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Confirming many a suspicion, a top exec for Microsoft’s mobile division admitted Thursday that thousands of existing Windows Mobile apps won’t be compatible with the upcoming—and radically overhauled—Windows Phone 7 OS.Microsoft exec Charlie Kindel told reporters during an event Thursday that Windows Phone 7 “marks a pretty distinct break with past versions of Windows Mobile,” according to CNET—not a shocking revelation, given that the new Zune-like touchscreen OS looks nothing like the labyrinthine Windows Mobile UI of old.
In an accompanying blog post, Kindel wrote that “the cost of going from good to great is a clean break from the past,” meaning that “previous Windows Mobile applications will not run on Windows Phone 7 Series.”
That’s not to say that existing Windows Mobile apps—and there are many thousands of them—couldn’t be modified to work on WP7, Kindel said (as quoted in the CNET story), but it sounds like the process wouldn’t be an easy one. “In some cases, some work can be done to get those apps to run, but it’s fundamentally a different platform,” he said.
Kindel also confirmed another recent rumor: That Windows Mobile 6.5, obsolete though it is, isn’t going anywhere.
“We will continue to work with our partners to deliver new devices based on Windows Mobile 6.5 and will support those products for many years to come,” Kindel wrote on his blog. (Now, why anyone would want to buy a Windows Mobile 6.5 phone now that Windows Phone 7 is on the way is an open question.)
Meanwhile, we’ve still getting mixed messages from Microsoft about which existing Windows Mobile 6 handsets will be upgradable to Windows Phone 7 … if, indeed, they’ll be upgradeable at all.
Just a few days ago, a Microsoft spokesperson essentially punted on the question, telling me that “we cannot confirm that WM6.X phones that satisfy [Windows Phone 7 hardware] requirements will be upgradable.” But during Thursday’s Microsoft mobile event, “the company also confirmed that it has no current plans to allow any current Windows Mobile phones to run the new OS,” CNET reports.
Microsoft has promised to answer more of our Windows Phone 7 compatibility questions at its MIX developer conference in Vegas later this month. In the meantime, though, Engadget is plaintively asking Redmond to “please put a line in the sand and tell us” if the red-hot HTC HD2—an upcoming Windows Mobile 6.5 handset for T-Mobile with “the best hardware we’ve ever seen”—”will be upgradeable to Windows Phone 7 Series.”
So, what do you think: Shocked (or not) that Windows Mobile 6.x apps won”t work on Windows Phone 7? Annoyed that your old WM6.x apps are obsolete, or are you fine with making a “clean break”?

via Yahoo! Tech