Microsoft introduces Windows Phone 8 | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft introduces Windows Phone 8

engadget.com

131 pointssoupboy186 comments

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, he made it really clear that Apple's job wasn't to beat Microsoft. Apple then delivered on that assessment and created entirely new markets for themselves.

Sadly, somehow, Microsoft went all XOR on our asses. I'm still baffled about how Microsoft is still trying to out-Apple Apple when they've repeatedly proven it's a disastrous strategy (see: Zune).

Microsoft are kings of productivity software and the corporate desktop. They own business communications. They own corporate email. So when it comes to revitalizing their phone product, they focus on the twittering tweens?

Is it just me, or is it not freaking obvious that Microsoft should focus on building the ultimate business phone? Something that corporations around the world would deploy to every single employee in a heartbeat?

Hey, RIM is struggling. Perhaps Microsoft could stand to fork out a Skype-sized bundle of cash to buy them out.

>Is it just me, or is it not freaking obvious that Microsoft should fire their phone strategists, and focus on building the ultimate business phone? Something that competes with Blackberry? Something that corporations around the world would deploy to every single employee in a heartbeat?

That's what they're doing: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/window...

>focus on building the ultimate business phone? That's what WP8 is. It has much better support for enterprise systems.

Windows 8 has native Active Directory support for device and user management. That along with ActiveSync and I think the phones and tablets are for the enterprise.

ActiveSync, huh? After completely broke direct sync with desktop Outlook in WP?

I don't think twittering teens is their target market.

"To help tell the story, we introduce our muses, Anna, Miles and their son, Luca. They represent classic Life Maximizers – busy personally and busy professionally, constantly juggling priorities, settled rather than seeking, and valuing technology as a means to an end, a way to get things done." http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=189338

And most of the "screenshot" images I have seen involve young families with 'hard working' parents that are trying to balance work and life 'in more demanding times'. Kids are almost always featured (not the target, but within).

> I don't think twittering teens is their target market.

It definitely was with the Kin.

It might as well have been with WP7.

It's good to see this has changed somewhat with WP8.

> I'm still baffled about how Microsoft is still trying to out-Apple Apple when they've repeatedly proven it's a disastrous strategy (see: Zune).

I don't see how they're trying to out-Apple Apple in this case. They're releasing a mobile operating system for third party vendors to create hardware for. Remove "mobile" and this is the exact same thing they've been doing all along.

> Microsoft are kings of productivity software and the corporate desktop. They own business communications. They own corporate email. So when it comes to revitalizing their phone product, they focus on the twittering tweens?

Are you forgetting that they're also still king of the consumer desktop? I highly doubt that their 85% market share[1][2] is business alone. Apple isn't selling more computers than all manufacturers combined[3].

[1] http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-shar... [2] http://www.statowl.com/operating_system_market_share.php [3] http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/01/hp-reclaims-top-spot-in-p...

> Are you forgetting that they're also still king of the consumer desktop?

They're probably still the majority shareholder, but I wouldn't call them kings. And if they are kings, they're leading a dying kingdom. Have you seen the iPad sales numbers recently?

There is no denying that the traditional laptop/desktop market is slowly dying away due to the iPad (and soon Windows 8 tablets), but I don't understand why this should drive them to build a business only device. Microsoft is still a very consumer oriented company, in addition to their business "kingdom".

> And if they are kings, they're leading a dying kingdom. Have you seen the iPad sales numbers recently?

Here are the Q1 2012 numbers:

PC sales [1]: 88.9 million

iPad sales [2]: 11.8 million

About 13% as many iPad sales as PC sales. While the iPad sales are impressive, it doesn't seem like PCs are dying yet.

[1] http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1981717

[2] http://www.abiresearch.com/press/3919

What are the numbers for 2011?

How many of those PCs were sold to homes?

From a 0% to 13% in just 2 years sounds pretty good to me.

>> Have you seen the iPad sales numbers recently?

Another one living in Apple's reality distortion field.

There are a few billion people living in presently up-and-coming developing countries that will jump straight to the ubiquitous smartphone era instead of first going through the ubiquitous "personal computer" phase.

Awesome business strategy: compete with cheap unlicensed Android phones.

> Something that competes with Blackberry?

The BlackBerry is pretty much dead. This is now largely the iPhone's market (being the only modern smartphone platform with completely solid Exchange support), so Microsoft is back to competing with Apple again.

Android has some level of Exchange support, as well. But what that entails depends on the OEM and their modifications (eg. Exchange support on an HTC Android device is completely different than what you get on a Galaxy Nexus, or a Motorola "BLUR" device.

Legacy BBOS is for all intents and purposes, dead.

BlackBerry 10 hasn't launched yet, but it's not exactly dead. Those of us actively developing for it are seeing lots of progress, and feel that RIM is far from dead.

Look, I'm going to be a bit harsh here. I've read your other BB cheerleading submission and the comments.

You can claim BB10 isn't dead, but neither is it alive.

It's vaporware at this point -- and it's logical to look at RIM's current performance to get a clue about how BB10 is going to perform and it just doesn't look good at all.

> Those of us actively developing for it are seeing lots of progress, and feel that RIM is far from dead.

Yeah and you're a small group of people compared to any other mobile platform with a very minority opinion. See also: the Amiga.

This just reeks of the WebOS debacle all over again. You can have the greatest technology ever but it won't matter if the company that owns it mis-markets/mis-manages it into the ground.

I hope they do succeed. I probably won't use one but it will foster more much needed competition.

