Let's face facts. Can you wait till Windows Phone 8

[palandri]

Apollo has me very worried about upgrading to a Windows Phone any time soon. Microsoft truly needs to come out and say whether the 7.5 devices will continue to receive updates after 8 is released. After all, I wouldn't buy a Windows 7 computer right now if I knew I couldn't upgrade it to Windows 8 when it comes out in less than a year. I'd even be willing to pay for the next upgrade, if it is significant enough. I believe that Microsoft either doesn't realize or isn't willing to cope with America's upgrading style. We, as general consumers, are stuck in two-year contracts. They need to assure us that what we're buying is going to last for that long. Having already outdated hardware and showing such grandeur on the horizon isn't the best way to make sales today.

I will actually be surprised if we get Apollo on a 1st generation device. the name of the game is sales. If you don't have them you go under.

 

[theefman]

I'd say what's more a concern is how big the next jump up turns out to be, and as a consequence how dated it will make the current hardware look. It's all well and good to say that right now, WP7 works very well on comparatively underpowered hardware - it does, no argument there. But think of it this way: July 2012 is only 8 months away and most new phone contracts now are 18 months to 2 years. But even on a 12-month one you'd have a third of it left if you bought a new phone *right now*.

Say the new chassis spec brings dual core, qHD SAMOLED+ displays at a minimum of 4 inches, 32 and 64 GB storage options, memory card access as standard, FFC as standard, gyroscope as standard. All fairly reasonable things available now on high-end phones - but all things that will make all the WP7 phones available now look unavoidably limited and dated in comparison. Imagine, also, that with this new horsepower the xbox live market takes off and we start getting some games of the class of Infinity Blade and Shadowgun. Only all previous-gen single core handsets can't handle the heavy lifting needed to run them.

Now imagine tomorrow you're off to sign up for a 2-year contract or put down ?400+ for an unlocked 800 or Focus S. In 8 months time - not long at all in the mobile world - you are going to be seriously annoyed that your top tier handset bought half a year ago is suddenly not much better with Gen 1 handsets a year older when it comes to what it can handle compared to the new models.

I think MS have a potential timebomb on their hands. They *have* to up the specs to keep up at some point soon, but because they didn't bump the specs more with Mango the new handsets available now are just too close to what came before. Which means they'll likely struggle to keep up with the big horsepower boost that the next-gen handsets get.

And there's only three solutions as far as I can see:

1. Offer recent upgraders (say, anyone 3 months in or less) some sort of trade in discount
2. Bite the bullet and tell consumers to pay to upgrade early/go sim-free or just make do until they can upgrade on contract
3. Deliberately hold back the chassis specs so that the upgrade is more modest and the 2nd gen handsets are therefore better able to cope

I reckon they'll go with 2, because 3 is just crippling new devices for the sake of it and 1 is very expensive. Which is why I won't be upgrading to a new WP7 handset until we get at least some clue about plans for the next 6 months.

There's nothing different here than with any other tech purchase - phones, TV's, dvd players, amps, speakers - practically anything you buy today will be outdated in record time. It looks like we will soon see a quad-core android device, should android owners all now start feeling they are on subpar hardware? Should they stop buying handsets based on what they think the next gen device could do? What anyone has to consider is what is the baseline performance you get, and if that provides an acceptable level of performance. So with even a 1st gen WP7 device it still runs smooth and plays games well. Upgrade to the latest and greatest WP7 and you get a better GPU, FFC, bigger, better screens and better batteries.

Later on down the line something better will come along but with WP7 you have 2 assurances IMO that make their approach better than the typical 3 month cycle we are seeing with android.

1) Whatever WP7 hardware you pick is highly optimsed and the performance you get is significantly better than what merely looking at the tech specs would suggest. So while there are technically better devices you really dont feel you are missing anything performance wise. Case in point, the 2nd gen devices with their FFC's seem to be handling video calling better than the single core androids did, and the better GPU seems to make the already smooth OS smoother still. So you get better performanc with a newer device but 1st gen devices still feel snappy and work with all applications.

