While the Android platform continues to see increasing sales and market share one of the biggest criticisms of it is the fragmentation, and this isn’t helped by the fact that each carrier normally carries its own version of a device and can be slow pushing out updates to handsets, but today we have news that Windows Phone 8 will offer a carrier opt out option to users.

Microsoft officially announced its next mobile operating system Apollo yesterday, and with it revealed a number of new features it will bring, but as ars technica are reporting in an article the release of the Windows Phone 7 platform didn’t quite live up to early expectations.

Certain carriers could often block the release of both new feature updates and bug fixes, which often left users with out of date software, but with Windows 8 Microsoft is planning to offer a solution to this. The various carriers will still be heavily involved in the update process of Windows 8, and by default the handsets will only alert users about the availability of software updates once the respective carriers have given them the ok to be released.

Although with Windows 8 users will have the option of opting out of the various carrier restrictions, but it will come with some kind of disclaimer telling the user it will void their warranty for the handset, and will also then likely to cease to be up for tech support provided by the carrier. They will be able to manually install the software updates as soon as they become available though.

Currently the exact details of how Microsoft intends this feature to work aren’t clear, and there is always the possibility that the carriers will attempt to block this option, but there is a good chance it will provide a solution to the current update issues. Users will then have the choice of carrier support or getting the latest software on time.

Would you like the option of opting out of carrier support without having to purchase an unlocked handset?