News · 19 Apr 2012 · MTW Editorial Team
Windows Phone 8 will be available as an update to current Windows Phone 7 handsets….or not. Nobody, I repeat, nobody really knows the answer for certain. So everything you have been reading in the past few days, hours should be filed under the rumor tag. At the day of the day the question is: Does it really matter? Well, in terms of PR, Marketing and overall user trust, not releasing a Windows Phone 8 update (or a subset of it) for, at the very least, the second generation of Windows Phone 7 handsets (especially Nokia’s) would be one of the dumbest move Microsoft will have ever done. Remember, we are talking about the same company that launched the horrendous Kin handsets. Sadly, anything is possible with the boys and girls in Redmond so don’t get your hopes up.
One more thing to realize is that current Windows Phone 7 handsets are not going to suddenly stop working once Windows Phone 8 is going to be released. hopefully people will understand and stop being drama queens. The phone you are currently enjoying will still be fully functional next year and beyond. Let’s assume that their won’t be a WP8 update for a second. What’s really missing from the current Windows Phone experience ? 1080 video playback/encoding? This won’t be “fixed” by a WP8 update (requires hardware). NFC support ? Won’t be fixed by a WP8 update (requires hardware and is already possible in WP7). better integration with Microsoft’s Bing, Skydrive, etc services? This can be added by a relatively minor WP7 update (and already done via apps like the new Translator app). The one thing that would be annoying will be the apps/marketplace experience because of the lack of WinRT / Native support that will come with WP8 and thus restrict the number of applications compatible with WP7 handsets (major suckage here….there’s no way around that). I but let me repeat this: Your current handsets are perfectly fine! Do I hope that Microsoft doesn’t do the dumbest sh@t ever and indeed release a form of WP8 update for a select number of Windows Phone 7 handsets? Hell yeah! Am I going to loose sleep, throw my WP7s handset in the trash, troll all over the internet, if they don’t ? Nope. First let’s just wait for the Tango roll out which should start in early June and the official Windows Phone 8 unveiling this summer.
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