Windows Phone 8 - Apollo 11 or 13?

[pyjamarama]

Another announcement from Microsoft this week, it's Windows Phone 8 annoucement

I think that Windows 8 tablet strategy seems to be going in good direction but the windows Phone is still in the limbo, lets see if 8 as chance of taking some significant market.

Saw on Twitter that Paul Thurrott is going to post a comprehensive analyse of the changes before the announcement is over http://www.winsupersite.com/

[LMN8R]

Nice set of updates. It'll be interesting to see if Microsoft's marketing department starts loving Windows Phone as much as its few customers do.

Also, they confirmed what I had heard internally - the middle ground between existing devices getting or not getting Windows Phone 8 - it's not cut-and-dry. Existing devices will get the "7.8" update which includes the new start screen and some other WP8 features.

Seems equivalent to me of when Apple brings iOS to old devices, even though it's missing things like Siri, turn-by-turn directions, and other features.

[Woolen Horde]

They're finally moving to the NT kernel, which is what they should have done with Phone 7. Well, better late than never, I guess.

[rei]

...aaand a big fuck off to my backup phone the Lumia 710.

[stusser]

Seems equivalent to me of when Apple brings iOS to old devices, even though it's missing things like Siri, turn-by-turn directions, and other features.

Umm, no. One of those features you glossed over is the ability to run WinRT apps. The winphone7 platform is being abandoned. Early adopters are being screwed.

[Woolen Horde]

Wow, MS just screwed the hell out of Nokia. Who the hell will buy a Lumia now?

[stusser]

Wow, MS just screwed the hell out of Nokia. Who the hell will buy a Lumia now?

Only a fool.

[pyjamarama]

Besides some of the nice features that come build in with WP8 I think how much will the WP7 user will feel left out will have to do with how many apps will fail to work on there phone not because of new hardware requirements but because the API is not supported. It's difficult to judge the impact of the situation until, after all how many user are actually aware if phones updates, besides the start screen will look the same so they may never notice :)

[DarthMasta]

Wow, MS just screwed the hell out of Nokia. Who the hell will buy a Lumia now?

Not me, and I'd wager, not anyone who knows of Windows Phone 8 plans.

[stusser]

they may never notice

That seems unlikely, when their friends are playing the next angry birds or words with friends or whatever and they can't install it in on their device.

[rei]

Remember this?

[Starlight]

It's an insult to the Apollo program. Space Shuttle more like.

[rei]

Since there's snowball's chance in hell enterprise/business will adopt Win8 as their longterm desktop OS for the next 5-10 years, everyone will instead move to Win7.

In the past 1.5 years WP7.x has had no MDM-support for enterprise until very recently. Since all these WP8 features have synergies with desktop/enterprise-Win8, this move just killed any interest we had in switching off iPhones and standardize on WP7/8 devices.

Way to fuck up, Microsoft.

[pyjamarama]

Not sure I understand the complaint, sure WP8 looks like Windows 8, but don't see why would make them inferior to other phones on a Windows 7 environment . If the devices are have the required features for enterprise management and the tools for management exist what does it matter if users are on Windows 7 on the desktop?

[rei]

actually that was pretty irrational and made no sense on my part. thanks for pointing it out. them fucking up with no upgrade path for suckers like me who bought a lumia will ensure that our corporate devices stay on iphone simply because i'm butthurt.

[Michael Fortson]

Wow, MS just screwed the hell out of Nokia. Who the hell will buy a Lumia now?

I know. The existing users are going to be pissed -- both of them.

[Chris Gwinn]

I know. The existing users are going to be pissed -- both of them.

My mom just bought a Windows 7 phone (with no input from me). She loves it. I think I'll just not tell her about this.

[rei]

https://twitter.com/intent/user?scre...fakeNokiaIndia

We don't expect sales of WP7 Lumias to fall in the next few months. You can't go below zero

[Jason McCullough]

The expected lifetime of a phone is about a year or two.

As to killing current sales, they didn't announce a date, did they?

[rei]

Remember the joke that was "PlaysForSure?" Zune cut those people off when it came out.

[Jason Becker]

My mom just bought a Windows 7 phone (with no input from me). She loves it. I think I'll just not tell her about this.

She'll never notice just like most smartphone users don't. If you asked 10 random users on a city street using an android phone what version they have how many could? Maybe one?

[stusser]

The expected lifetime of a phone is about a year or two.

No, it's exactly two years, because that's how long phone contracts last.

Also: http://mlkshk.com/r/GXR5

[mkozlows]

The expected lifetime of a phone is about a year or two.

Great, but the Lumia 900 is out now; people who bought it at launch will have had it for six months when the WP8 phones come out this fall. That's another 18 months of limping around with a dead platform.

Plus, the whole thing about WP7 is that it may be lacking today, but it has "potential." Microsoft kneecapping that potential eliminates the only sensible reason that someone might buy it -- that someday, it'll be awesome.

