Actually Windows Phone 8 Will Run on Windows NT Kernel

We ran a piece a few days ago about Ms-Nerd’s assertion that Microsoft was not moving to Windows NT kernel as the basis for Windows Phone in WP8.  He asserted that this had been talked about but it had been scrapped, especially due to the fact that Nokia is trying to drive windows phone into the mid and low range and the windows kernel has too much overhead for that work.

For non technical readers I believe I need to define what exactly is going on here.  If Windows Phone 8 was to move to Windows NT kernel it would not change what the user sees.  The phone interface could stay the same but the core of how it runs would change.  I don’t want to go into more detail than that because my knowledge is limited, but it wouldn’t mean a change in the UI of windows phone.

Wmpoweruser has learned from sources very close to the matter that this is incorrect.  Not only will Windows Phone 8 be based on the Windows NT Kernel, most of the work has already been completed.  They are now approaching the third milestone for Apollo out of three total.  What’s more regarding Ms-Nerd’s assertion that Win NT would have to much overhead for lower end chips; well this doesn’t seem to be true.  What is actually the problem is that Win CE, which windows runs on right now, is nearing its limit on the newer chipsets in version 7 and windows phone is still running on version 6.  Perhaps this is the real reason we haven’t seen any dual core Windows Phones.

What’s more this makes sense.  Why do you think we haven’t seen NFC on Windows Phones and why hasn’t Microsoft allowed game engines like EPIC to run on Windows Phone?  Why continue to add features to the Win CE kernel they are working with now when they are about to change it anyways?  Native game development would become broken once kernels are switched out.

And for a final juicy rumor; our sources tell us that the July launch date for Apollo leaked by the Nokia executive at Nokia World isn’t too far fetched and both Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 are supposed to launch simultaneously.  That’s very interesting. 🙂