Miracast to require new Windows Phone hardware, Lumia 1520 might make the cut

[Windows Central]

If you?ve been eagerly awaiting Miracast support in Windows Phone 8.1, and are excited that you?ll be able to upgrade your Windows Phone, you may have to pipe down slightly as your current device may not be compatible. This news comes from Joe Belfiore on Twitter, stating that only the Nokia Lumia 1520 from current (and previous) generation Windows Phones may be compatible.

Full story from the WPCentral blog...

 

[inteller]

That's bull**** and Joe knows it.

 

[BIGPADDY]

Nokia saying that the 1520, 930 and icon will get the miracast update:

Windows Phone 8.1 update: everything you need to know - Nokia Conversations

 

[Cleavitt76]

That's bull**** and Joe knows it.

It's not a conspiracy. The hardware just isn't there in older phones. The hardware WiFi chip has to support a specific version of WiFi-Direct or higher as it is required by the Miracast standard. Windows Phones use Qualcomm processors. Qualcomm only started to support WiFi-Direct in more recent versions of their processors and to begin with it was only in the higher end quad core versions. Some flagship Android phones have been using those quad cores (they needed them to run well), but WP devices have mostly been the dual core versions. The 1520, Icon, and 930 use a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 which does support Miracast. Nokia will probably need to update their firmware to expose the previously unused functionality to the 8.1 OS though.

This is the only real disadvantage to Miracast compared to competing technology. It only works on relatively recent devices because it is based on more modern standards than similar competing technology. In the mobile world "recent" is like 3 months or less. This is also the case on laptops and tablets that are older than a couple of years.

I don't know why people assume that MS would purposely cripple certain phones. They don't even deal with the phone hardware (yet), they just code the general Miracast functionality into the OS. It would be like blaming MS because your laptop from 2005 doesn't support Bluetooth in Windows 8 when Windows does support it and the laptop just doesn't have any Bluetooth hardware.