Current devices will not be upgradable to WP8.

[eric12341]

Originally Posted by orangekid

You can get a better phone if you want, you just have to pay full retail for it. Apparently lots of people did this to go from the iPhone 4 to iPhone 4S for just one new feature. Also the 7.8 update hasn't been revealed fully, it may have more hardware independent features from WP8. It will also continue to be supported with apps and updates when appropriate. WP9 isn't for another 3 years, we'll worry about that when we get there. It'll be the same kernel so it shouldn't be an issue, all phones are guaranteed at least 18 months worth of updates from the time it's released. Has google ever put together a policy like that? There are still tons of android phones that haven't even gotten gingerbread and quite a few that won't even get ICS.

Yeah but you can easily flash any firmware version you want on Android phones, whereas you can't do that on a WP7 phone. MS has already said 7.8 is basically just a gui update, I don't see any core features.

Google doesn't need a cheap promise like that because they are not the only company who releases Android, they have no control over what HTC or Sammy does with the source code. WP7 and 8 are MS only, the manufacturers do not write their own code like with Android. The awesome thing about Android is that if you read enough you can make your phone do whatever the hell you want it to. I like WP7 and 8 UI, I really do, but until MS puts out something stable with real app support that doesn't change every 2 or 3 years then I just feel bad for people who buy WP7 phones.

And I'm not an MS hater, I actually like Windows 7 a lot, and I have my complaints about Android and iOS, but as a consumer I can't trust those guys with their ongoing beta test.


Let me get back to you in 5 years when they have a decent product.

True but what if you don't want to waste countless hours online trying to get the $200 phone you just bought to work the way it's supposed to? What if all you want is to unbox your phone and that's it? Gingerbread had some critical security changes and not many phones got it. As for WP8 they got it right this time, the reason why WM was so buggy was because the CE kernel didn't really support all the features WM has. It also didn't support advanced hardware (Android barely does as well). Reason why WP7 was on the CE kernel was because the RT (based on NT) kernel wasn't ready yet. So it was released so they can get mindshare and a presence in the mobile market and try to clear the bad rep they accumulated from WM6.5. Good news tho is that the NT kernel does support high end hardware(better than Android). This will allow for even better features to be added to WP8 and beyond. Also since WP8 and W8 share the same kernel they can run the same apps as long as the proper optimizations are done, imagine just downloading /buying one app and it work on all of your devices.