2) The rate of change to the WP7 chassis spec is slower so you dont feel the hardware you just bought is obsolete a few weeks later, so by the time we see a big jump in minimum specs you dont feel as if you've just chucked money down the drain. This point actually is more relevant to android devices and I think by the time we see such a huge jump in performance that the earlier devices are not capable of keeping up most people will be looking to upgrade anyway.

I think we will see newer, faster hardware in 2012 but as with all things tech, what you buy now wont be as good. But in our case, even the comparatively outdated hardware provides a fantastic experience and is worthwhile in itself. There's always something newer, better round the corner, better to enjoy now than wait forever.

 

[Pronk]

Oh yeah, I agree that there's always something new around the corner. It's just in this case the corner is much closer than is sometimes the case. It's true there's always a new Android handset coming, but they're not jumping from e.g. everyone on single core to quad core - the spec creep is a fairly incremental process. But also a bad system as it's exactly that that leads to market fragmentation.

Which is part of my point. I thought with the chassis specs Microsoft were going with a sensible, more Apple-like model of set upgrade levels at a reasonable timeframe but with the benefit more hardware choice. But at the moment it seems the mango kit is much closer to a stop-gap than a genuine step up, which means the real step up coming with Apollo will be pretty much a two-year jump forward in technology compared to the first WP7 devices - but is that two-year jump going to run on the stop-gap mango hardware that's much closer to the 1st gen stuff than any Apollo-gen kit?

Course, it might be Apollo will be super-optimised and run well on all current WP7 kit (hardware allowing). But I can't help but be wary about buying anything new for months until we know more about what Apollo will need and what the spec jump will be - and I'm already a WP7 owner who likes it. If someone new thinking of taking the WP7 plunge is doing their research, this could really put them off. And that'd be a shame.

 

[theefman]

I think Apollo will be available to all handsets but the Apollo-gen handsets will bring specific hardware advantages, like how Mango handsets have FFC's and gyros but probably nothing that will be a real deal breaker for those on current 2nd gen handsets.

It all comes down to the same thing anyway, if Apollo launches as expected in Fall 2012 it would present the same problem to 2nd gen device owners 1 year later as it would to 1st gen device owners if the hardware spec had jumped significantly with Mango, a year later. Either way, while I see your point I think it amounts to the same upgrade dilemma anyone who keeps up with tech deals with and while some will wait, others will go with whats available.

 

[power5]

Quad core android tablet has just been announced a couple days ago. Tegra 3 based Asus Transformer Prime. They should have called it "Asus Optimus Prime"

http://www.intomobile.com/2011/11/0...-worlds-first-nvidia-tegra-3-tablet-official/

 

[threed61]

Quad core android tablet has just been announced a couple days ago. Tegra 3 based Asus Transformer Prime. They should have called it "Asus Optimus Prime"

Asus Transformer Prime announced: World's first NVIDIA Tegra 3 tablet is official

I think the HTC Edge smartphone is supposed to be quad core too.

 

[power5]

You are right and it looks dead sexy too. Nice features around the camera on back and nice curved edge like the lumia 800 on the screen.

 

[Rhody#WP]

What you guys are talking about as a danger, Apple is using to drive long lines at Apple stores every year. If the OS catches on and people buy into the ecosystem, they will wait in line to pay full price for hardware.

 

[palandri]

Apollo will be available as an upgrade to Gen 1 handsets. Why wouldn't it be? Computers from 2005 can upgrade to windows 8 .

Sent from my T7575 using Board Express

That's what I have read also, next comes Tango, then Apollo. I hope it happens, but I'll be surprised if it does. It just seemd like more than one could usually expect for phone upgrades.

 

[jeremyshaw]

[...]

1) Whatever WP7 hardware you pick is highly optimsed and the performance you get is significantly better than what merely looking at the tech specs would suggest. So while there are technically better devices you really dont feel you are missing anything performance wise. Case in point, the 2nd gen devices with their FFC's seem to be handling video calling better than the single core androids did, and the better GPU seems to make the already smooth OS smoother still. So you get better performanc with a newer device but 1st gen devices still feel snappy and work with all applications.
[...]

