Rumor: Nokia and MS are testing a build of Apollo on the Lumia 610.

[George P Global Moderator]

The MS nerd?@MS_nerd

Time to drop the biggest effin' #tip bomb: Nokia & Microsoft are testing a build of Apollo on the Lumia 610. Not 'performant' enough. Yet.

If you follow the rumor and leaked news mill around MS and it's products then you all should know MS nerd and his/her record to date which as far as I remember has been spot on.

Then, going by the above tweet, it would seem MS and Nokia are testing WP8 on the low, very low, end Lumia 610! If true this should bode well for upgrading first gen phones as well as offer us an idea of the type of performance MS is aiming for. If the other rumor about WP8 sharing it's core with Windows 8 are true then MS has done a load of performance and optimization work moving over the NT core to the phone. If something as low speced as the 610 can run WP8 well then the rest is just what features are or are not supported depending on the rest of the hardware?

Either way, this little tidbit, if true, should be a clue to the future support of WP8 on older devices. If MS wasn't going to support them then why even bother to test on such a slower phone like the 610 at all?

[Mohitster]

Awesome news indeed!!!!

[the better twin]

When you look at Nokias target markets (emerging markets like China and India) you would have to wonder why MS and Nokia would suddenly abandon these users with Apollo.

So far we have heard nothing but rumour, and this tweet would have to be regarded with the same skepticism as the previous ones, but it would be pretty daft for MS and Nokia to have Apollo only run on high end devices. Where would low-mid WP7 devices fit in? Would they fragment the OS?

This rumour makes the most sense so far, as MS would not want to talk about something they are still testing.

I imagine we will find out soon enough though.

[Muhammad Farrukh]

This news is awesome, if true, and could turn out to be a game changer for Windows Phone

[BajiRav]

I guess The Verge and specially Josh Top***y (sorry don't know spelling) guy continues its crusade against WP for some reason.