[RepoMan]

That's not the only sensible reason to buy it. Shit, Woz thinks it's the most usable phone out there as is, no "future potential" required.

Yes, it sucks that they couldn't go right to the Win8 architecture with Phone 7, but that's just the way it went. Better to get at least some credibility for having a usable phone at last, not to mention some good user experience and iteration.

It's always dumb to buy a product based on future potential. If it doesn't do what you really need on day one, you're playing a crapshoot.

WinPhone8 will have the user experience that got high reviews from WP7, plus near-trivial porting of Windows apps. Hard to see it not being more successful from a developer standpoint, and if Microsoft knows anything, it knows that as go developers, so go users.

Yes, it sucks to be left behind with any device, but only hardcore nerds feel that their existing products become worthless as soon as something better exists.

[Disclaimer: I work for Steve. There, you can ignore everything I said now.]

[mkozlows]

Yes, it sucks to be left behind with any device, but only hardcore nerds feel that their existing products become worthless as soon as something better exists.

Yes, but pretty much EVERYONE knows that a phone that's not getting support from developers sucks, and that not being able to use any new apps and play any new games is a major problem.

[Disclaimer: I work for Steve. There, you can ignore everything I said now.]

Dude, just because Jobs is dead doesn't mean Ballmer can be called "Steve."

[LMN8R]

Umm, no. One of those features you glossed over is the ability to run WinRT apps. The winphone7 platform is being abandoned. Early adopters are being screwed.

I'm actually curious about what specific features they talked about that you think would be possible on existing Windows Phones, if only they brought the full Windows Phone 8 down-level?

1) New start screen will be in 7.8

2) Encryption and other corporate stuff - not there, but it needs new hardware anyway, so it doesn't make a difference.

3) New apps, app platform - the CPU/GPUs in existing Windows Phones are so ancient by competitive standards, I don't think this would make much difference anyway. Native code would definitely help on the existing hardware, but since all WP8 devices will have vastly improved hardware, you'd then be asking developers to significantly fragment their applications anyway into low-performance and high-performance hardware.

4) Higher resolution support - needs new hardware, doesn't matter anyway

5) SD card support - Needs new hardware, doesn't matter anyway

6) Nokia maps - already coming in 7.8

7) NFC and Wallet stuff - needs new hardware, doesn't matter anyway

What's left is Internet Explorer 10. That would be a shame if they don't bring it to 7.8, but I don't think they've said either way.


Seriously, is there something I'm missing here? What else makes this so damn tragic for existing Windows Phone users?

[stusser]

the CPU/GPUs in existing Windows Phones are so ancient by competitive standards,

The lumia 900 came out 2 months ago. Two months. The flagship phone is being rendered obsolete. After two months.

All that other stuff is just features. You can drop features. App compatibility is not a feature-- if apps aren't compatible, the device is dead.

[LMN8R]

The device has 100,000 apps. Any developer brave enough to actually develop apps isn't just going to stop and hope people will buy new devices. They'll continue developing apps for the people who already have them. Why wouldn't they? They'd be relegating themselves to the same overly-risky situation of developing for a platform with literally 0 people instead of a platform with god-knows-how-many-people.

[stusser]

So now you think people are going to develop winphone7 apps after winphone8 releases? That seems unlikely. To put it mildly.

[mkozlows]

3) New apps, app platform - the CPU/GPUs in existing Windows Phones are so ancient by competitive standards, I don't think this would make much difference anyway. Native code would definitely help on the existing hardware, but since all WP8 devices will have vastly improved hardware, you'd then be asking developers to significantly fragment their applications anyway into low-performance and high-performance hardware.

Yes, the WP7 phones are ridiculously ancient hardware, a point which I have made repeatedly and which was dismissed as "irrelevant nerd talk." But even at that, the Lumia 900 is no worse than the iPhone 4 or Galaxy S or Evo 4G.

When the next big Angry Birds, or Words With Friends, type game comes out, it will almost certainly run on the iPhone 4, and the Galaxy S and the Evo 4G. But it will almost certainly NOT run on the Lumia 900, a phone two years newer than those and with similar hardware. That's a pretty big damn problem, and not one you can brush aside by just disparaging what is, after all, still the current Windows Phone flagship.

And to answer your question about why game devs would target WP8 (with 0 users) instead of WP7 (with literally DOZENS of users), the answer is really really really really really obvious. First, because WP8 supports the NDK that will allow them to make it a relatively simple port of their Android/iOS code-base, instead of having to rewrite it all in C#/XAML. And also second, because WP7 will never have more users than it has today, and will ultimately dwindle to nothing; it's one thing to create an app for a platform that doesn't yet have enough users to really justify it, when you think that platform has a future, but entirely another to create an app for a platform its makers have abandoned.