Whats the chance of MS doing a WP 8.1 public beta/preview?

[wapoz]

Way back during the days of WP7, MS did a developer beta of WP 7.5 that was easy enough for an enthusiast to flash their current device with. Even though it wasn't official, it gave many WP users the chance to play around with 7.5 a few months before it's official release. Fast forward a few years and It seems now that MS has taken a more liberal and open approach to allowing it's customers to test drive updates in the form of the GDR3 preview, which was a simple and straightforward update process that anyone could do even without technical knowledge.

Will the trend continue with WP 8.1? Now that it's rumored to have a release of late spring/summer, what's the chance of them releasing a public beta or preview before the "official" release to generate buzz and give devs a headstart? It would be a massive misstep if they waited that long to get it in the hands of customers, especially considering just how recently Android and iOS went through major revisions, and WP is starting to lag behind in it's feature set compared to the other 2 major OS's.

Thoughts, predictions?

 

[DBDev]

I hope so, and I think it is a pretty big chains since they had preview for GDR3 :wink:

 

[Aldwin1999]

I wish they would release a dev preview WP8 is a real competitor to the other OSs and this update will show what this platform could do... And this is only the start.... And when WP9 comes out I heard that you could update your WP8 device so that's some good news to the future users :3

 

[Ultimateone]

I believe it will happen for every update now, I dont know why they wouldn't.

 

[omgitsnick]

Isn't this happening already? It does say in the Preview for "Developers":

"You'll receive early access to the latest updates by enabling the Windows Phone Preview on your phone."

 

[hopmedic]

I'd say it's hard to say. We can sure hope. But FYI the 7.5 early update was developers only, and we had to agree to NDA.



Sent from my Developer Unlocked Nokia Lumia 928 using Tapatalk

 

[wapoz]

I'd say it's hard to say. We can sure hope. But FYI the 7.5 early update was developers only, and we had to agree to NDA.



Sent from my Developer Unlocked Nokia Lumia 928 using Tapatalk

That didn't stop the good folks over at XDA LOL. I had mango on my Samsung focus for a couple of months early thanks to them

 

[John20212]

Now all we need is OEMs like Nokia to do the same for their firmware and OS additions like Nokia Black, so we can completely bypass the curse that is the mobile carrier.

 

[Ali Assaedi]

I had mango on my Samsung focus for a couple of months early thanks to them

"mango", the memories .. suddenly i feel too old

 

[hopmedic]

That didn't stop the good folks over at XDA LOL. I had mango on my Samsung focus for a couple of months early thanks to them

I didn't say others didn't get it, but with WP8, that's not going to happen. Security model is different. Hasn't been hacked yet.