Be Excellent To Each Other

Everything I've read said that's it's bringing features over including the UI. I can't find anything specific but I'd be surprised if it's just the different sized tiles they introduce.

What is the actual root reason that current devices won't be able to run the new OS? Aside from requiring some massive jump in hardware, what other factor could be such a complete blocker? Aside from MS just being dicks for the sake of it which I assume they're not doing here...

It's a completely different OS, based on an NT kernel instead of a CE kernel. They've built the new kernel for the new spec hardware, so it won't run on the older kit.

7->8 is technically a bigger under-the-hood change than 6.5->7.

Bonnet.

Google > Craster.

So, "WP7 was basically shite at it's core and we've realised that so are fixing our mistake at the expense of everyone who's supported us up to this point?" Fucking hell MS.

Fixed.

"We wrote it like this. Now we know how to do it better, so we will. Seems daft to stand still forever.".

Just like every other manufacturer in history, then.

MS are always damned if they do and damned if they don't. For each person praising them for innovating, there's someone damning them for backwards compatibility. Which is how you define your market, I guess.

Was it really based around windows CE, I thought the entire point of 7 was that is wasn't supposed to be based around CE, becasue CE was old and no one really liked it.

It was effectively a shiny skin on top of CE, yes.

Which other manufactures are you talking about that threw their entire product line under a bus less than two years after the first release? It's certainly not their main competitor in the same product space that they're struggling to get a proper handhold in. I really don't see this as a case of, "Well we made what was a good decision at the time and things have changed," this is more, "We made a stupid decision in the past and now we need to screw out customers because of it." Yes, it will mean they can move to a better platform for their mobile OS going forward and that'll be good in the long run, but I think it's entirely fair to point the finger at them for making bad decisions rather than excusing it by pretending it's just the normal march of technology at work.

Even on android & iOS, when a new OS version comes out, it's not been the case that if you can't update, you've still had access to lots of (most even) new apps released.

Yes, I think that Windows Phone 8 looks pretty cool, and they're doing some smart stuff with it, but it's definately a shitty situation for anyone who's just bought one of their recently released flagship devices.

I'd probably be cautious of ever buying a Windows Phone if there's a possible major update on the horizon that I might not be able to have access too. With iOS they have their roughly annual major new version, and they always work on at least the previous generation of hardware, and if you care you know roughly when to expect new hardware. With Android, as long as I've been using it anyway, there have never been any killer features that I've been cut off from by not being on the most recent OS version.

They just put up a load of posters advertising the "new range" of Lumia smartphones near me.

nokia did when they moved to wp7

Hp did when they dropped web is.

Don't apple refuse to upgrade anything before the 3GS

Things have to move on.

You're not reading one post eh Kovacs?

Hp with webos. Bought palm. Released a phone and a touchpad. Then bined the lot. Sorry I thought that I answered correctly.

Do I put zing now?

The first device with WebOS was the Pre which came out in 2009 and it looks like they essentially halted production on WebOS devices in August 2011 so fair enough, I'll give you that one! Apple and Nokia don't count though because they either produced their previous product line for much more than two years or still create iterations on that product line even while, understandably, making previous versions of the hardware obsolete.

Thinking more on this, I'm not entirely sure what they could have done. Look at the list of what's coming in WP8

Full SD support - hardware dependent
New resolutions - hardware dependent
NFC - hardware dependent
Multicore CPU support - hardware dependent
New home screen
IE10
Skype integration

So - the first four are impossible to bring to WP7, because they rely on hardware that doesn't exist on those phones. If they provide the last three, and there's no reason they can't do so pretty easily, surely they've brought every WP8 feature they possibly can to WP7?

they could've brought the underlying OS over, leaving those bits out. As it is, we get no new apps. Or developers stick to obsolete APIs (why would they, hardly anyone had time to buy one?!)

They went to the effort to strip wp7.5 down for low spec devices that have been on sale for weeks before they murdered them, and are committing to a new release backporting some bits (which will mean additional support development instead of sticking with 7.5) - why didn't they just craft a barebones wp8 instead? They've fucked this up completely.

Yeah, the app support is the painful bit. Still - it would just be a case of flicking a switch between the two before you hit compile, so it shouldn't be a great deal of work for developers to support their existing install base.

They say they're 'adding' multi core 'support' - which is a mistruth, they're REQUIRING it, if they can't recompile for the ARM derivative in WP7 devices.

With the MS brand tablet, the wanting to pick Nokia up for cheaps theory makes an awful lot is sense.

Android is in the same position though with that feature list in that not all Android phones have the hardware for those features; but you can still upgrade them to ICS, you just don't get the features of your hardware doesn't support it so I don't understand your argument here?

