-gen devices would actually run the NT kernel without a hitch.

That said, I think Microsoft should do an upgrade subsidy of $100-200 for anyone who bought a Windows Phone in 2012. How many new Windows Phone owners could there be? 5 million? They won't need to payout for than $500 million.

But hey, I guess paying out half a billion to consumers isn't how companies work. I can dream, though.

 

[Reflexx]

If you can provide them with a technical paper detailing how to accomplish it they'd probably hire you and pay you a nice salary.

I think the best they could do is somehow work with the homebrew community for a work around. Something not officially supported. A "try at your own risk" venture.

 

[rbrunner]

Technical reasons

Beside all politics, I suspect there are solid technical reasons why the phones out now can not get WP8 in its full glory with reasonable effort and reasonable cost. Microsoft seems not to detail them, but I think they are there.

Candidates in my eyes are:

a) WP8 with its new core also brings another device driver model compared with the old Windows CE based kernel of WP7. Who will write or provide all these drivers for the existing phones? Maybe the manufacturers are unwilling or unable to provide them.

b) The boot loaders of the existing phones may not able to boot WP8, and its too complicated / costly to modify those boot loaders.

c) WP8 may be too big to fit into the flash memories of existing phones.

By the way, the one reason that is widely floated ("WP8 is multicore, so your existing phone with a single core won't be able to run it") strikes me as something given to the non-technical masses, as something that sounds logical and is therefore more or less acceptable. Technically, that strikes me as so much rubbish: The Windows NT kernel was multicore from the beginning but of course runs quite happily on a single-core CPU as well.

And that's true for any other OS that I ever heard of: I don't know a single example of an OS that absolutely cannot run on a single core, but must have more than one.

 

[Rocketdan9]

The Windows NT kernel was multicore from the beginning but of course runs quite happily on a single-core CPU as well.

And that's true for any other OS that I ever heard of: I don't know a single example of an OS that absolutely cannot run on a single core, but must have more than one.

I agree with you on this. And does this mean all the new devices coming out post WP8 era will have to be dual core, and be able to support 720 p at min??

what does it mean when ms claims wp8 can support different kinds of processors (does it mean only for dual, quad and up) and resolution (over 720p?)

Maybe i`m still fresh off the Android world, but even with the expensive and powerful Galaxy S3, you always have the Optimus L7`s that is made with older specs, running the new ICS os.

 

[jimmy1one]

If you can provide them with a technical paper detailing how to accomplish it they'd probably hire you and pay you a nice salary.

I think the best they could do is somehow work with the homebrew community for a work around. Something not officially supported. A "try at your own risk" venture.

Same old song, again we all knew this was coming, Everyone wanted MS to step up they did. Now it's our turn to let our money do the talking if you want the latest and greatest buy the new phones when they become available.:blush:

 

[Rocketdan9]

Same old song, again we all knew this was coming, Everyone wanted MS to step up they did. Now it's our turn to let our money do the talking if you want the latest and greatest buy the new phones when they become available.:blush:

Jimmy1one, do you own an older wp7 phone?

Bc if you do, i can understand your attitude.

But if you read my thread completely , you will understand people who just bought their 500 dollar phones, don`t share your sentiments. Esp after 1.5 years of their new phone life, possibly new or popular apps will start drifting away from wp7 format.

 

[mparker]

Anyone feel MS could have a change of strategy or mind and change WP7.8 to have NT Kernel? (has it been said official that Wp7.8 won`t have NT kernel?)

There is absolutely zero chance of this happening. This wasn't solely Microsoft's decision; the manufacturers had their say in it too. Putting the NT kernel on the legacy machines would mean new drivers for everything - flash memory, screen digitizer, 3g radio, 4g radio, wifi radio, gyroscope, compass - everything. And these drivers need to be written by the companies that designed and manufactured the handsets and the components that went into them. If a decent fraction of these companies said "no" to writing new drivers for these legacy handsets, then Microsoft's hands were tied.

Once the transition to the NT kernel is finished, then this situation will be much improved. It's just the transition period that is awkward. We're in a similar situation to the transition from Win98->WinNT (new process-based driver model with protected memory) or WinXP->Vista (driver model based on ActiveX). Except that as major as those two transitions were, the WP7->WP8 change is even bigger, because Windows Phone is skipping ahead two generations of kernel (WinCE is closely related to Win95, WP8 is using the Win8 kernel).

WP8 should be in good shape for the future. Many of Vista's problems were due to missing/buggy device drivers as hardware manufacturers got up to speed. But once Windows' driver architecture stabilized with Vista's ActiveX-based driver architecture and the manufacturers got their drivers written and debugged, drivers could be re-used from version to version of the OS. You can use Vista drivers on Win7 and Win8, for example, and MS claims that if manufacturers can also use those drivers on Win8 tablets and WP8 phones if they're using the appropriately compatible hardware. Current mobile hardware apparently isn't compatible with desktop hardware, but I suspect that the component manufacturers are racing to meet that goal.

 

[Big Supes]

Nokia shouldn't have released the L800/L900, but then again, people would have moaned that they're not getting new hardware out there.

