With such an upgrade to the Nokia X line, the question is, will Microsoft update the current X devices to version 2 of the X platform?
That is what I asked yesterday as I covered the Nokia X2 announcement.
There’s an answer: NO!
Here is the bad news: Microsoft won’t be updating the 4 month old first generation Nokia X devices like the X, X+ and XL to the Nokia X Software Platform 2.0 that brought with several welcome changes. The company quotes the devices’ ageing hardware as being the reason they won’t be getting the update. However, as expected, there’s a consolation. It will provide some minor updates to help improve the experience.
Because of the necessary hardware upgrades, the Nokia X software platform 2.0 won’t be available on Nokia X, Nokia X+ or Nokia XL. However, more updates will be coming to further improve the experience of those devices in the coming months.
It is not like we did not see it coming anyway. The new Nokia X2 has better processor (a dual-core Snapdragon 200 clocked at 1.2 GHz vis-a-vis the dual-core Snapdragon S4 chip clocked at 1 GHz in the first generation X devices) and better memory (the Nokia X has just 512 MB RAM while the X+ and XL have 768 MB. The X2 has 1 GB RAM). Forcing the updated platform on the old X devices will likely result in lag as their hardware can’t handle it. Before you even get to the lag, is there enough memory to start with? For those who’ve never understood why it takes so long for Android OEMs to provide updates and then still go ahead and provide that late update to just a few devices you can slowly start understanding why. Of course besides the usual OEM negligence and sales drive spirit (which is obviously not the case here anyway).
Nokia X Software Platform 2.0 is based on Android 4.3 unlike the Android 4.1.2 that the first generation of X devices is based on. It includes several improvements to Fastlane, the virtual keyboard, the control panel and the camera UI. There’s also a Lumia style Apps List which is basically Microsoft’s version of an app drawer (in list format…). There’s a new home button alongside the back button on the Nokia X2 hardwared. The new software also ships with a new default browser, Opera.
