This is how Windows Phone boss Joe Belfiore answers critics who say Microsoft is too slow updating WP8...

Belfiore decided to comment in a thread on the official Windows Phone User Voice forum after sustained and growing criticism that Microsoft is dragging its feet by failing to release significant updates fast enough to Windows Phone 8.

WP8 was released last year. In the past week, a minor update GDR2, started rolling out. It doesn't bring much new.

We're promised GDR3 later this year. Again, we don't expect that to bring any major new features.

In fact, it's not until next year that Windows Phone 8.1 will be released. Even then, we don't know what it will do. We can just hope that it brings WP8 onto a level playing field with iOS and Android and includes basic features - missing at the moment - like a notification centre and multi-tasking to name just two.

But that's not until next year.

Surely Microsoft is big enough and grown up enough to get WP8 updates out faster.