Samsung Windows 8 Phone To Use Galaxy S3 Hardware: Rumors. According to the latest rumors, Samsung will be basing their Galaxy series Windows Phone 8 of the future on the recently launched Galaxy S3 hardware. These are the rumors that have been doing the rounds right after the device was launched a few days back in London.
The HTC HD2 is a great smartphone and was launched around 3 years ago running Windows Mobile 6.5. Of course Windows Mobile 6.5 devices weren’t upgraded to Windows Phone 7 which indeed changed the game for Microsoft and gave rise to an all new mobile operating system. HTC HD2 has been subject to various hacks and developers have managed to flash several version or flavors of Windows Phone 7 on it. The device comes with a 4.3” screen and is a great device as far as hacking into is concerned.
When Windows Phone 8 was announced, Microsoft also made it clear that the existing Windows Phone 7.5 devices won’t be upgraded to Windows Phone 8. That is of course a very disturbing news for owners of devices such as Lumia 900 because it’s not a good feeling to have a device that is less than a year old and yet is already obsolete. According to Microsoft, the reason for Window Phone 8 not being able to make it to existing Windows Phone 7.5 devices is that they lack the hardware capability to do so, but seems like developers have proved them wrong.
The developers at Dark Force Team have got Windows Phone 8 running on the HTC HD2. Though the functionality in its current trim is limited to a certain extent, but the point is made and it is that HTC HD2 can indeed run Windows Phone 8. The developer team posted few photos on Twitter as proof for the same and has been attached in this post above. The hack demonstrates that even relatively old hardware may be capable of handling Windows Phone 8. Just in case you need a refresher, the HTC HD2 has a 1GHz single-core Snapdragon S1 chip with Adreno 200 graphics and only 448MB of RAM.
It was previously understood that Windows Phone 8 comes with a built in security settings which is supposed to only enable WP8 devices run the software, but the case here is something different and we have a smartphone dating back to 2009 running the new OS, which is fantastic. Though limited in functionality, it also means that there is a possibility to have the existing wonderful Windows Phone 7.5 devices such as Lumia 900 booting Windows Phone 8 goodness unofficially.
For those who are extremely bored with Windows Phone 7.5, Microsoft will be releasing an official update and most of the existing devices will be upgraded to Windows Phone 7.8. The features included in Windows Phone 7.8 have already been leaked online and we have written several articles on the topic as well.
Previously, developers at XDA had managed to create a ROM for the HD2 and had it running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, though the initial release was far from perfect. Since the DFT team has noted that their WP8 on HD2 hack was just a “proof-of-concept”, don’t expect a fully-working Windows Phone 8 ROM to be released for the HTC HD2 in the near future. What are your thoughts on this news?