Windows Phone 7.5 not to update to WP8?

[anon(5335877)]

I had a thought the other day - I wonder if we haven't been staring at the answer all along. You know where MS said Tango was the update to accomodate low-end phones and Apollo was for high-end devices?

What if Tango is for all current models (which they will reclassify as "low end") and Apollo is for all new models (which they will classify as "high end")? That would mean we've technically been told the truth all along that ALL current phones will get an upgrade, but also that current handsets won't be getting the full monty.

Even the naming would make sense. Tango just follows from Mango. Apollo 8 (the space program) was the first craft ever to leave Earth orbit and go to the Moon, so Apollo as the codename for Windows Phone 8 would take the platform above and beyond where it has been before. But perhaps requiring new hardware to get there.

That would be disappointing.

Then again, that's still about a year from now, and knowing me, I can never keep a phone longer than six months, so I'll probably be changing phones anyway by the time Apollo comes around.

 

[Seketh]

I had a thought the other day - I wonder if we haven't been staring at the answer all along. You know where MS said Tango was the update to accomodate low-end phones and Apollo was for high-end devices?

What if Tango is for all current models (which they will reclassify as "low end") and Apollo is for all new models (which they will classify as "high end")? That would mean we've technically been told the truth all along that ALL current phones will get an upgrade, but also that current handsets won't be getting the full monty.

Even the naming would make sense. Tango just follows from Mango. Apollo 8 (the space program) was the first craft ever to leave Earth orbit and go to the Moon, so Apollo as the codename for Windows Phone 8 would take the platform above and beyond where it has been before. But perhaps requiring new hardware to get there.

I don't think so. The Nokia Lumia 900 doesn't fit on your theory, since it's a current model and I think it will be launched alongside Tango, since the dates are somewhat coincident.

It wouldn't make any sense to release the Lumia 900 and not update it to Windows Phone 8, it's a flagship device. And if the Lumia 900 gets the update, then all other hardware also get it, since what runs on the Lumia 900, runs on every other Windows Phone.

Truth be told, I'd like Microsoft to clear up this as soon as possible, but I see no reason why Windows Phone 8 won't come to all existing devices.

 

[Reflexx]

If WP7 phones are not updated with WP8, but they do receive an update that gives it feature parity that isn't hardware dependent, would people still be upset?

My guess is yes. But I don't really know why they would be.

 

[gwydionjhr]

Almost all the things listed are feature dependent. I think the one thing I would dearly love is to the see the new syncing app/feature brought over to WP7.5.

 

[mprice86]

If WP7 phones are not updated with WP8, but they do receive an update that gives it feature parity that isn't hardware dependent, would people still be upset?

My guess is yes. But I don't really know why they would be.

I would be pretty jazzed off to be honest. Simply because it's the kind of thing I moved away from Android to escape. I bought a brand new phone, I expect that it will be supported for a year minimum. Giving a second rate version update out is not a substitute and is definitely not supporting the user, the community and certainly not the customer.

Furthermore, I find Windows Phone exciting for the potential uses when combined with, and along side Windows 8, this was one of the big driving factors in me getting one. If it ends up that I would have to get a new phone to run the new OS, as well as the new PC OS; Microsoft, rather than getting ?2-300 of my money, would get precisely **** all off me.

I and everyone else with a Windows Phone, has made both an investment and a commitment to the OS, it is only right that they be rewarded for that. The idea of year old phones being totally obsolete is quite disturbing given how much MS has gone on about fragmentation.

All that said, aside from the more recent info suggesting that there will be changes to the kernel to bring it more in line with Windows 8, there has been nothing to say that the whole thing has been rewritten. Furthermore, there has been literally nothing in the rumours of features and changes that suggest that Apollo will be a massive departure from WP as it is currently.

I've said it before, MS is not a dumb company. They know the backlash they would face if they did something so stupid and as others have said they are famed for their backwards compatibility. There is simply no way that they are so stupid to screw over the people who have supported Windows Phone this far.

 

[alzaeem]

I think the main arguing point in that reddit post is that WP8 will be based on a different Kernel and hence current hardware won't support it. Well did you guys know that MSFT initially used early Windows phones hardware to test Windows on Arm? Apparently that was before ARM tablets were around.

This is from Microsoft's building windows 8 blog: Building Windows for the ARM processor architecture - Building Windows 8 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

This is one of two images in that link showing this: http://blogs.msdn.com/cfs-file.ashx...files/00-00-01-29-43/8306.Photo_2D00_0052.jpg

This should eliminate all doubt that NT kernel can run on WP hardware (excluding potential low end handsets coming with 256mb RAM). The only thing is that it might require updated drivers from manufactures, although judging by the fact all those manufactures will be making Win8 based tablets/PC's, they should have no problem with that.

Ultimately MSFT needs to ensure gen 1 devices can get one more major update to maintain a legitimate advantage over Android's fragmentation. I am sure that they know that. Hopefully they will put those rumors to bed at MWC.

 

[N8ter]

The main issue will be the specs of the early devices, not what it was tested on or whatnot. Also, every WP7 device doesn't have the same exact hardware in it. The SoCs are the same, but other components are different which is why OEMs still issue their own WP7 device updates outside of Microsoft's official updates.

Android fragmentation isn't really an competitive issue. By the time Apollo is out almost all Android users will be on at least Gingerbread and really Android releases often don't break many advances (it's like upgrading Mac OSX in many cases) so that's not a huge problem.

Dispirate Screen Resolutions and Form Factors post a bigger issue to Android developers than what version of Android is running on the device, since almost all Android users are on at least FroYo right now and they can simply target the least common denominator.

OS Version Fragmentation never hurt Windows on the Desktop, so why do you assume it's going to be some huge competitive disadvantage to Android, which has grown massively despite it?

 

[Bifurcated]

Windows didn't have OS fragmentation on the desktop. At one point there were two Windows streams - the 9x line and the NT line. These days only the NT line is available.

A better comparison would be Linux, where there is a profusion of different incompatible versions.

 

[N8ter]

XP vista 7 that's three versions and API levels. Later Android versions are backward compatible with earlier API levels. The comparison is right on. You're wrong.

Sent from my HD7 using Board Express

 

[N8ter]

Linux fragmentation is not really because of solely the kernel (notwithstanding the fact that much code links to kernel code, but you can't always expect a Vista or XP driver to work on latter windows versions, etiher). It also has much to do with the packages in the distro and their version level dependencies with other packages/libraries. That's a bad comparison, if you wanna get technical about it.

Android fragmentation is more comparable to desktop windows than desktop Linux. Android did not share Linux's specific issues and latter versions of windows have largely eliminated the DLL h-ell that roughly mirrored those issues on this platform.

Of course, Linux's issues are a bit deeper than that but that would require too much text to explain. From a developer's point of view, and even a consumer the version-level dependencies are what really plagues most users. It's what causes software to break if you update something that you thought wasn't even related to it. It's why different binary packages are tied to specific libC versions. Among other things.

There are things tied to specific kernel versions, but that goes for any OS. Drivers and such, for example. You canot just install a Windows 2000 Driver on Windows XP just because they're both NT-based. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't. Apple avoids this by producing their own PCs with set PC configurations. If people did this with Linux they could avoid many of the kernel linkage issues (since you could update drivers from the OEM, but it still won't fix the DLL **** that plagues that platform). That requires more fundamental changes (that is an issue on almost All Unices).