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Microsoft: Windows Phone 8 is not coming to Windows Phone 7.x handsets

Categories: Windows Phone
By: , IntoMobile
Wednesday, June 20th, 2012 at 10:23 AM
lumia_900_cyan

Microsoft announced Windows Phone 8 today in a San Francisco event. Though all the changes are exciting for customers going forward, current Windows Phone 7.x owners will be disappointed to find out that Windows 8 will not run on their hardware.

Speaking to The Verge, Microsoft’s Greg Sullivan said, “the nature of the investment [in Windows Phone 8] is primarily in areas that are not exploitable by existing hardware.” Sullivan points out that support for dual-core processors and NFC are features that phones like the Lumia 900 just can’t use.

Microsoft wanted Windows Phone 8 to work as well as it could and decided to leave older hardware behind with this release.”To do the work to bring all of those elements to a platform that can’t exploit them wasn’t necessarily the most efficient use of resource,” says Sullivan.

Instead of Windows 8, existing phones will get Windows 7.8, a version of Windows Phone that’ll include the new start screen and tile customization of Windows 8. The update will be delivered  directly to phones, bypassing  the carriers.

[Via The Verge and WinSuperSite]

About The Author

Kelly Hodgkins

Kelly spent the last four years covering mobile technology at places like BGR, Gizmodo and The Unofficial Apple Weblog. Before writing, she spent a few years working with and teaching others how to use Adobe Flash and Macromedia Director. Even earlier than that, she spent several years as a Ph.D student in Microbiology. When she's not writing, she can be found fishing the lakes and hiking the mountains of Western Maine with her husband and tribe of children. You can follow her on Twitter @kellyhodgkins.

  • Anonymous

    MSFTs promise is broken and deceptive! two years ago, MSFT’s WP team told their promise that won’t brings fragmentation to Microsoft’s existence [wp7] phone in future. but MSFT team forgot their promises and still created a WP7′s fragments.. SAD!

    • Anonymous

       2 different versions of windows ISN’T fragmentation.

      WinPhone 7.8 is NOT WinPhone 8. You shot your own argument down when you said “MSFT’s WP team told their promise that won’t brings fragmentation to Microsoft’s existence [wp7] phone in future” – this is Windows Phone 8.

      You want real fragmentation, go get an Android or an iPhone 3gs, and let me know how iOS 6 works out for you…