I do not disagree with anything you've said. There's a lot about BB10 that makes it better than other platforms.

But it will boil down to marketing and execution, lest RIM become another Palm, HP, or Nokia.

I don't exactly have my blinders on, but I am optimistic for the platform. With all of the naysayers, sometimes, someone has to be a bit of a fanboi.

Agreed.

Hmm. Is current state of Exchange support in WP7 really worse than in iOS? Just asking, if someone did any comparition.

Something that corporations around the world would deploy to every single employee in a heartbeat?

That's not necessarily up to IT anymore, thanks to the iPhone. To achieve your goal, they would have to build something that those employees insist on bringing to work under pain of termination, as they did the iPhone.

Nothing in Microsoft's DNA -- and specifically in Steve Ballmer's DNA -- would permit the creation of such a device.

I think iPhone started the BYOD movement because it was so much better than the rest of the devices for quite some time. Its only now that android and windows phone are catching up. If you see there are only marginal differences between the top of the line devices now. So the "insist on bringing to work" that you talk about is not strong enough as long as the device is a easy replacement. Both Android and I think windows phone with v8 are getting there. So IT should not feel resistance to deploy these. Besides with Microsoft's familiarity and IT friendly tools and mindset, they might actually favor a windows phone over iPhone which does not have features such as company specific app store.

Another aspect of BYOD is that companies aren't paying for phones any more. I don't think they'll ever go back, even if someone could develop a mullet phone that pleases both consumers and IT.

MS isn't going after Apple. It probably can't, but it knows that if it delivers tablets and phones that can integrate with AD, Exchange, and other enterprise services and be a lot less locked down, they can steal Android's lunch and create a business friendly phone/tablet ecosystem.

If Joe and Jane Public buy those, that's great too. Oh, and they will because they'll feel comfortable with Windows, especially if they are told "Oh btw, you can have Windows on your phone and tablet as well as Office now, why bother with whatever Android is or that Apple stuff."

Its also a little silly to expect MS to not try to compete in these areas. Their Win8/Tablet strategy is big and risky and may or may not pay off, but conceding that realm to Apple and Google seems foolish. Personally, I like the idea of a "super tablet" that replaces my laptop entirely as opposed to this odd device that kinda sorta fits between my phone and my laptop.

MS isn't going after Apple.

Microsoft is absolutely going after Apple. Apple is making inroads into business -- and with that influence and control over enterprise choices -- and Microsoft rightly sees the threat. On the Venn diagram of needs that a device satisfies, WP7 and now 8 overlaps the iPhone far more than it overlaps Android.

Oh, and they will because they'll feel comfortable with Windows, especially if they are told "Oh btw, you can have Windows on your phone and tablet as well as Office now, why bother with whatever Android is or that Apple stuff."

That was what led to the Windows CE disaster. Of course this time around they're trying it in the opposite direction, trying to force a smartphone UI on desktops. We'll see how that works out.

Mind you I wholly disagree with the GP, and I think it too was drawn from the well of delusion: Microsoft saw that the separation of enterprise and consumer has blurred. Trying to out-RIM the Blackberry -- as it fails -- would be a hilariously dumb move at this point. People want to carry one device and it needs to competently cover both sides of the equation.

"That was what led to the Windows CE disaster."

No. What led to the Windows CE disaster was what Google is (was, until ICS?) doing with Android: let OEMs customize UX the hell out of it and go bananas on cutting h/w components costs to the bone.

This is so astonishingly detached from reality that I don't know where to begin.

Trying to beat RIM is obviously a bad move, but there's still billions of dollars to be made on phones that businesses deploy to their employees.

Extensive remote control, feature-by-feature lock-down, active directory style roaming profiles, super-hardened security, VoIP-over-VPN phone calls... the list of possibilities goes on. Get this right, and every company on the planet with any sense of paranoia will be theirs for the taking.

Before Windows Phone 7 even shipped, I was talking to my Microsoftie friends and said that I thought there was a great opportunity to build a phone that had the best Microsoft enterprise (Exchange and Sharepoint) integration, good free developer tools, and a good app marketplace with better organization and discovery than Apple's. Now throw in great Skype integration and Office support and they could have a good business phone. But if the phone doesn't have Dropbox, Pandora, and dozens of other high-profile apps users are already using on other platforms, that's a hard sell to anyone outside of IT departments.

I think there's also a window to build a decent consumer phone with great XBox integration. Make the phone essentially compete with Wii U and have great stand-alone mobile games too. That could be a great phone for twittering teens. You just have to get on other carriers besides AT&T though.

>> doesn't have Dropbox, Pandora, and dozens of other high-profile apps Some of these apps were limited because older windows phone did not have native code support and had a limited reach. Now with shared core with windows desktop and tablet, a developer has opportunity to write for windows phone and then run it on all devices. That sounds damn attractive a proposition.

Besides the argument is losing its steam pretty fast. With already 100?K apps out there the list of apps missing is growing smaller every day and in most cases a replacement is already available.

Microsoft is already eating RIMs lunch without a buy out. A lot of RIM's enterprise software is tailor written for the old BBOS and wouldn't do MS a lot of good.

Which is why RIM is trying to move their expertise into areas such as Mobile Fusion, allowing administrators to managed BYOD in the enterprise. Imagine BlackBerry BES services on your personal Android or iPhone, so you can access your company's assets in a secure manner. It's something RIM is working towards, and is honestly something that Microsoft's culture wouldn't allow.

But WindowsPhone already supports connecting to SharePoint and accessing any documents stored there.

