Following mixed reactions to the news that Windows Phone 7.5 users would not get a full upgrade to Windows Phone 8, Microsoft's Ben Rudolph (of 'Smoked by Windows Phone' fame) has posted a video on the Windows Phone blog demonstrating the new start screen that will come to current hardware (using an early build on a Lumia 900). In the post, he links to a page that has been added to windowsphone.com, which is meant to signpost the coming Windows Phone 7.8 update for current users.

From Ben's blog post:

Yesterday I snuck over to the engineering building and “borrowed” a Nokia Lumia 900 running a VERY early build of Windows Phone 7.8, so I could shoot a video of the amazing new Start Screen. It’s pretty awesome; being able to resize tiles to S/M/L gives a whole new dimension – no pun intended – to personalization and customization

For me, the small-sized tile that made me contentedly sigh “finally…” is my Phone Tile. I don’t do that much talking on my phone and use it pretty much entirely for email, text, web, games and everything else, so it was a big relief to miniaturize it and get it out of the way. On the other hand, I’m pretty jacked to make things like email, messaging and music nice and big so I can see more of what’s going on at a glance.

If you've already been following the news, there's nothing new on either of these pages. However, it might be worth keeping an eye on the Windows Phone 7.8 page, because if more Windows Phone 8 features are backported to Windows Phone 7.8, then they might just be listed here. At least, that's what I'd do if I were running the Windows Phone team. However, the expectation at this point is that the Start Screen is the major part of the update, albeit augmented by several platform-upgrade-like apps, from Nokia, for their Lumia devices (e.g. Camera Extras, Counters).

Do you think this is Microsoft doing its best to communicate clearly with its customers, or do you think this is an attempt to put out fires among disgruntled Windows Phone 7.5 users?