Apple does the same thing. Only issue is, not all features make it back to the older devices based purely on performance alone. Others, for differenciation, etc.


But one other thing to note...

Apple has been either on the bleeding edge or on the upper cut on SoC, too. Their A4 was already fast for it's time, A5 was unmatched when it was released, and still has the fastest mobile GPU. The samsung SoCs before that were no slouches, either (SGX535 GPU). MS, on the other hand, launched on the Qualcomm snapdragon S1 chips, which were already outperformed by the S2 chips out the door, and were not even competitive in any sense vs the S3 chips that followed soon after (S2/S3 made on a smaller fab process vs S1). Only now, we see S2 chips, which are hopelesly outmatched by current gen chips. Yeah, MS doesn't need much processing power, but app resume/load times are still bad, web browsing certainly could be faster, and all S1/S2/S3 designs are still limited badly by the fact that the second memory channel is off package, so it's almost never implemented, hanpering it's performance even further (not even going to mention the memory bandwidth benefits of Tile Rendering in PowerVR GPUs - which is a technology MS developed in Tailsman, lol).

In the short run, I can see why MS isn't pushing the edge of performance, mainly due to limitations of current SoC. Hopefully S4 with a new arch and fab process alltogether will come soon, and allow the next push of WP7 devices to have good HW to back them up. (ST-E NovaThor has it's share of flaws, too... more so than Snapdragon IMO)

More hopefully, however, MS and it's partners will make a phone and software ecosystem that is worthy of a massive "Droid-esque" marketing push that put Android seriously on the map.

 

[theefman]

I think MS is waiting for the OS to mature enough to take advantage of the bleeding edge hardware as well. Things like NFC and Bluetooth 4.0 will inevitably come but I dont expect to see them race to adopt each new hardware advance as it comes available. What we will see is probably more an integration with MS tech like Kinect and whatever new cool thing MS research thinks up.

 

[Judge_Daniel]

The bottom line is that Apollo is going to be a huge change in Windows Phone. Dual-cores, different screen resolution, more native connectivity to Windows (8?), major NFC integration, Inspiration Engine, etc. will all be a part of Apollo (as far as we know). These aren't all just stat-boosters. Some of these are game-changers. The NFC, W8-connectivity, and screen resolution are the three that concern me the most. I'm not sure if Mango phones will even be able to cope with those. That is why cell phones are different than TVs, computers, etc. There isn't always an option to upgrade them. For example, I bought a WM 6.5 phone less than a year before WP7 came out. I don't regret it (I LOVE my Imagio), but it did leave a bad taste in my mouth when MS announced that no 6.5 phone would be able to upgrade to 7. I realize there is a probably a much greater difference between 6.5 and 7 than 7.5 and 8, but we don't really know just how great of a difference there will be in the next iteration of WP. Furthermore, it is rumored that it may come mid-2012. That means if I go with a Nokia phone in early 2012, then I'll get about 6 months out of my phone before it is obsolete. That is unacceptable when required to have a two year contract.

Basically, any educated consumer should be concerned. Not necessarily deterred, but concerned. After all, WP 7.5 is a great, great product in itself, but it is always good to look forward.

 

[theefman]

None of the things you mention preclude an upgrade for 1st gen devices, only means they wont be able to take advantage of all the features in Apollo. And I highly doubt the rumour that Apollo is going to appear mid 2012, MS has stated they are on a yearly schedule for big platform updates, and launching so early doesnt give enough time to release updated dev tools.

Plus Nokia will be launching US devices early 2012, hardly good PR to announce devices then 3 months later obsolete them, is it? Just look at the Xbox, 6 years old and just using software updates you basically get a new console even with a launch console. Lets not forget rumours tend to be just that, we've seen our fair share with the Mango update. Apollo in mid 2012 doesnt make sense unless MS is in full desperation mode, and everything they've said points to them playing this as a long term operation. I dont see why anyone should be especially concerned about WP7's upgrade cycle, more applicable to android where its anyone's guess if you will ever get an update.