> when they've repeatedly proven it's a disastrous strategy (see: Zune).

That's not the best example to use of Microsoft's failure.

Every time Zune has been brought up for discussion here, I've seen primarily two types of responses...

From people that actually owned a Zune: Fantastic product (better than my Apple iPod).

From people that never owned or tried a Zune: It's absolute crap (I've never seen any of my iPod friends with one).

The iPod users verbal diarrhea was so thick, that MS's marketing department couldn't cut through it. One iPod user would regurgitate it down another's mouth, and soon everyone had fed on the same crap.

Watching their "network effect" was kind of impressive.

Agree.

The Zune Pass worked great for me ($10/mo) to listen to all the music in their library on multiple devices and computers.

I've said for a while that if Apple released a subscription-based iTunes that a lot of people would use it...perhaps even rave about it.

And then Spotify came along which replaced my Zune Pass membership.

I played around (and rather liked the Zune) when it came out, but as with many of the devices discussed here it is more about the ecosystem than the device.

I was very put off by moves that Microsoft had made with Plays4Sure[1] (oh the irony) and worried that they would do similar with Zune Marketplace.

1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PlaysForSure

Microsoft's failures extend way far beyond the Zune: http://obamapacman.com/2012/06/microsoft-tablet-pc-mobile-de...

Every company has failures and successes. For every a zune there is also xbox, Kinect and PC periferals. For iPad there are Apple TVs and Newtons, etc. What's the point?

Xbox is a failure by almost every financial metric. Microsoft is not anywhere near recouping the initial costs. The entertainment/devices division is rarely profitable and last quarter lost over $200 million.

And the quarter before that ... the entertainment & devices division made $528 million.

Here are the last six quarters prior to Q3 2012, all profitable

http://betanews.com/2011/10/20/microsoft-q1-2012-by-the-numb...

http://betanews.com/2011/07/21/microsoft-q4-2011-by-the-numb...

http://betanews.com/2011/04/28/microsoft-q3-2011-by-the-numb...

http://betanews.com/2011/01/27/microsoft-q2-2011-by-the-numb...

http://betanews.com/2010/10/28/microsoft-q1-2011-by-the-numb...

And yet the Xbox still hasn't recouped it's losses total.

A few profitable quarters does not make up for years of losses. Here are some charts for you to make it painfully clear which divisions are profitable and keep MS running:

http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-microsoft-lo...

http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-microsoft-pr...

You are assuming that the brand are business are done. At the end of all the investment Microsoft has a great consumer brand name and a beachhead in living room. What is that worth to you? To call it a loss, what makes you assume that the business will at best run at break-even and won't make any profits, or Microsoft won't be able to leverage the existing xbox brand to sell additional Services/products?

I am not assuming anything, I simply presented some facts.

My opinion is MS has squandered both the smart phone market lead they had nearly 10 years ago and the TV space as the XBox would have been an obvious Apple TV/ Google TV type platform.

Whether MS can dig themselves out of the hole remains to be seen, at this point I have little faith, but as along time MS proponent now converted to Apple, I would still like to see them succeed, but I do think that will require a leadership change.

I was given a Zune. It was well made and easy to navigate, much better than the Archos I bought before I bought my iPod. If the Zune had been released before the iPod, it would have been an impressive piece of hardware. A great product! However it wasn't. I tried really hard to enjoy my Zune. It felt like a waste just to throw it away.

The problem was that it was almost as good as my iPod. Releasing a product that is almost as good as a product that came out 3 years earlier doesn't work. If you are going to release 3 years late, you have to be better. I agree with the above comment, Microsoft will fail it tries to beat apple where it is strong. Microsoft either needs to find a "Steve Jobs" who can drastically change its company culture or stop tying to compete with apple on consumer products.

Note: I am being generous when I say it was almost as good. It had downsides. In particular the companion software to load up music was a bad experience.

My guess is that when people say they loved their Zune, its because they wanted to love it. If you gave the same person an iPod (and they were being impartial) my guess is they would choose the iPod.

However, I don't think its likely these Zune owners were impartial. It would not be a big surprise if most people who bought and defend the Zune are Microsoft Zealots that want to find reasons to prove Microsoft is great and Apple is bad.

I can't believe you just complained about the Zune software in a comparison with Apple's stuff. iTunes is the most amazing piece of garbage I've ever been forced to use for so long.

I bought an iPod in 2005, it was a nice piece of gear for sure, but for some random reason I ended up buying a Zune in 2007, and the iPod never saw the light again until I managed to break the Zune. The main reason for that is I never wanted to see iTunes again. I would have succeeded were it not for my damn company-provided iPhone! :)

> iTunes is the most amazing piece of garbage I've ever been forced to use for so long.

I don't have that many complaints about it. It looks weird on Windows, of course, but it blends in nicely on a Mac. From your comment, I assume you haven't used Sharepoint.

I use Sharepoint everyday. I hate it and iTunes equally. I use the Zune software everyday. I have it installed on all of my computers. I can't say that it is perfect, but it is leaps and bounds better than iTunes in my opinion.

I will admit that I never liked iTunes as a music manager for my iPod. I used a program on Linux to put songs on my iPod, however, I liked iTunes much more than the Zune software.

> That's not the best example to use of Microsoft's failure.

I think it is. I liked the zune myself and would have switched if it could sync with my mac. However, it's undeniable that the Zune was a failure. I think the OP's point remains true.

