By Stephen Schenck

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 event last week managed to answer plenty of questions about the operating system, including finally putting to rest the issue of updates for current handsets. While no existing models will transition to WP8, we learned that some of these models would be seeing Windows Phone 7.8, instead. In preparation for those updates to start arriving, Microsoft has put up a short page informing users of what they can expect, and prepared a video demonstrating how the new UI will appear on the Nokia Lumia 900.

If you were hoping beyond hope that WP7.8 might include a few WP8 features beyond the new start screen, you’re going to have to try harder, because that’s still all Microsoft is committing to.

It’s nice to see the new, more configurable start screen running on a 900 (courtesy of Ben Rudolph), but it really just makes us wish all the more that this current generation of hardware would get to see more of WP8′s changes than something so simple. That’s not to say that the new start screen doesn’t look great and won’t be quite useful, but being such a minor part of WP8 makes this all a hard pill to swallow.

We’ll be checking back on this page in the future once Microsoft is closer to actually releasing the first WP7.8 updates.