New bug reportedly found in Windows Phone Store: WP8 apps "updated" into WP7 version

By Kane Gao
last updated

The "Windows Phone Store" is a pretty big concept. Instead of being one simple market available to all users equally and indifferently, it has countless facets intended for specific user groups and regions.

Depending on your OEM, carrier, geographic region, OS version, and size of RAM, the apps visible to you just won't be the same. When things get complicated in order to serve as many types of consumers as possible, the chance of stuff going wrong gets increased as well.

Chinese tech site WPDang got user reports about what appears to be a new bug in the Windows Phone Store: Some users are getting served with the wrong version when performing an app update. Microsoft now allows developers to provide WP7 (7.5 and 7.8) and WP8 versions of an app separately to achieve the best compatibility. Recently however, the Store seems to get "confused" about user OS versions from time to time, ending up pushing WP7 apps to WP8 devices as updates.

To verify this weird report, WPDang reached out to the developers of Love Wallpaper HD (opens in new tab), who had a quick look into their server log, and found the following data:

This is part of user OS version statistics pool of the WP7 version of Love Wallpaper HD. The entries marked with a red rectangle clearly do not belong to this gang. The data means somehow the WP7 app is being pushed to certain WP8 users. The developers randomly pulled 100 entries from the WP7 user pool, and 11 of them turned out to be actually running WP8. The sampling size is too small to be called scientific, but still, the 11% percentage looks pretty serious.

Either Microsoft's Windows Phone Store server is being naughty, or a lot of people are trying to sideload the wrong version of an app into their phones. The latter doesn't look very likely though, because Love Wallpaper HD has been available in the Chinese facet of Windows Phone Store since the beginning, and it's a free app. Why bother sideloading when getting it from the legal channel costs nothing and takes only a few seconds?

We don't know if this is a China-only problem, or a global glitch. Has your WP8 device been fed with wrong app updates lately? Please let us know in the comment field.

Source: WPDang

Kane Gao
Kane Gao
40 Comments
  • Windows Phone Store & The WP Store Website need massive fixes and update and definitely the need to redesign the website store! P.S Look GooglePlay website and iTunes and compare them with WPstore and how many features are missing.  
  • Yeah, Id like some sort of wish list
  • Yeah. I want "More from this deveoper" and "People also searched for" and "Similar apps" sections.
  • There is a "more from this dev" feature. It's a link in each app close to the bottom in the WP store and the dev's name is a link in the web store.
  • Wrong update = app stops working?
  • This might explain why it seems as though very few apps are being updated for Windows Phone 8 users.
  • This is ace for all those who keep asking for WP7.x ;)
  • +7.8. Cheers!! ;)
  • Happened to me with Viber, reinstalled it.
  • Seriously new bug,
    Wp lacks many features and still got many bugs problem. Qhat happen to MS.
    MS please fix these bugs becuse it is more important than bring new features.
  • I experienced this with the renren social network app, the Chinese version of fb. Was prompted to update the app and got the wp7.5 version, and 2 or 3 days later updated again back to wp8 version. A few people in the renren forum said that the wp8 version was pulled from the store, that may have to do with the mix up.
  • So is this only affecting app updates? Or is it allowing WP8 users to download WP7 apps and vice versa?
  • I think it's only affecting updates, my guess is that the servers aren't detecting the OS version numbers correctly.
  • I had the same issue with Peregrine Twitter app and based on Developer's response this is not the first time happening it seems.
  • Random, but on WP7.8 I keep getting a ghost app update. The marketplace live tile says 1 but opening the marketplace and no update, the live tile then has no update number. Been doing it for about 5 days
  • When I had my HTC trophy, I felt like I was getting ghost app updates once a day...
  • Happened with Peregrine a few weeks ago and just got updated to the correct version last week, I believe.
  • I have to say that some Microsoft specific apps don't work too well on Windows Phone. I know there's been Xbox music issues, full Office support/integration, some Skype integration issues, and the Microsoft store and Marketplace just don't do enough for me. I actually thought Office would be perfect on a Windows Phone. I just can't figure out why its not. There are sooo many talented devs out there, I just wish they'd reach into the dev goodie bag and utilize the awesomeness that's out there. It would be one more thing that they wouldn't have to worry about. Well, hope this gets fixed soon. :)
  • What's wrong with Office?  I find the Office integration superb!  All the apps, especially the OneNote app are amazing and fast and just sync seemlessly with SkyDrive.
  • Maybe its because I've only been using it since February, and maybe I'll visit my Microsoft store to have them help me with it...but when I create a document like a Microsoft word document, it looks completely different then one created from my PC. Or when I transfer one from my PC and I edit it on my phone I can't use the same fonts or paragraph settings or anything remotely close to the original document. It basically comes out looking like a notepad file. Also, I can't attach documents to an email. I wasn't referring to SkyDrive or any other part. I basically thought it would function just like Office does on a computer. Am I missing something that I didn't find before?
  • My gosh, awesome, so much stars on the sky, I can't count them
  • Happened to me with PC remote (us market)
  • I have heard other developers complaining about this, so its not just the Chinese store.
  • This actually happened with the Disqus app for a few weeks. For some reason with the last update that went out, only the Windows Phone 7 version was being served to everyone EXCEPT Windows Phone 8 users who were using a WP8-only language (e.g. Slovak).
     
