Even though Windows Phone 7 arrived late in the ongoing War of the Mobile OS, it was interesting enough to grab the attention of consumers and critics alike. The best part of the Windows Phone ecosystem was that when the OS got the 7.5 Mango update, it was made available to each and every Windows Phone 7 device available in the market.
The same however cannot be said for the Windows Phone 8 update. It would have been a consolation prize if at least the AAA Windows Phone devices such as the Lumia 800, Lumia 900 and the other high-end device were capable of handling the update.
The only thing that will be made available to existing Windows Phone 7.5 Mango users is a partially redesigned Metro UI, with customizable Start screen. The new and improved Live Tile interface / Start screen will be made available to users via the Windows Phone 7.8 update.
Microsoft has explained that the features that have been announced with Windows Phone 8 are deeply integrated into the hardware of the device and hence will not be compatible with previous generation hardware. You can take a look at all the features of Windows Phone 8 here.
Windows Phone 8 brings with it quite a few hardware features such as multi-core processors, new graphics engines, higher screen resolutions, microSD storage, and NFC which are absent from the previous generation devices that supported the Windows Phone 7.x OS.
All those of you that picked up a Windows Phone device in the recent past, should get ready to feel obsolete as Windows Phone 8-powered devices hit the streets this American fall.
The first Windows Phone 8-powered devices will come from Nokia, Huawei, Samsung and HTC. These devices will be built on the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus Krait MSM8960 chipset, with dual-core processors clocked anywhere between 1.5GHz and 1.7GHz, coupled with the Adreno 225 GPU.
