After yesterday’s Windows Phone 8 announcement, Microsoft said that they wouldn’t be upgrading any existing Windows Phone 7 devices to Windows Phone 8. As you’d expect, Windows Phone 7 users got pretty mad, considering many people recently bought into the Windows Phone ecosystem with the Nokia Lumia 900, which came out just a few months back.
Instead of updating users to Windows Phone 8, Nokia said that they would be bringing an update to Windows Phone 7 under the version number 7.8. This update would bring the aesthetic features of Windows Phone 8 to the Lumia 900, but not many of the other cool features of WP8 such as application support.
To me, this is unacceptable as the Lumia 900 was released in late March, 2012. Windows Phone 8 could hit the shelves as early as September 2012, which would make the lifespan of the Lumia 900 just under seven months. This is embarrassingly less than that of the iPhone or even some Android phones.
So, if Nokia and Microsoft aren’t already screwing Lumia 900 (and other WP7) users hard enough, The Verge had a chance to talk to Nokia’s Kevin Shields on the Windows Phone 8 upgrade. What he said will probably grind your gears. Kevin stated that:
I definitely think it’s more than enough. I think that ultimately your typical customer probably isn’t all that aware of this upgrade thing
So let me get this straight — Kevin is saying that an aesthetic upgrade is more than enough to keep users happy? I think not. What about app support? What about the fact that a phone you released only a few months ago is already going to be outdated?
Another thing that really got me angry about that quote is that Kevin basically called the typical customer stupid. Really, where does he have the right to comment on what the average consumer knows about technology? While I’m definitely not the average consumer, my experience tells me that the average consumer has at least some understanding of a software upgrade. I’m pretty sure they would feel ripped off when they can no longer play ‘Words With Friends 2’ when released on Windows Phone 8 at the end of the year. /rant.
