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If you got in on Windows Phone early — in which case, bless you, brave one — you may have been a little miffed when you found out that your shiny old Lumia wasn’t going qualify for Windows Phone 8. Lucky for you, the next best thing is finally here: Windows Phone 7.8. Here’s how to get it.
Okay, so it may be a decent amount of hurry up and wait; the tiny live-tile toting update will be rolling out through February. Still, better late than never, you dozens of proud Lumia 800 owners, you. [Nokia]
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You know there were other windows phones than just the Nokia ones right?
Just too little too late. I have a Lumia 800 and its been the most painful year ever. Now i’m just looking forward to my Samsung GS4 or Sony Experior Z once they get released. I can’t wait to get rid of this paperweight.
I must admit that I am starting to get a bit fed up with MS dropping the ball. There is so much potential with win8/wp8/xbox but it doesn’t quite seem to mesh like it should..
Also the UI on Android 4.x is actually starting to look pretty damn good..
I couldn’t agree with you more. Most painful year ever. Nexus 4 on it’s way to me as we speak!
I often wonder why tech sites push and promote Windows phones as the best thing ever. Yet few people like the experience. Is it just that they aren’t Android of iOS so they want to spread some love or are they talking huge backhanders.
But I’m getting to that age when change seems like such a chore, I even dropped Windows 8 from a laptop, seemed to radical.
While I was a bit upset initially when I got my Lumia 800 and WP8 was announced soon after I have to say I love this phone. Super easy to use, and interesting UI, all the apps I need and an overall smooth user experience.
While this update is OK it does just seem to let you fiddle with the size of tiles – when I have some money I’ll probably just buy a WP8 phone but until then this phone will do just fine.
Hating my windows phone for the last year
Oh well.
At least someone likes them, but not really the foundation of a solid future.
Quite true. Everyone has to start somewhere though and personally I hope that the OS does take off a bit more since there seems to be a bit of promise.
I do agree that at the moment it’s not really a contender to draw people away from iOS or Android.
To be fair, quite a lot of people like the experience, anecdotal stories to the contrary aside. And windows 8 is a huge departure from windows 7…..IF you participate in the new UI. You can pretty much get by using win 8 exactly as you used win 7 and almost never see the start screen (other than when you boot up). The only time i see it is when i use it for the only thing i used the win 7 start menu for by the end: searching for applications. Even then, i see it for the half a second it takes to hit the windows key and start typing the name of an application (which is, incidentally, a nice short-cut to the search functionality). Funnily enough, I’ve put win 8 on every machine i own. It’s improved my laptop experience hugely for one tiny reason: gesture scrolling with the touchpad is SO MUCH SMOOTHER in win 8! No idea if this is Samsung releasing better drivers for win 8, or the underlying windows mouse scrolling behaviour. Either way, it’s now a lot more like my girlfriend’s mac, which is how i’ve always wanted it to behave.
If you can persuade yourself to persevere with it for a bit, win 8 does include quite a few improvements under the hood. It’s more resource efficient, it boots faster, the new task manager is worth the price of admission alone, and the it has file system security improvements so i’m told.
Let me get this straight, the 7.8 update brings just new colours and smaller tiles. WTF, is that it!? Just two changes!
No extra row of icons? OMG!!
Brian types as if he’s somehow superior to every other human on earth who owns a Lumia. Must be the owner of an iPhone.
I would just like to point out that my Samsung Omnia W also updated to 7.8 today. Do the old disconnect trick in Zune.
My friend got a Lumia 800 at launch and she’s not very good with tech so she never updated it. She asked me to do it for her and I was shocked at how long it took. I don’t think she’ll be wanting this update if it’s not adding anything fantasticly new to her phone. To be honest she’s regretting getting that phone and I don’t blame her. It’s awful.
I don’t really understand people that see WP7 as awful, not as great as others, but awful?. It’s so easy to use, any info or app I want is only a few swipes away. WP7 also came with features that others are only just catching up on. It’s simple, clean and organised unlike most other phone os. But I do think it could do with an update on from WP8, even though I like the os, it can still improve.
Hope your friend has better luck with her next phone!