I had one, and while the Zune devices were great the PC software was the worst media navigation stuff since Sony's Minidisc<->PC efforts. The sad thing is MS appear to have expanded the Zune PC thing to cover the entire OS.

I'm sure the Zune was a fantabulous product. It was still an utterly failed strategy, because by that point, the game wasn't a competition about how nice to use the product was.

The same is true for phones today.

I get a chuckle out of reading people's views w.r.t. Microsoft. There are a good number who complain about lack of innovation & how Microsoft invests too much time in supporting legacy systems and that they should totally get rid of the CE core. Then there's the other end of the spectrum where Microsoft is stupid to stop supporting certain platforms because they're clearly not thinking about the users who use those systems.

I think this is inevitable when a company targets a diverse set of demographics. What works for one customer might be disastrous for another.

People would damn MS either way. They could've updated older WP7 devices only to have them run slow and have newer apps not work correctly due to missing hardware features. As a developer, that'd be nightmare to support.

Joel Spolsky famously wrote about those competing imperatives in a 2004 essay on the API war:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html

"There are two opposing forces inside Microsoft, which I will refer to, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as The Raymond Chen Camp and The MSDN Magazine Camp."

The former is obsessed with backwards compatibility, and the latter is obsessed with the Next New Thing. Spolsky's thesis was that the latter won out, to Microsoft's long-term detriment.

Spolsky worked at Microsoft years ago. Not sure how relevant and current his knowledge is...

He wrote that piece in 2004, though.

Well that explains why Raymond Chen's blog is called The Old New Thing.

That's funny - my hatred of Windows almost entirely boils down to their reluctance to chuck old and horrible APIs (see windows.h). I'm not sure how much this is true anymore.

It's strange to me that the company once renowned for maintaining backwards compatibility and established workflows well past what most customers might expect or demand has recently been so blasé about throwing their installed base under the bus. It's becoming hard to remember that Microsoft was once synonymous with a stable development platform.

Just from a UX point of view, starting with the ribbon interface in Office 2007, it seems like the company has become much more willing to change things around drastically without any apparent effort to help their customers make the transition gracefully. The Win Mobile to Win Phone 7 to Win Phone 8 transition has been equally disjointed, and the Windows 8 release seems to bring that level of adventurism to their bread-and-butter desktop platform.

Are these people regular crazy, or crazy like a fox?

>blasé about throwing their installed base under the bus.

What user base? I for one am thrilled to see Microsoft responding with what seems to be an appropriate level of urgency.

Does that mean that the architecture of Win Phone 7 was a mistake? That it was never really part of a long-term strategy to transition from Win Mobile to Win Phone 8? Does Microsoft really intend to churn through platforms that quickly? It makes you wonder how far ahead they're planning things out over there, and whether this is a platform you should hitch your wagon to as a developer.

Windows 7 was well-reviewed based largely on it's UI (as far as I could tell). Microsoft has kept a lot of that, but the underpinnings are now shared with their tablet (which makes sense) and desktop OS (not sure if that makes sense, but whatever).

Seems like a move that's designed to be more sustainable in the long-term by uniting their efforts. Personally, this move would make me more comfortable buying a Win8 tablet and/or phone.

Until they switch directions again in a couple years, to whichever way the winds shift. I'm not quite sure if anyone's at the wheel.

Windows Phone 8 is based of windows core, the same core that is bread and butter for the company and is something synonymous with Microsoft. There is no switch from directions possible here

Wow, really Microsoft? You don't know better by now that if you're going to release a platform, hype is up like crazy and then basically leave people hanging... that it kills hardware/software communities?

The WP8 features sounds great, but where does that leave my Lumia 900? I really love the phone and well, it sounds like I'm SOOL.

Welcome to the Nokia experience. I bought a N900 in 2010, and I was literally thrown under the bus not once (when Maemo was replaced by Meego), not twice (when the N9 debuted with a completely different UI) but three times (when they switched to WP7 even before the N9 was shipped).

Meanwhile MS was busy killing off WinMobile, then Kin, and now WP7.

And they wonder how Apple can get such faithful developers... A real mistery...

Glad you didn't go android. Because their upgrade experience is not any different.

> incompatible with current devices

Interesting. This may well be the right move for the long-term, but they're going to end up with a lot of angry early adopters right now. Android upgrades look nice all of a sudden.

I think cutting all the legacy is a good move -- start over from scratch. They have the wherewithal to round developer support (and also leverage their Xbox relationships), so cutting baggage is a good idea.

How much legacy is there? It doesn't seem like Windows Phone 7 handsets have been out that long... and my impression wasn't that they were generally extremely low-specced.

> I think cutting all the legacy is a good move

Microsoft clearly agree with you, because they seem to be doing that with every generation of Windows Phone.

There's only been one generation of Windows Phone with two releases.

Windows Mobile was substantially different and went through many generations with upgrades dependent upon carrier implementation.

True from Microsoft's perspective but from a customer's perspective it looks like "Windows for phones" changes radically and entirely incompatibly pretty often.

Edit: On the other hand, most of the current market probably didn't know about Windows Mobile so perhaps that's mostly moot.

Twice in the past 10 years, or once every 5 years. That's the difference between iOS 1 (2007) and iOS 5.

We could just as easily say "twice in 2 years, or once every year" since the first WP7 devices shipped in late 2010 and WP8 will be out by end of 2012.

That's ignoring the long history of Windows Mobile from 2002 to 2010 though.

That history is irrelevant since we're talking about Windows Phone and not Windows Mobile.