    I talked to MS support and they cited a few reasons for the conflict:
    1. That the language codes for the WP7/WP8 versions must match (meaning to not specify specific versions of English, for example).
    2. That the WP7 version must target WP7 only, and not WP8 (you can only do that upon app creation, as far as I know)
    3. That the version number for the WP8 needs to be higher
     
    I changed #3 but that didn't fix it immediately. Then out of nowhere WP8 users got the update and it was all fixed. Strange. I'm thinking there were too many conflicts so they either fixed the bug, or modified the behavior to handle conflicts more gracefully.
  • Peregrine 'updated' to the WP7 version. Took a few weeks to get this sorted. Now when I do a reinstall of apps that I already have purchased it keeps asking me to buy again. Each case I have to buy it again and MS issue me an immediate refund. It's quite a mess.
  • This is for forgetting about us.
     
    with love from WP7.8
  • Damn WP7.8 peasants, hehe :P
  • This happened with Disqus about a month ago. It was updated, and when I checked the app it no longer supported 16:9 and its double-wide tile was nonexistent. Fortunately the next update fixed the issue.
  • An update didn't fix it, Microsoft did :-)
  • I haven't experienced anything of such. At least for the now.
  • Microsoft say you have to set the WP8 version number higher than the WP7 app version number. This has always been the case and may be why some are having the problem. But also if you set the WP8 version to require high memory or something then all the wp8 devices that don't have enough memory will see the wp7 version instead
  • HAVE YOU all notice that all these problems does not effect microsoft own apps or xbox live games
    thay run out of the box every time,, think about this folks
    and what it meens,, running two frameworks on the same platform
     
  • But nobody says about Xbox Music - Where, a lot of music are inconsistent (artists, albums) and where is Music Video Clips -  which was on Zune ?????   I love ZUNE (Style was sexy)
  • I havent had this problem, but i am having the problem of purchased apps not showing the entire list (and Marketplace Refresh is appearing constantly through the list)
  • App update notification stops working on mine for weeks.... Microsoft online support told me they're investigating the issue.
  • ive noticed this too. My app updates are appearing days after they are actually ready to be updated on some apps, and system Nokia appps are not notifying at all for updates.
  • Heres the fix, I've had this a couple of times since i got my L920.
    Unpin store from home screen
    Go to internet explorer settings and delete temp files/cache
    Press and hold vol down and power buttons = soft reset
    Once on again change time and date back to correct time.
    Repin store.
    That should sort it, i had to do it a weeks ago. If doesn't work first time, do again and on the soft reset keep holding buttons for about 20-30 secs, phone should vibrate again and follow instruction from sift reset.
    Hope this helps
  • Thanks. I will have a try hope the issue can be resolved.
  • anyone have problems with gleek updates?
  • In US with Lumia 920, and received 12 app updates this morning?? One of them was WP central, along with Facebook, collector, and rowi. Haven't updated them yet don't want WP7 versions