Microsoft to speed up Windows Phone feature iteration


It seems that Microsoft's plan so far with Windows Phone has been to build the base and optimize the software before allowing hardware manufacturers to add new features, but it looks like Microsoft might be ready to start pushing the Windows Phone ecosystem a bit faster.

In an interview with Techradar, Microsoft's director of Mobile Communication Business Aaron Woodman said that Microsoft knew there was a lot of catch-up to be done to compete with the likes of iOS and Android, but that the company thinks that it has achieved that basic parity, and now will begin looking at more "innovative pieces". Much of that base work was put towards hardware optimization, which according to Woodman means that WP single-core devices can have "better performance than a great deal of the dual core devices out there without having to sacrifice or balance things like battery life.” Woodman continues on to point out the flaws with the Android platform, saying that the "first several dual core devices actually didn’t even use the second core" and that even now many developers don't optimize for dual-core even though dual-core marketing is listed "on the back of every box and on the placard".

As for pushing new hardware features, Woodman made it clear that Microsoft wasn't going to jump on everything just because it is new. To that point, NFC will be making its way into handsets, but 3D screens will most likely not be part of the Windows Phone ecosystem, because it may not lead to anything "meaningful to end users".

Still, it will be nice to see what kind of "innovative pieces" Microsoft does decide are worth the time. We're certainly hoping that means higher resolution screens, and maybe something similar to the Xperia Play's built-in gamepad, which could really boost the value of the XBox Live offerings on Windows Phone. What would you guys like to see in Windows Phone?

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