Did HN get over-run by MS employees or something? What the hell is going on! :)

WP6 > KIN > WP7 > WP8. I count three killed platforms in three years.

Kin wasn't an official Windows Mobile/Phone platform, though.

I have a Windows Phone (Lumia 710) besides my iPhone, that I bought two weeks ago. The phone itself was released in Europe in November 2011. And now it's outdated/legacy already?

It breaks trust. How would I know that if I buy a WP 8 phone that it will be supported with upgrades a year down the line?

Wouldn't such criticisms be valid for Android as well?

Depends. No such criticism can be said of Android as an OS, but you could certainly make good arguments directed at the ecosystem in general. The interesting thing here isn't that the upgrade isn't compatible, it's that most people would expect Microsoft to support older systems. It's a break in their character. Maybe a good one? We'll see.

So it is delivering an update for those phones too. Additionally there is a promise to support OTA upgrade of all released devices for 18 months. What android phone has that commitment?

> What android phone has that commitment?

To the best of my knowledge, all pure Android phones have that, plus more in some cases (the Nexus line). Additionally, many of the higher-end ones from other manufacturers likely do as well.

Source?

and what percentage of android phones are these pure android devices?

It is, and it drove me from Android to iOS.

Absolutely they would. Plenty of Android devices are left in limbo waiting for the upgrade, or aren't given at all.

Yes, but majority of users don't care about upgrades. Those who do care ... they usually go custom ROM route. Quite a few of my friends have cyanogenmod roms with newer android versions, since the manufacturer (htc, et al) dropped support for the device.

Its not entirely a start over from scratch. Every WP7 app will work going forward. I do agree with the move though. Its better than having a bunch of old phones running WP8 with a poor experience.

Legacy? For reals?

WP7 is much younger than Android and the iPhone. Already they're cutting out the "legacy"?

They are bringing some features from WP8 to current devices (at least it seems so), like the new start screen, etc.

So besides support for NFC, dual core, new resolutions - it appears that most of the software based updates are coming to current devices in the form of WP 7.8

http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/20/3096945/windows-phone-7-8-...

Application support is a bigger concern than 8.0 features.

Did they mention if Windows Phone 8 apps can run on Windows Phone 7 ?

I know they mentioned that the opposite is possible ....

It's extremely unlikely, if it was the case WP7 devices would have just gotten WP8.

The opposite is possible because if Microsoft just immediately trashed all the work their far and few WP7 supporters have been doing to help the platform, literally nobody would be on their side at that point.

You can only throw out the drawing board so many times before people lose any trust that you will ever settle on something for any real length of time.

More importantly Microsoft just Osborned Nokia's current product line. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect

They didn't have to! -- what they just did was screw themselves in the branding (and that's it).

They've created a new update, Windows Phone 7.8 that will rollout to current Nokia devices and other Windows Phone 7.5 devices.

It will include many of the new UX features, such as the new home page, etc.

But as WP8 is changed so much on a fundamental level, it makes no sense to port that to legacy hardware. They're reenvisioning the OS -- so the current Nokia phones won't support higher resolutions and multicore processors. That's ok! They don't have the hardware!

This is exactly what Apple does -- limited updates for legacy devices.

Only Microsoft was stupid enough to call it Windows 7.8 instead of Windows 8 (for legacy devices).

It's all in the branding and since they're bringing up the major features that legacy devices support, they should have just called it Windows 8. Consumers don't care about the distinction, if it looks like WP8, it's WP8.

No. WP8 introduces an entirely new API for app developers. WP8 apps will not work on WP7 devices. That is going to have huge and painful effect for existing WP users.

EDIT: Apparently I am wrong on this.

Legacy devices means devices from 3-4 years ago for Apple. If I buy a Windows phone today, it won't run the next major version of the OS. I'm just glad I didn't buy a Lumia 900 when my upgrade became available like I planned to.

My original iPad is now legacy barely more than 2 years after it's release. It's last available update is from June 6, 2011. So essentially about 1 year and 2 months of support.

Huh? 5.1.1 just came out last month: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1521

You're right. Not sure why I had June 6th of last year. So it should be 2 years+ after release.

I have a HTC Titan. I'll get the new start screen feature and a few other updates in WP7.8. WP8 is really about supporting hardware that doesn't exist on my phone anyway.

That said, after WP8 goes out, MS really needs to step up there game with software updates. Having to get the carrier and manufacture on board to release an update has effectively made updates impossible.

Definitely agree about it being the right move for the long-term; Microsoft tends to have a bad habit of sacrificing performance and features for the sake of supporting old systems, glad to see this is changing.

As for all us ‘early adopters’, I for one don’t mind at all. There are some features of the new OS that simply aren’t supported by current-generation WP hardware or just wouldn’t perform well on it. I’d rather not get an update than get one that compromises the performance of my device (which I love as-is anyway) or one that seriously fragments the platform.

And, the way I see it, if WP8’s future is one of greater integration with W8 and Xbox, and Microsoft can really deliver on their ‘3 Screens & The Cloud’ vision [1], and this decision is integral to that (which it seems to be), then I’m fully on-board with it.

Also, they just announced that all existing Windows Phone 7 devices will get an update, to ‘Windows Phone 7.8’, which will bring all the UI changes and many of the new WP8 features. Most importantly, they’ve stated that all non-native code WP8 apps will work on WP7. I think that's the most important thing anyway and this approach makes for a good middle-of-the road solution. It allows developers to focus on just one platform and gives (the admittedly few of us) current WP7 owners continued access to new apps and features.

