Get out the salt: Windows Phone said to be getting a new UI

Get out the salt, do your rain dance, and take this next bit of information as just another rumor - but Eldar Murtazin is saying that Windows Phone 9 will feature an updated UI that will drop the tile-based interface formerly known as 'Metro'. Now, this would be a massive departure for Windows Phone - and Microsoft's other Windows and Xbox interfaces - but he insists his claims are "not tales". We should point out too that this is not the first time we have heard that Windows Phone 9 might be a clean slate from Eldar.

If you are wondering why we are even giving this tweet more than 4 seconds of consideration, it’s because Eldar has a way with (occasionally) getting his information right. Now, he is far from perfect, but he has notably pegged a few rumors in the past including his consistent proclamation that Microsoft would buy Nokia, or at least part of it, which turned out to be true.

Looking back further, he has had ties to Nokia and rough outlines of a connection to Microsoft. Of course, you can’t ignore that he has also been quite negative of Nokia - and, to some extent, Microsoft - in the past and that his latest claims could well be ill-informed. 

With the above being said, what might be happening is that information is being diluted down the rumor chain. Windows Phone may well be getting an updated UI in future versions - and that would be no surprise as each new iteration of Windows Phone has added new visual components and features - and in the case of what Murtazin refers to as 'Windows Phone 9, it could be getting so many new features that it looks like a whole new interface.

Microsoft has invested billions into unifying its user interfaces with common elements, and we can’t see them dumping those efforts so quickly. Certainly the UI will be evolving and considering there has been a massive re-org at Microsoft with many new leaders in new positions, a significant update to the Windows Phone UI would not unexpected.

The timing of Windows Phone 9, according to Eldar, would be for the fall of 2014. We will be curious to see if Microsoft sticks with this timeline considering they will be pushing a significant update early next year with Windows Phone 8.1.

Source: Twitter