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Microsoft introduces Windows Phone 8
- debacle 14y agoThis is more terrible news for Nokia.
- danieldk 14y agoWindows Phone 8 is an operating system, not a phone.
- eli 14y agoAnd is there an upgrade path from Nokia's current Windows phones to Windows Phone 8?
- danieldk 14y agoI don't know Engadget's source, but: http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/20/microsoft-unveils-windows-phone-7-8-for-legacy-devices/ http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/20/microsoft-unveils-windows...
- thejake 14y agoBut who is going to buy a Windows Phone 7 device now? Nokia's already poor device sales is going to fall off a cliff.
- sjwright 14y agoFor 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?
- falling 14y agoFor 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?
- sjwright 14y agoOr 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.
- konstruktor 14y agoYou mean the 3GS from 2009 that will be supported by their pending iOS 6 release?
- sjwright 14y agoAstonishing.
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- cantbecool 14y agoNot even an upgrade even for the Lumina?
- KeyBoardG 14y agoLumia will get WinPhone 7.8 which includes all the UI updates but leaves out the features which requires more advanced hardware.
- onetwothreefour 14y agoLOL. 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.
- KeyBoardG 14y agoThe 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.
- druiid 14y agoWow, 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.
- toyg 14y agoWelcome 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...
- barista 14y agoGlad you didn't go android. Because their upgrade experience is not any different.
- robomartin 14y agoMicrosoft needs to get with it and provide video of these events.
- cryptoz 14y ago> 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.
- ttol 14y agoI 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.
- glhaynes 14y agoHow 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.
- sjwright 14y ago> 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.
- brudgers 14y agoThere'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.
- glhaynes 14y agoTrue 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.
- ConstantineXVI 14y agoSeems 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.
- weiran 14y agoHas this been explicitly stated? I'm hoping they do unify under the single WinRT framework.
- ConstantineXVI 14y agoThey'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.
- daeken 14y agoThey 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.
- ConstantineXVI 14y agoThey 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-channel-9 https://skitch.com/constantinexvi/enb3e/windows-phone-summit...
- bztzt 14y agoAlthough 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.
- glhaynes 14y agoWhat 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.)
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- wavephorm 14y agoI 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.
- saturdaysaint 14y agoYep. 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.
- glhaynes 14y agoI'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]?"...
- jmspring 14y agoIt 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.
- kalid 14y agoI 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/B005LHN47S http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Galaxy-Epic-Touch-Android/dp/B... Wow.
- WiseWeasel 14y agoIt'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?
- phren0logy 14y ago>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.
- WiseWeasel 14y agoDoes 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.
- phren0logy 14y agoWindows 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.
- stewie2 14y agoyes, finally supports C++.
- forrestthewoods 14y agoNot 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.
- stewie2 14y agoYes, C++ is the most power efficient programming language. I have been waiting for this feature.
- desigooner 14y agoI 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.
- laconian 14y agoI think this is inevitable when a company targets a diverse set of demographics. What works for one customer might be disastrous for another.
- KeyBoardG 14y agoPeople 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.
- RyanMcGreal 14y agoJoel Spolsky famously wrote about those competing imperatives in a 2004 essay on the API war: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html 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.
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- fratido 14y ago"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.
- kineticflow 14y ago>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".
- bztzt 14y agoCompiled from bytecode
- sjwright 14y agoWhen 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.
- cube13 14y ago>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/windows-phone-gets-ready-for-enterprise/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/window...
- IanDrake 14y ago>focus on building the ultimate business phone? That's what WP8 is. It has much better support for enterprise systems.
- rome 14y agoWindows 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.
- snaky 14y agoActiveSync, huh? After completely broke direct sync with desktop Outlook in WP?
- gouranga 14y agoI 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.
- ja27 14y agoI 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.
- zdw 14y agoiPhone 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...
- rome 14y agoCurrent 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.
- pohl 14y agoThere'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?
- MatthewPhillips 14y agoI vote that "different kernel" qualifies as a legitimate reason too.
- robert_nsu 14y agoThank 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.
- toksaitov 14y agoThe original iPad got 2 major updates from iOS 3 to iOS 5.
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- WrkInProgress 14y agoWhenever 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".
- RobAtticus 14y agoMight 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"
- islisis 14y agoThe correct name is "Windows Phone ME"
- KeyBoardG 14y agoAs a Windows user now I have to decide between a 720p WindowsPhone8 phone or the Windows 8 RT ARM tablet.
- forgotAgain 14y agoRemember 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.
- nsns 14y agoAm 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.
- robomartin 14y agoIf 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.
- slowpoke 14y ago>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.
- aqjq 14y agoAll upgrade controversies aside, I think WP8 has some great features and look forward to checking it out when it releases.
- shellox 14y agoMicrosoft have absolutely no taste..I would probably go to the bathroom if I want to see tiles.
- cma 14y agoApple have absolutely no taste..I would at the insides of an animal if I wanted to see shiny things.