We do know that Redmond is hard at work on the next version of its mobile OS, and that latest is that it is set to arrive in or around the holiday sales period this year.
But one thing the company plans to do is to keep a lid on the official details of the new platform. A year or so back, things were different — Windows Phone was a fledging new platform, and Microsoft was all too keen on announcing new features, months before release.
But all that is said to change according to Greg Sullivan, the senior product manager of Windows Phone. He was talking to Pocket-Lint at the Mobile World Congress:
“We’re going to have an upgrade path going forward. Windows Phone 8 can evolve. We have an architecture that enables portability and is fundamentally hardware independent. As the market evolves and customer requirements demand it, we’ll evaluate options.”
“Last year the announcement that the current line-up of devices such as the Lumia 900 would not be getting the full update hampered sales, and although Microsoft has said that any future upgrades wouldn’t encounter the same problems, it’s clearly something it wants to avoid.”
Obviously the fact that Windows Phone 7 users could not upgrade to Windows Phone 8 was due to core changes in the kernel of the mobile OS, which was always going to have compatibility issues.
Things are different now that they have an architecture that is portable yet hardware independent.
Still, enthusiasts may have mixed feelings with this new approach. As long as the devices are compatible, leaking out features is not essentially going to have any major negative effect. Then again that depends on the features being leaked.
With the Windows Phone platform fast maturing, Microsoft may very well be concerned about competition stealing its ideas and thunder.