Sent from my HD7 T9292 using Board Express

 

[rockstarzzz]

none.

Zero.

I don't want MSFT to give me new kernel on my old hardware. I know it can't handle it.

I won't run it.

Have you seen iPhone forums when iPhone 3 and 3GS got their iOS4/5 update?

It was bogged down, literally. People wished they did not get the update. Why? Well, they had ALL the features their phones could handle, remember it is still the same core. Still those features killed iPhone 3.

I don't want that. No one does. Windows and MSFT has done an excellent job to remove the image of bogged down, laggy, slow and buggy OS = Windows. If they give us the new kernel on the old hardware, we will be the first ones to criticise MSFT. The same way we did when they made us use WM6.5 on WM5.0 hardwares. That bad reputation and backlash would be FAR more harming to the whole ecosystem than this is.

The current whining babies are only those who DID not read a single developers document, thought yesterday's launch was for consumers, thought yesterday's launch was all WP8 is about. Why are we forgetting that consumer launch hasn't occured yet. End users will have plenty more features to look at. Yesterday's summit was just to lure even more developers on the platform so that when consumers summit occurs, there are apps to boast about!

So, no, I don't want that new kernel my phone isn't capable to run.
Developers WILL make WP7.x apps - http://forums.windowscentral.com/1674820-post401.htm
I will get more features than what I already have on my phone with Windows Phone 7.8 (not just a start screen).

 

[Jeff Kibuule]

Absolutely none. This also prevents another problem, as Windows Phone 8 developers now have a MUCH higher GPU standard when developing games, making it very similar to Windows RT tablet hardware.

It is sad if you just bought a Lumia 900, but I want Windows Phone 8 devices to be the absolute best possible, since there are more people who aren't on the platform that Microsoft has to convince than those currently using WP7.5 devices.

 

[Gemini Ace]

Anyone ever heard Louis CK's bit on this?

Louis C.K.: "The Shittiest Cell Phone In The World Is A Miracle"

 

[HeyCori]

Gingerbread ran well and like **** on multiple devices. Same with honeycomb and even ICS. I think MS doesn't want to go down that road of whether or not your phone works really well is a roll of the dice. I loved the fact that no matter whether it was a launch device or the latest Lumia 900, ALL of the phones were smooth and fast. If they had to bastardize WP8 and to get it to run on lower end hardware, then I guarantee you some OEM would intentionally make dirt cheap phones that barely function. It's just a theory, but it has market precedence. Look at all the cheapo Android tablets out there.

Now whether or not they allow us to unlock our devices and let XDA make up the difference, that would be awesome. To do it you'd have to know what you're doing and the average consumer would never hear of it.

I also agree that it's entirely likely that some developers will realize there's still good money to be had for everyone on WP7. Just because we think everyone will move to developing for WP8 doesn't make it true.

Here's something interesting about ICS. As of this month, ICS only makes up 7% of the Android market share. Yet, consumers are not raging about the lack of updates. The average consumer doesn't care about updates. That's why I find it strange that the OP says that people expect 3 updates over 3 years. We care but you're average consumer won't and that's why this won't have an impact on MS in the long run.

 

[selfcreation]

I have honestly never seen so many people upset , about the start of a new OS.

I have ... with Iphone and Android and MANGO . same story. every time... always complainers.

this is nothing new.. i dunno why people where expecting MS to be different from Google and apple...and the rest of the world.

aside this site doesn't even harbor 1% of WP users... you think theirs allot of complaints .. but its always the same people! lol

 

[Nataku4ca]

to be honest, im pretty sure someone from XDA will come up with a rom to allow wp8 to install on our devices, since this thing was tested on hardware way older than ours

the fact of the matter is, if they do allow upgrades to current devices a few things will have to happen: (some others have suggested)
1. data will be wiped clean, just like when u try to upgrade from xp directly to win7
2. there is a chance, like flashing BIOS, that the phone will brick, be it power loss or other matters

the first issue will most likely piss off a few users anyway, no matter how you explain it to them, the second issue, ya... if that happens a law suit will probably happen, i wouldn't take the risk either

im actually pretty happy with 7.8 since thats what i was assuming would happen right from the beginning, the biggest issue right now is no one knows what features would be included, which i seriously doubt would just be the UI change

as far as apps go, there is no reason to go all crazy over it since the dev tool for wp8 isn't even out yet, so it will be at least another 3~6 month before any apps that will use native code or wp8 specific code come out, by then most of us (im saying around 50%) of us are due for upgrades anyways... the fact of the matter is many apps DON'T NEED TO BE WP8 SPECIFIC, so there is no way in **** the devs would compile them solely for wp8, at least i wouldn't, im expecting may be 1% or less apps to be wp8 only by end of 2013, 2014 is when they will really start showing up

so in the end, people just need to relax, im kind of expecting wp7.9 for next year then wp7 series would end after that, it only makes sense that way... (but probably won't get much feature with 7.9)

btw, with the way ppl are exchanging for new hand set I don't think this is going to be an issue for alot of the enthusiast anyways (some of my friends are going with 1 phone every 6 month then craiglist it =..=)