Microsoft confirms lack of backward compatibility in Windows Phone 7

March 5, 2010 | By Surur

In a twitter Q&A session Microsoft has confirmed that Windows Phone 7 development will take place in XNA and Silverlight. XNA is already in use on the X-box platform for mini-games and is also the foundation of application development on the ZuneHD.

Microsoft also confirmed Windows Mobile software will not run on the Windows Phone 7 platform, with Microsoft promising they "will continue to work with our partners to deliver new devices based on Windows Mobile 6.5 and will support those products for many years to come" .

With this move Microsoft has sadly basically condemned Windows Phone 7 series to feature phone status for at least its first 6 months to a year, due to the very likely severe dearth of applications, especially productivity ones that take quite a long time to develop. At the same time, despite Microsoft’s promises, we can also expect development on Windows Mobile to more or less cease also.

It seems the time in the desert has just started.

Do our readers think Microsoft is acting wisely? Let us know below.

About Surur

Site Admin and Windows Phone enthusiast, he has been using Windows Mobile devices since before they were called PocketPC’s. He is currently sporting a HTC 7 Trophy.

Tagged developers, software, windows phone 7

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Unfortunately, I think Microsoft has to take this step because much of the existing WinMo software, while effective, just would look jarring in 7 series. Just thing of how reviewers savaged 6.5 when it came out just because some of the system screens weren't touch optimized and had plain white backgrounds and boring typefaces.

Plus, a lot of the old software is styles based (not that I mind) and might be kinda hard to use on a 7 series device.
http://intensedebate.com/profiles/encoreppc encoreppc

hmmmm…. xpecting someone from XDA could do a software emulation,
Peter

WP7 is to WM6.5 as WebOS is to PalmOS – a totally new, unrelated platform. However, Palm capitulated to legacy Treo owners, assisting with the rapid development of the Classic PalmOS emulator – which works very well. Perhaps MS could throw a bone to those with a big WM application investment by working to develop such a thing.

But I wouldn't hold my breath!

http://www.avianwaves.com Parrotlover77

I don't know if Microsoft will be the one to do it, but making an emulator would not be terribly difficult. It remains to be seen how much of WP7S and CE6 share with WM and CE5, but it would seem to me that an emulator could be made that did not have to emulate an entire OS, only the changes in libraries between 7 and 6.

Again, not holding my breath, but the amount of work required is less than WebOS to PalmOS, which share less foundation, from what I understand. WP7S and WM6 share a lot — Windows CE.

Also, what's with the major pessimistic attitude about this post? Who was still holding out hope for official integrated backward compatibility?

Considering the vast number of skilled developers on XDA and PPCGeeks, not to mention big companies like SPB still announcing new apps for WM6.5 going forward (namely, MobileShell 5), I don't see a issue here. Not everybody is an early adopter. WP7S may take a while to get an appbase, but WM is fine for quite a while.

Snatchertas

Mobile platforms tend to suffer from such generation incompatibilities, so we should not be surprised. If you take a look at the massively popular Symbian platform you will see that it is a platform that makes the handset manufacturers life easier, and not the developers' or the end users'. New and improved features appear in the new handsets and the older ones are left in the dust.

Now, of course we don't like that model, but it is not unheard of, and certainly it makes sense to Microsoft as well as to handset manufacturers. Software developers will also benefit from creating new and shiny versions of their older offerings, practically rebooting their business.

So, yes, it is a departure but the market will decide.
http://intensedebate.com/people/l3v5y l3v5y

WM users have got used to having software from 5-10 years ago working on it. This is due to the massive backward compatibilty of the CE core, and of WM itself. At some point though, MS need to just start from a clean slate, and that's what WP7 is.

