Windows Phone 8 devices are upgradeable: Microsoft
Allays fears that customers buying the latest Windows Phone devices might be left in the lurch once the next OS update comes along, similar to what happened with Windows Phone 7 smartphone users.
Microsoft has confirmed that the Windows Phone 8 series of smartphones will get the next major OS updates. This confirmation does allay the fears that these devices might also get shut out for future updates, something cultivated by what Microsoft and what they did with Windows Phone 7 smartphones once the Windows Phone 8 OS was released.
“Windows Phone 8 can evolve. We have an architecture that enables portability and is fundamentally hardware independent,” said Greg Sullivan, a senior marketing manager at Microsoft. “As the market evolves and customer requirements demand it, we’ll evaluate options.”
Microsoft is said to be already working on Windows Phone Blue, in line with the entire Blue upgrade system the company wants to set in place. The idea behind this is to replicate the quick upgrades, like how Apple does it for the Max OSX and iOS updates.
According to the representative, Windows Phone 8 is flexible enough to adopt new hardware components. That was a big problem for Windows Phone 7, which was trapped by Microsoft’s own prescribed spec boundaries.
Sullivan claimed that Windows Phone is still in a stronger position than BlackBerry 10 or the upcoming Firefox OS for smartphones because “its part of an ecosystem,” Sullivan said. While BlackBerry has some strength in business, it lacks elements like Xbox and Office, Sullivan said. Firefox OS so far lacks both a “great user experience” and an overall ecosystem, he said.
Incidentally, what Sullivan says does not directly answer the question of whether the existing hardware on the likes of the Lumia 920 will be compatible with the newer OS, and whether the next OS will be compatible with this hardware. What Sullivan is essentially saying is that the Windows Phone 7 devices were limited by Microsoft, in an admittance of short-sightedness. Secondly, he says that Windows Phone 8 is flexible enough to adopt new hardware components. But, for example, if you are upgrading your Lumia 920 to the next OS (if and when), it is a question of the new OS being compatible with the existing hardware, and not vice versa. In a nutshell, we will believe it when we see it.
Source: PCMag