Nokia X/X+/XL -- No X2 Upgrade For You!
Microsoft's Mobile Phones UX Design Studio chief, Yannis Paniaras, delivered the bad news.
---- 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.
In other words, Nokia X/X+/XL customers find themselves in a situation akin to Windows Phone 7 and 7.5 buyers. And in a way, Microsoft's excuse has gotten even more tenuous, because we know the OS could theoretically run on the current lineup's hardware based on what we've seen with Android.
While the second-generation Nokia X2 OS will switch versions of Android (branched from v4.1.2 "Jelly Bean" rather 4.3 "Jelly Bean"), that alone doesn't explain why it can't install on the legacy devices. The problem lies, it would seem, in the button selection.
The original Nokia X was a questionable idea on paper, and in the wild it has proven a frustrating mixture of well crafted, polished parts alongside painfully senseless design decisions.
Among the senseless bits was the phone's button selection and means of handling multitasking. Multitasking on the Nokia X was more or less broken. The "Fast Lane" UI element (Home Screen; swipe left from right hand corner) was not true multitasking in that it offered no way to completely close background running apps, and at times had trouble restoring state information. This train wreck is fixable, thankfully, via a paid app that restores normal Android-style multi-tasking.