[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/stevecla01/archive/2009/05/21/three-...

they’ve stated that all non-native code WP8 apps will work on WP7.

Where did they say that?

Moreover, applications for Windows Phone 7.x will automatically run on Windows Phone 8 with little or no changes to the code of the app. Apps coded on Windows Phone 8 will conversely run on Windows Phone 7.x as well, so long as they don’t use native coding (apps coded with native C++ won’t run on Windows Phone 7.x since they use different APIs).

http://www.wpcentral.com/microsoft-officially-announces-wind...

What is it about its requirements that keep it from running on anything that exists today? The article just seems to talk about how it can support higher specs? (I ask because it'd better be a really, really good reason that it can't run on anything existing because that doesn't seem like good news for anybody.)

I just sold my Lumia 710 and replaced it with a 10 year old Nokia 3310. Looks like i picked the right time i.e. Before the value bombs.

For ref it was sold because the battery life is abysmal, there is no upgrade path and the mic doesn't work properly.

This is more terrible news for Nokia.

Windows Phone 8 is an operating system, not a phone.

And is there an upgrade path from Nokia's current Windows phones to Windows Phone 8?

I don't know Engadget's source, but:

http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/20/microsoft-unveils-windows...

Right, so it's just a new OS... but it effectively dead-ends the Lumia, making it considerably less valuable.

How about the HTCs and Samsungs that ran androids and never got their upgrades?

But who is going to buy a Windows Phone 7 device now? Nokia's already poor device sales is going to fall off a cliff.

For that matter, who is going to buy a Windows Phone 8 device now, since there's no reason to believe it will run Windows Phone 9?

For that matter, who is going to buy an Android 2.3 device now, since there's no reason to believe it will run Android 4.0?

Or an iPhone 3GS, since there's... oh, wait... and it was released when? ... 2009 you say? Astonishing.

---------

EDIT: For the narrative impaired, I am saying that the 3GS is still being supported with major software upgrades despite being three years old, in stark contrast to all other major smartphone platforms.

You mean the 3GS from 2009 that will be supported by their pending iOS 6 release?

Astonishing.

I guess you're making the point that people will continue to buy it because they are mis- or uninformed?

I’m making the point that that issue alone (which I consider very serious and hindering the ecosystem) didn’t kill Android.

It's one thing to know your phone will eventually be obsolete, it's another thing when that eventuality is imminent.

They changed to a better kernel. A really old and battle tested kernel. It is an exceptional reason to break compatibility but it's hard to argue that they shouldn't have made the decision. Certainly they won't switch kernels again soon because there is no better Windows kernel than NT.

iPhone 3GS, released June 2009 and iPhone 4, release June 2010, both get iOS 6 (albeit with fewer features than an iPhone 4S).

No Windows Phone 7 is getting Windows Phone 8.

Supporting older hardware = brand loyalty, and environmental responsibility.

Yes an iPhone costs more - it's also going to be updated for longer...

Current Windows 7 phones are getting updates, 7.8. Contrast this with the original iPad which won't get ios 6 and it was released in 2010.

There's a legitimate reason for excluding the original iPad, though: it has to push four times the pixels as the iPhone 3GS, while still being limited by the same 256M of RAM that the 3GS has. Apparently at least one essential application (my guess would be Mobile Safari at least, probably many apps) couldn't provide an acceptable user experience within that constraint.

Perhaps there's a legit reason for the current Windows 7 phones, though. Does anybody know?

I vote that "different kernel" qualifies as a legitimate reason too.

Thank you. I'm glad someone else sees this. If a developer writes a NFC enabled app that finds its way on to previous generation phones, the support alone will be an utter nightmare.

The original iPad got 2 major updates from iOS 3 to iOS 5.

It already got two major updates though. Hardly the same situation, Microsoft has just been neglecting their older phones for quite some time now. I wouldn't exactly cheer them for that.

"albeit with fewer features than an iPhone 4S"

And that's pretty much what's happening with WP7. Windows Phone users are getting an upgrade [1], but it won't be as fully-featured as WP8. Apple just did the slick move of calling both the partial update and the full update by the same name.

[1] http://www.slashgear.com/windows-phone-7-8-brings-wp8-ui-to-...

Except that it's not the same.

You'll actually get iOS 6 on a iPhone 3GS, whereas Microsoft is backporting select features to the older Windows Phone 7 OS.

That means still no native code, etc.

So would it have helped if Microsoft had been ingenious like Apple and called it Windows phone 8 but delivered fewer features instead to older devices?

No it would have helped if Microsoft had provided the WP8 update instead of just a UI tweak. Spiffing it up to look like WP8 solves only a cosmetic problem, it doesn't allow WP8 apps to run on older devices.

In a major update like WP8 or iOS 6, APIs are depreciated and new ones that are exclusive to the newer OS are introduced. Having everyone on the same version helps developers target much better.

If you think iOS 6 for the 3GS is just iOS 5 with UI tweaks applied, you're dead wrong. It's iOS 6 with features disabled so it will run better, not iOS 5 dressed up to look like iOS 6 which is what MS has chosen to do here.

With each version of iOS, developers can access new API on older devices. With Windows Phone 7.8 it will not be possible to access shared native API set.

So you get a new UI; who cares? What is truly important is application compatibility, and someone with a 3 year old iPhone 3GS will still be able to run brand new apps made for iOS 6.0. On the other hand, someone in a store buying a Nokia Lumia phone today might not be able to run apps released 3 months from now.