Part of the reason for MIX10 being focused on WP7 is so that developers can get software out well before devices come out later this year. This means that even before the platform is available, there will be software available.
doministry

I wouldn't lament!
I think that can clean the platform and building it from scratch can only help!
Rohit

I am totally with MS on this one. Old WM apps looks horrible. They were buggy and I will not miss them at all. I love the fact that Silverlight and .NET is big part going forward. One day one MS will have hundreads and thousands of developer who will know how to develop for WP7. If the phone sells well I expect within an year hundreads of apps to come up. This is a great oppertunity for any developer out there.
Jos Dewey

Who gives a crap?

I'm not totally on board with WP7, but I see why they need to do this. Shall they keep support so we can continue using PHM RegEdit from like 2002, for instance?

If they want to be taken seriously they had to dump these apps… sorry to the 5 percent of WM apps which were actually updated in the last few years, like Resco Photo, but oh well, most of the stuff that will be killed by this is already of no use to anyone.
Kruk

I like this move very much, I dont miss WM6 app, except TomTom. And I am sure it will be ported.

And I think there will be some good apps at launch date! They have some times between MIX and holiday season.
Sgt Pepper

This will allow to clean some old-fashioned WM6 applications. Some of them were really horrible, with old ugly interfaces, bugs, etc…. The best applications will survive, the big mess of old applications will be cleaned. But there is a big risk: Who will take the risk to move to WM 7 when man know there will probably be a lack of appications at the beginning. Now, I'm not in a hurry to move to WM 7. I will wait patiently for this OS to be mature, with a lot of applications. But, when you see how poor the MS Marketplace is… will there be applications for WM7?

Seven mss

Who will gake risk at the beginning? The beginning is the best! Make the first good solitair app, and everybody will buy it because it is the only solitair app out there. Believe me, just look at Apple Appstore. Even the first fart app was a success.

Two things are needed: There must be a positive hype about 7Series (that means lots of people will buy a 7Series device) and it must be easy and nice for developers to make their apps.

NuShrike

I'm not sure how the frest-start was entirely necessary since WM was only lacking in the GUI framework. The rest of the OS worked fine, and just needed to transition to CE6 for a better kernel.

After all, even in Windows7, you can still use most of your old-moldy software dating back to the DOS days. This has always been one of Microsoft's selling points by not destroying people's investments over the years. As comparisons, PalmOS was not using a modern OS kernel and needed the transition to keep up with the hardware demands, while Android was just born from Zeus's head.

To all those supportive of this fresh-start, then you should be just as supportive of dumping WP7 until 2012 simply because that's also a frest-start, but onto at least more mature phone OSs such as Symbian or Android for the time-being.
http://beemer.sesma.eu beemer

I understand the change done by Microsoft, but the lack of applications will be a heavy load for the new WP7.

As a WM programmer, I agree with the drop of C++ applications compatibility because the too low level API was causing issues, perhaps a move like Android, allowing .Net C# applications plus XNA and Silverlight would have been a better move.

GP007

This is exactly it. One thing people have to remember is that by using .NET and Silverlight apps will be that much better at keeping up with future OS updates because they're running managed code. Devs don't, and MS doesn't as well, have to worry about future low level OS updates breaking apps if all of them are Silverlight/NET and so on. It's win win for everyone.

And those old WM apps really do need to go, a clean start is the best. Other platforms like the iPhone and Android now both started off clean and have gained loads of apps as well. All MS has to do is make sure to market the hell out of Windows Phone so that device sales are good and devs will make apps, it's what they do.

I'm with MS on this 100%
NuShrike

Can you point out some good, fast, and light .NETCF programs?