 

[rluka]

They need to assure us that what we're buying is going to last for that long. Having already outdated hardware and showing such grandeur on the horizon isn't the best way to make sales today.

In the market they have more experience in (PC business), OEM usually have free upgrade program.

All new PCs purchased in about half year before planned release of the next Windows or Office will be eligible for free software upgrade to the latest version. They understand that consumers (and small business) will hold back from buying computers (more expensive than phones) when a new OS is in the corner.
The fact that Windows itself cost $100+ is not helping

 

[Dark Mirage]

Actually, I wondered how much the idea and arguments about dual core is planted by Neowin's recent editorial
More reasons as to why Windows Phone needs dual-cores - Neowin.net

If compared to PC, I also don't feel the need for latest biggest baddest video card, THE component that's always in Need For Speed mode for latest 3D games in desktop.

It's articles like that which articulate better my point about the need for Microsoft to catch up with Android and Apple in the hardware department.

It's not just about the OS (which, yes, IS wonderfully smooth). It's also about the apps and features. Android and Apple phones can already do things that make a Windows Phone look tame. By the time we get dual-core support, WP7's feature set and apps will likely look archaic in comparison. And let's not forget just how many amazing mobile games we are going to miss out on for the next six, or more, months (titles which would offer a much needed boost to the mobile Live service).

I love WP7; I really do. The OS is fantastic. But, at the same time, I can't help but feel like I'm missing out. Anyone who's seen me in the gaming portion of the forums will know this right away. I don't want to sacrifice my OS... but, outside of that, Android and Apple are just seem to be handling things so much better. I've already waited a year for things to pick up... Asking me to do it for possibly another is when you start to ask too much :/. I can't handle the one day a week release schedule for Live. Especially when there are few decent indie games in between to spice it up.

 

[Blacklac]

Keep in mind, iOS games and Apps still support older devices (iP4 and 3GS). They are not built to fully utilize the 4S hardware. Plus even the 4S only has 512MB RAM, so there isn't really an advantage on that front either. Not that WP doesn't need to push their hardware specs, I just dont think the grass is THAT green on the other side.

****, I'm about to join WP from Blackberry. WP is in decent shape to me! ( I joke, I still LOVE my Playbook and think if RIM can pull it together a little, they will have a solid future.) Looking forward to my HTC Titan though.

 

[pseudoware]

Apollo will be available as an upgrade to Gen 1 handsets. Why wouldn't it be? Computers from 2005 can upgrade to windows 8 . To say it won't be is just plain curs?.
Sent from my T7575 using Board Express

This is what I understand, also. I recall reading something that sounded like this is assumed. The 1st gen devices will get cut-off at some point, or course, but not at Apollo.

 

[Dark Mirage]

That's not entirely true. 3GS support is still around, yeah. But a number of game developers have stopped support for the device. It's also missing certain features from the iOS5.

While all things will end eventually, the problem still lies in what everyone else has pointed out: When WP7 was released, it was already outdated hardware. Our S1 processors are already a couple generations behind. There's not much more you can squeeze out of them. When Apollo hits, our processors will be about three years behind. For a cellphone, that's getting long in the tooth... Especially when you consider that Snapdragon's processors aren't exactly the worlds best.

I have no doubt we'll still get support from MS either way, but I'm not worried about that. I'm worried about missing out on games and apps.

 

[Blacklac]

I dont disagree with your points, at all, but I mean even the iPhone 4 is a 800Mhz single core with 512MB RAM. Granted, it may have a better GPU, iOS devs will be supporting that for atleast another year. HOnestly, I think WP should worry about Devs coming to the platform itself than Devs dumbing down games for a single core CPU. You can do alot with a 1-1.5Ghz single core and 512MB RAM. It's not like the GPU is awful either.

But yeah, I understand your points and concerns.

 

[joemd60]

Shhhhh keep it down! All this sub-standard WP7 talk is hurting my sub-standard Trophy's feelings!