Just yesterday it was discovered that Nokia had been seeding some OS updates for the Lumia 800 and 510 devices on their servers, specifically WIndows Phone 7.8. The evidence came via the third-party software Navifirm, which shows the updates waiting for distribution.
Now, one of our eagle-eyed readers caught the Lumia 900 getting in on the action. The OS update is for RM-823, which is the international, non-AT&T version and has an OS version number of 8858 with the 12480 firmware. Windows Phone 7.8 is finalized at 8858 making this a bonafide official update.
Windows Phone 7.8 is poised for release on the Lumia 900
While we didn’t count the number of carrier or regional updates, there are plenty including Baltics, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, India, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, European unlocked, Sweden and more. It looks like an army on the hills getting ready to attack, as Nokia is evidently going to roll out 7.8 en masse within the next few weeks.
The AT&T version, RM-808, unfortunately did not have an 8858 update sitting on the servers. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything bad as that situation can change at any moment now.
Our reader, Jens_V, managed to also download and flash their Lumia 900 with the updated OS and noted “No Nokia features, just live tiles, Bing wallpaper, new colors, new boot screen, new wallpapers”, which are things we expected. Nokia is likely to add new camera apps via the Nokia Collection soon after the update goes live to users.
For those curious if you can flash your AT&T phone with one of these combo OS/firmware packages, yes you technically can but we do not know the ramifications including whether or not you’ll hose LTE, let alone of the rest of the radio via this update. Best to sit back and just wait a little while longer.
Thanks, Jens_V, for the tip and photo!