The .NETCF ones I'm aware of are usually a combination of buggy, fat, slow, 8second+ startup time, or crashes easily. Most of the good apps are not .netcf usually in my experience, and I have yet to see using low-level API causes problems.

stoolzo

Sometimes you have to burn to encourage new growth, however new isnt always better. Personally I like the PC in a phone aspect of winmo, I dont want a apple like toy, oh and I dont spend half of my life on facespace either. I like menus and icons I dont like pointless transitions an graphics either. I suspect it will look nice and do a decent job but ulimately lose favour very quickly with its users as you wont be able to tweak it as much.
motty69

The good apps will be ported, I'm sure MS will work with devs to see that this happens so there's no tumbleweeds blowing through the Marketplace when WP7 is available. I think working with devs and getting a good high-profile ad campaign together should be very high up on Microsoft's to-do list for launch. If they want to be a player, they gotta let people know they are coming rather than just leaving the promotion to the blog-o-sphere.

If the demand is there we'll see an emulator as well, if not from MS or a dev there will be an XDA/PPCGeeks homebrew effort.

joozzt

An app can easily be much more than an UI calling higher stuff which MS thought would be useful for the user. When an app writer must rely an what MS thinks the user wants, they all will be steered by the hidden agenda that every big company has.
let's say i want to listen to the very popular shoutcast stations at somafm.com ?
Oops, MS was not interested in this, sorry, no streming support for Shoutcast built in, so we can't write an app for that.
This could happen with much more technologies around, so i still wonder what's going to happen at MIX.
The recent release of the native Opera Mini is very interesting timing of them also

http://intensedebate.com/people/RezxerT RezxerT

I have to admit that I'm a bit upset reading the replies in this article. I mean, for me, the loss of backwards compatibility is enormous; an absolute deal-breaker. I'm so heavily invested in the WM6.X apps that their loss is a big blow to me; hell, the last time that I was able to switch cell phones so easily was back when I used the Sony Ericsson S710 (not even a smartphone, so I couldn't invest heavily in it even if I wanted to).

So the thought that I'm in the small minority and the majority of of WM owners will have little to no issue switching (meaning Microsoft has little incentive to provide an emulator or at least some workaround to get older apps to work) to WP7S is a bit demoralizing, to say the least.

I have to confess: I've actually been thinking a lot of going to the dark side (iPhone). I mean, I typically despise Apple's products, and the iPhone's specs disgusts me (the 3GS is barely better than my 2008 smartphone), but it is the only platform in existence that is capable of replacing *every single* app I've used on WM with something that is either equal or even better. And, of course, the iPhone has a whole ton of apps which never saw the light of day on WM.

*Sigh* It's stressful being a smartphone user.
ianl8888

M$$ is deliberately trashing the WM apps library built up over 10-15 years

The destruction of high-end apps for medicine, survey,mapping, engineering, CAD, 3-D modeling etc is utterly appalling. It's ignorant to say "Oh, they'll be ported". It took many years with much money and effort, including experienced user input, to develop these apps to the stage they are now

UBoobs, InYourFace, Twithead and the rash of dumb-down junk for dumb-end users is well suited to the IPhoney – hard, serious apps that can be relied on will not appear for WM7 for years, if at all. "Ugly" is not a useful description of a medical diagnosis program … "life saving" is more apt

The hardware [1ghz+ CPU's, 32Gb SDHC cards, W/XVGA] has developed to the point where it is equivalent to the earlier 486 PC's at a fraction of the cost and size, making it usable across the globe in your pocket), but the firmware has regressed to Paleolithic levels:

"Ughh !! Me have finger !!"

geezicantwait

wow, in light of ianl8888's comment, i do seen to remember all the reasons i and many others have stuck with wm for all these years. many business are using attachments to wm phones from conducting a cencsus to field surveying and then some. not that these things cant be done on wp7, but many small companies have invested thousands of dollars in liscensed sofware that they use daily. i feel these ppl as the annoucement by mw to for no back compat. will cause developer to stop making programs that those ppl depend on.

Still, in light of this i still do support the decision as many were defecting a ranting online everywhere in how bat the underlying OS was. then when it gets overhauled we complain again! besides the way this new OS is designed, i think they may have achieved their goal of doin away with the so called app as we know it. at least they did go to code that many ppl already know and are familiar with anyway.