[citation][nom]belardo[/nom]There is a SEVERE difference in supporting a 2002 product with a 2011 OS, no? My iPad1 won't be getting iOS6.0 and it doesn't matter - it'll be a 3 year old product when 6 comes out. The Lumia 7~900 are current products. Their technology is a year out-of-date. MS has orphaned them because of how the OSes are completely different.Most Android apps that runs on 2.x phones will run on 4.x phones. My phone went from 2.1>2.3, but it'll never run 4.x... its too old and doesn't have the required feature sets. Its also wearing out - as cell phones are such heavy use items - they only have a 2~4 year life span. (Dropping, battery wear, run-over, kicked, etc)And yes, nobody has ANY business releasing any new products today that is sub Android 4.0. Yet, even Samsung has just released a new phone with 2.3?! (WTF?! Its a phone with a TV projector built in [10ft tall max]) since Android is open source, a developer can choose to use what they want. Those going with 2.x are doing so because they are using slower/lower end parts.Microsoft has screwed WP7 owners, simple as that.[/citation]
2002 product? The first gen ipod touch came out in 2007 and the 2nd gen was out in 2008, so I really don't understand what you're talking about.
I'm curious what it is in windows 8 that windows 7.8 phone users won't get? MS is not abandoning support for 7.8, but they cannot deliver the performance and stability that will come with windows 8 phones if they have to consider the however many permutations of phone hardware that already exist. I'm so sick of half-functioning hardware, OS, and 3rd party apps. As a consumer looking for a better option, I'm happy for someone else to draw a line in the sand and have some standard. With Windows 8 supporting multi-core CPUs and 7.x did not (ergo 7.x and older phones were single-core), it makes no sense to roll out a more advanced OS to sub-standard hardware.
It was even detailed that a majority of the features that consumers would notice in Windows 8 would be added to 7.8. MS releasing a different OS on a different hardware platform doesn't immediately make the old OS non-functional.
And how many phone manufacturers and network providers honestly roll out Android updates? Unless you're using one of the few big-budget, big-name phones on the larger networks that has lots of support for the firmware and OS, chances are you don't get frequent--if any--OTA updates. Maybe one. IIRC mine got a 2.2 to 2.3 update, and that was WELL after 2.3 was in the wild for quite some time. Never got anything beyond that--probably because the hardware wasn't enough to support the newer OSs. How is Win 8 any different? Even if you bought a 2.3 phone just before ICS came out, if it lacks the fundamental hardware that allows ICS to do what it does, it makes no sense to even consider supporting that platform.