Goodbye Windows Phone - Lack Of Upgradability Kills It For Me

Yesterday Microsoft officially announced Windows Phone 8, and it looks like it will be a welcome release. Unfortunately, exactly zero percent of current Windows Phone users can upgrade their devices to the refreshed platform. That's right. If you have the shiny new flagship device, a Nokia Lumia 900, your phone just became obsolete.

WP8 has a lot of great new features like:

• Integrated VoIP support, so now Skype can let you know calls are coming in without having to be the foreground app.
• In-App purchasing
• Device Encryption
• Better multitasking

It also has an improved Metro interface as seen in the image above. All in all, it looks like a really nice upgrade to the current platform.

Developers will be able to take advantage of these features as well. They can also write native code, a big no-no in Windows Phone 7, something that drew complaints.

If you have A WP7 device, you might get Windows Phone 7.8 later this year, after WP8 launches. I say might because newer devices are more likely to get the upgrade from the carriers, but older first generation devices have probably been forgotten about. 7.8 though only gives you some of the visual enhancements, not the core upgrades. That means new apps written in native code won't run on your device. How much fun will it be this fall to see new apps being released in the Marketplace that you cannot run on your 4 month old Lumia? Not much I suspect. No other WP8 improvements will be in WP7.8, just the shiny new start screen according to Joe Belfiore.

I purchased a New iPad two months ago and am really enjoying it. In fact, this post is being written on it using Blogsy. I have been following the news on iOS 6 and like what I see and have been seriously considering an iPhone 5 this fall. My wife and kids all have an iPhone 4, and they have iOS 5 on there now and will be getting iOS 6 this fall. Heck, Apple is even upgrading iPhone 3GS users, which launched in 2009, over a year before WP7 launched! Sure, not every iOS 6 feature will work on older phones, but most will. Apple's upgrade for older phones isn't just window dressing, no pun intended.

So I'll get the iPhone 5 and can be reasonably sure I'll be able to upgrade to iOS 7 and 8, while consumers of Microsoft's platform get no such assurances that WP9 or above will come to their phones. Yeah, WP8 supposedly comes with better upgradability, as stated in the blog, but the same thing was said when WP7 was launched in 2010.

That is a shame too. I love the Metro interface. I love the people hub, Facebook integration, the smoothness of the UI, and overall intuitiveness of the platform. Phones today aren't toasters though. They are computers, and people expect to be able to upgrade them for at least the duration of their contract. How pleased will the guy that purchased a Lumia 900 last month be in early 2014 with a phone that hasn't seen an update in over a year and a wealth of cool new apps that won't run on the device?

You've lost me as a phone customer Microsoft for at least four years, which will be two contract upgrade cycles for me. In that time, you'll have to prove you have fixed your upgrade cycle and won't abandon current customers so quickly. Two years isn't enough time to establish a track record, especially given your past, so I won't even consider your platform in 2014. I'll keep an eye in you though. Your software is good and the Metro UI in a phone is great. That isn't good enough though. You have to keep me on the latest greatest after I fork over my hard earned money for your product, something Apple is willing to do, and has proven it year after year.