Don't you see the problem?

and someone with a 3 year old iPhone 3GS will still be able to run brand new apps made for iOS 6.0.

At half the speed or less compared to when the phone was bought, be driven insane and then be forced to buy a new phone.

Or at least that is how I experienced iOS updates while I was still in the iPhone camp.

So in other words they give you both the option to retain current performance and the option to upgrade and reduce performance but have better app compatibility, and that's somehow a bad thing?

Software updates don't have the ability to give your device more RAM or a better processor, and the original iPhones were extremely underpowered. I don't know exactly what you would like for them to do.

Let me guess, you probably had an original iPhone and suffered when iOS 3.0 came out and performance was terrible, right? Did you know that a subsequent release (3.01 I think) fixed this issue and performance was fine again?

The one thing that I will acknowledge is that newer devices with more memory and more CPU power tend to go to app developers heads and they start to write apps that run beautifully on new iOS hardware, but slowly on old hardware. That is hardly an Apple problem - you'd be hard pressed to find a 3 year old PC that can run the latest high end games as well as a brand new one.

I personally find it amazing that my original iPad purchased 2 years and 3 months ago will still run the latest software just fine. My wife's iPhone 4 purchased 2 years ago also works just fine, and she didn't want to ugprade to the 4S because everything still "just works" for her.

Remember those WP7 commercials that called Android phones betas? Well I guess Microsoft was having a beta program of their own. Such nice guys these Redmond folk are.

If Microsoft delivers on the Phone <-> Tablet <-> Desktop connection, with:

  - A decent ecosystem
  - Free from totalitarian-regime control
  - Access and compatibility with a wide range of current hardware devices:
    - USB mice/trackball
    - USB external drives
    - Monitors
    - Keyboards
    - Printers
    - Speakers
    - HID devices
    - Bluetooth without requiring a proprietary chip
    - Non-proprietary peripherals in general
    - USB memory sticks
    - And generally anything that can connect to the device
    - Without requiring the King to bless what you are doing
  - Freedom from the 30% death-tax on mobile devices
  - Freedom to write any app you care to for mobile and tablet without 
    the need for Royal authorization
  - No requirement to buy super-custom-secret chips to do hardware
  - No onerous requirements for expensive approval process on hardware
  - Easy and publisher-controlled app updates
  - Decent device pricing
  - Wide availability
  - Interoperability with existing systems
  - Application compatibility (Desktop <-> Tablet)
  - Sensible app deployment requirements without having to package megabytes of
    crap you don't need for a phone just because you also want to offer the 
    app on a tablet that has greater resolution.
  - And a few more things I can't think of right now

I, for one, will cast my vote and support their efforts both as a developer and consumer. If anything because I have a very strong feeling that Apple needs serious competition to remain in check. They have taken a far too totalitarian approach to their offerings and it is not getting any better.

Of course, I'll continue to support Apple as well. Just hope they see the light and consider taking off their sometimes-not-so-benevolent-dictator hat.

>They have taken a far too totalitarian approach to their offerings and it is not getting any better.

You might have missed the part about Microsoft being equally as eager to lock down everything they can get away with. This isn't going to make things better, it's going to be worse.

Seems to be an odd decision to share the kernel with Win8, but not (explicitly) the WinRT SDK. It would seem in Microsoft's best interest to make sure bringing apps between the two is a recompile away; the way it's being phrased the SDK doesn't sound like it's absolutely 100% compatible.

Has this been explicitly stated? I'm hoping they do unify under the single WinRT framework.

They've only said "minimal code changes", "two days of work"; also only mentioned native code in the context of games and nothing to suggest support for HTML/JS-based apps (which would imply WinRT support). "Recompile + UI tweaks" would be a headline feature for the SDK, not stating such outright leads me to believe this isn't the case.

EDIT: just said that the CLR is now identical between phone and W8, but again "share more code", still not naming WinRT.

They said that native code is going to be supported. That tells me WinRT will be as well; it's not like people are going to be writing MFC apps for it.

They only seem to be recommending it for games, implying you can't run the UI with it https://skitch.com/constantinexvi/enb3e/windows-phone-summit...

Although they didn't come out and say this, the impression I get is they are bringing over the WinRT APIs for lower-level stuff like networking, etc., while the XAML UI stuff is an extension of the Silverlight in WP7x rather than a port or adaptation of Windows.UI.Xaml from Windows 8.

If that's what they're doing, I think it's the right decision - the UI conventions themselves are different between the phone and Windows 8 (more than people realize, despite having a similar visual aesthetic), so you'd have to rewrite much of the UI anyway - so why break compatibility with WP7.x.

Am I the only one who thinks of both Microsoft and Apple as simply two of the biggest gamblers in the game? No one knows yet how the recent technological changes will look when the market becomes stable, it is too early to tell. Apple has gambled quite good three or four times in recent years, as did MS before them, and both were always at each other's throats (Jobs' accused MS of stealing Windows from Apple). Both have had their low points. While there's a new big gambler in town (Google), the picture hasn't really changed much for the past 30 years.

Not even an upgrade even for the Lumina?

Lumia will get WinPhone 7.8 which includes all the UI updates but leaves out the features which requires more advanced hardware.

LOL.

Native languages do not "require more advanced hardware", since you can already use native languages on iOS and Android hardware.

Are you people brainwashed? WP7 is dead.

The native APIs and all that support work is built into the updated kernel... That is the point. Don't be so quick to point out superficial faults on internet comments.