Hell, forget about Android, what about every other OS in the universe? They all support stuff in the software that a given target device/build might not have in it's hardware profile for so users with those devices just don't get those features.

My point is, why care that the phone won't upgrade to WP8 if it gets all the same features it would have had if it did upgrade to WP8?

Because the splintering of the app market is the biggest problem.

And I'm not convinced it is. It's utter, utter simplicity to compile your app for both platforms. Sure, there will be plenty of new apps that will be built solely for 8, particularly games built on native code rather than .NET (which wouldn't be possible on 7 anyway), but for 30 seconds extra work, no developer is going to ditch their 7 install base for no good reason.

Like Lewie I suspect that this kind of OS fragmentation is bad from an app point of view right now. It's the future I'd be really worried about though; MS have done some work here to bridge a functionality gap with an update for Win7 handsets but I'm willing to bet they won't do that for future Win8 updates so your Win7 guys get this one final sop and then get dropped. Also for third party dev, they may release two versions of their current apps but there will be more reason to dump Win7 users as time goes on. And for people who haven't yet released an app at all but are planning to in the near future then I'd guess that they'll be looking at Win8 as the future of the platform so they might well skip the Win7 guys entirely. With Android or iOS it's still fundamentally the same OS everyone's running so a lot of apps can be relased/updated once and still work with the new guys and the people running older versions. That's obviously not the case here so it's not great.

All of which is fine for the platform itself and it's future of course, it's just shitty for the current users is all.

It is shitty, but I don't think it's anywhere near as shitty as I thought it would be when I originally found out about it. And MS have promised (yeah, yeah) that they will continue to develop both platforms.

Also, while you're right about Android, the marketplace fragmentation in terms of what apps will run on what is immense! Far bigger than we'll see on the WP marketplace.

The biggest problem I see isn't technical at all -- it's consumer confidence in the nascent platform being shaken too far.

I'm not convinced the consumers will realise, understand it if they do realise, or care about it if they understand.

I think people are smarter than that. Something like 80% of iPhone users upgrade the OS within a month or so of release, and this was true even when that process involved the hassle of plugging into iTunes. At least some consumers understand about new software.

They'll realise when they hear about a cool new app they want to get and then can't find it on the app marketplace.

How many would have bought music in iTunes in a given month? If you plug in your device to sync, you get prompted to upgrade. Doing it as a by-product of having a need to plug your device in to sync music doesn't mean you care/know about new software.

That statistic would mean more if they didn't get told to upgrade their phone when they wanted to add music.

The shiny shiny updates to iOS are very well publicised though, moreso, I'd think, than Android or Windows. I'm surprised that Rory Cellan-Jones doesn't have a seperate iOS.bbc.co.uk microsite every time Apple give an iPhone presentation.

o/

Hahaha - clearly you're not a Windows Phone user. There are no cool apps.

\o

And also, cool app differentiation occurs already, in both ipad vs ipod and the many differing guises of android. Furthermore, most of the software pgrades come throgh the service provider well after the original release date on android phones, in some cases the pgrade is never released unless yo jail break your phone. And it would appear that my U key is not working properly.

Still, though. The backup/install/restore process takes 30 minutes or so (which you're going to know once you've done it once), and you can say "no" to it, and people who literally don't care wouldn't bother to go through the process.

I'm uneasy with most lines of argument that run along the lines of "people won't understand this so it doesn't matter". I think consumers are often savvier than they are given credit for (or MoneySavingExpert and HotUKDeals wouldn't be as popular as they are).

For example, if people don't care, why did Nokia's Symbian sales plunge after the announcement that it was going to WP7? And yes, you can still buy S60 phones to this day -- there's a few on CPW's website

yeah, but it isn't really like for like is it, when Nokia announced they were moving to windows they didn't just announce a new OS, they announced a new suite of hi-tech phones which certainly looked better than anything else they had previously brought out - along with a major ad campaign. If they had brought out windows onto the same hardware as the symbian OS you could claim the drop was due to the OS, but I think the hardware probably played a major part as well.

Sure -- that's true, too. All I'm saying is that I don't think it's a slam-dunk conclusion that this will have little or no affect on Nokia's sales for the next four or so months.

And I don't think anyone would argue that.

Hi. Welcome to the Internet. You must be new here.

OK - I don't think anyone has argued that. Here.

If Grim...'s contention is true, then there can be no affect on sales.

That was about OS updates for existing phones, not Nokia sales.

Same thing, surely? If consumers don't care about updates to existing phones, they're not going to care about the nonupgradable Lumias in the channel now either, and will go on buying them.