Windows Phone 8 Won’t Work on Existing Phones
Although existing Windows Phone devices won’t be able to run the next version of the operating system, Microsoft isn’t totally leaving customers in the cold.
Microsoft is planning an update for existing devices that will bring one key feature of Windows Phone 8 — the more customizable Start screen. That update, known as Windows Phone 7.8, will be available for the current crop of Windows Phones from Nokia, HTC and Samsung.
The main reason the new software won’t run on older phones is that most of the new changes are related to support for new kinds of hardware that don’t exist in the current generation of phones.
By contrast, apps written for Windows Phone 7 will run on both current and future phones. That’s because even though Microsoft is changing the core of the operating system, it has never allowed programmers to write natively for Windows Phone 7.
However, apps written for Windows Phone 8 won’t necessarily run on the older devices, meaning that those with older devices may soon see cool apps that they can’t use.