I suspect the lack of upgrade path was planned well before the Lumia 900 actually found a bit of traction with consumers. Wave goodbye to that momentum. That would be a big blow to Nokia. Does that drive their price down even lower until Microsoft buys them out? We'll see.

"Compiling in the cloud" - So i'll have to give my sources to Microsoft? Great for security checking, but hey - they can read my code and gain knowledge from it? That's just doesn't feel right.

>So i'll have to give my sources to Microsoft?

No, they never said that. In fact, just now (during the developer part of the presentation) the presenter mentioned that it will "just work".

Compiled from bytecode

yes, finally supports C++.

Not sure why this was downvoted, C++ support is huge. The biggest thing holding Win Phone 7 back was requiring C#. Meant every iOS/Android app needed to be rewritten from scratch which obviously isn't going to happen for anything but the absolutely most popular stuff.

Yes, C++ is the most power efficient programming language. I have been waiting for this feature.

Whenever MS does one of these presentations, they always seem to get 90% of the way there in terms of polish, focus and message.

Why are they even bothering with branding "Windows Phone 7.8" ?

They should have just named the update "Windows Phone 8 Legacy" and the actual WP 8, "Windows Phone 8".

Might just me, but I prefer "Windows Phone 7.8" vs "Windows Phone 8 Legacy". It's shorter, and when given a short explanation I get what it is. If you call it "Windows Phone 8 Legacy" people are going to wonder why they can't install WP8 apps on it, after all, it has WP8 in the name.

Edit: forgot the word "apps"

The correct name is "Windows Phone ME"

All upgrade controversies aside, I think WP8 has some great features and look forward to checking it out when it releases.

As a Windows user now I have to decide between a 720p WindowsPhone8 phone or the Windows 8 RT ARM tablet.

Microsoft needs to get with it and provide video of these events.

Live stream: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Windows-Phone/Summit

http://live.Twit.tv is live streaming the event with commentary.

I imagine a lot of RIM and Google executives are getting a twitch in their eye right about now. If these new devices live up to their hype I can easily see them supplant Android as the "anything but Apple" option.

Yep. The real tragedy of fragmentation is that Android still lacks any kind of brand power - they're the phone equivalent of yesterday's faceless beige windows towers. If Microsoft actually ship this in 2012, and have someone mildly competent in marketing, I wouldn't be surprised to see most American users once again choosing between MS and Apple.

I'm not really sure whether it's true or not that Android doesn't have brand power. I mean, it's not as strong as "iPhone", certainly, and I don't have any specs to show, but I sure notice "Android!" on signs in front of cellular shops a lot... and there's a giant green Android robot balloon on the top of a little wireless shop just down the road. Even my non-techie friends say things like "Is that an iPhone or a Droid [sic]?"...

It seems to me, Android phones focus much more on the brand of the device than the platform it is running...

"Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch"

Ads might mention mention Android but much more verbiage is about the device features and the like.

iPhone doesn't need this. RIM really didn't need this.

Windows Phone adds I have heard, Nokias are now known for running Windows Phone, I haven't heard many commercials for other device manufacturers. But, for me, I know it is an Android phone when I hear the ridiculous names.

I thought you were being sarcastic with the name, but no, it really is called the:

"Samsung Galaxy S II Epic Touch 4G Android Phone, Black (Sprint)"

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Galaxy-Epic-Touch-Android/dp/B...

Wow.

That's not a tragedy for Google, that's their game plan. They want their apps and services on every "faceless beige box" in the world. The market for cheap generic consumer electronics is not going away.

Yeah, but I don't think it would be a small loss for Android to fall from dominance in medium to high end phones in Google's best markets. In theory, Android gives them at least some control in a category with important implications for every part of their business (mobile). I doubt they're too concerned about Bing, but if WP8 takes off, it gives MS room to make inroads in search, and for Apple and Microsoft to interfere with search queries with tools like Siri...

I can easily see them supplant Android as the "anything but Apple" option.

Do you really imagine that the hundreds of millions of Android users chose "anything but Apple"?

This mirrors the iPad discussion. People want a device to fill needs. Anyone who thinks this isn't competition with the iPhone is an imbecile.

  Do you really imagine that the hundreds of millions of Android users chose "anything but Apple"?

Yes I believe this is true.

There are very few redeeming qualities that an Android tablet has over an iPad. Likewise the people I know with Android phones either couldn't afford an iPhone, don't want one due to philosophical issues, or just wanted a simple feature-less cell phone and an Android phone was the same price.

People do not desire Android devices... they tolerate them. That's why Google should be afraid of these new Microsoft tablets and phones -- people already desire them in a way I have never heard anyone talk about any android device ever created in the past 3 years.

You clearly exist within an Apple fan bubble. Your opinion has zero correlation with reality and you didn't even understand the point I was making. Rather I would say that you couldn't understand it.

Excuse me, but "reality" is the world around you. My "opinion" is based on my own experiences, and my own observations of the people I know -- because that's what reality is. Reality is not simply what "people say" on internet tech websites and android discussion forums.

Sure. People want a smartphone that can post on facebook, take pictures, send and receive emails, etc. They also want to play games, maybe use Netflix, etc.

They choose a phone based upon that. Hundreds of millions of people, when given that choice, choose an Android device for a wide variety of reasons. You don't get that, I understand, because you live in a bubble and have no engagement with the real world.

Microsoft have absolutely no taste..I would probably go to the bathroom if I want to see tiles.

Apple have absolutely no taste..I would at the insides of an animal if I wanted to see shiny things.

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