Windows Phone 8: Microsot's new OS for next gen Windows phone

As expected, Microsoft announced its forthcoming mobile operating system at its Developers Summit on Wednesday. Expected to be released this fall, somewhere around September, Microsoft is all geared up to survive the competition from the iOS and Android platform. With a lot many new features outlined at the Summit, here are the few important ones.

Shared Core: "The future of Windows 8 is a 'shared core' between Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8," said Windows Phone 8 product manager Joe Belfiore at the Developers Summit on Wednesday. This means Windows Phone 8 will be deeply linked with PCs and tablets running on Windows 8 platform. Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 will share the same kernel, file system, multimedia apps and graphics support. As a result all apps that will work on Windows Phone will work on tablets and desktop PCs as well. Even sharing content and apps between the three devices will be much smoother. Even developers will be able to create content that will run on both the platforms. 

Multi-Core support: Until now, WP7.5 offered support to a single core. But now Microsoft is looking beyond a single core and has opened arms for multi-core support. The company didn't go much in detail about multi-core support but at the moment they are starting with dual core chipsets. And will have full multi-core support in the future.

New Start Screen: Metro UI on the WP Mango looked nice but had two tiles at a fixed size each. The new OS will allow users to create their own customised homescreens as they will be able to resize the Live Tiles into large, medium and small size and even colour them. As rumoured, Microsoft has not included notification centre to the WP8.

Internet Explorer 10: We saw this coming to WP8 platform. With browser being an important part for any smartphone, Microsoft will now offer a powerful browsing experience with the Internet Explorer 10, with HTML rendering. There will also be security features like anti-phishing.

High Resolution Display: Microsoft has included support for 1280 x 720 and 1280x 768 resolutions. This means, Windows Phone smartphones will have better quality displays, in par with the competition. 

Nokia Maps: The widely acclaimed mapping solution from Nokia will now be the default Maps on WP8 smartphones. Microsoft has dumped its own Bing Maps. This will feature offline mode, turn by turn navigation and a wider coverage.

NFC and Mobile Wallet: With NFC support making into WP8, the users will have access to a new feature called Wallet. The 'mobile wallet hub' on WP8 will allow users to pay for goods and services from the phone itself. Along with storing financial information, the wallet will integrate apps as well. Unlike Google Wallet that is blocked by the carriers, Microsoft says WP8's mobile wallet will be supported by carriers themselves, with a Secure SIM system.

MicroSD card: There is an end to the limited inbuilt memory as the microSD card support has been finally added to WP8. 

Enterprise Ready: Enterprises and IT administrations will be happy about the WP8 enterprise level features as Microsoft promises direct Windows 8 level device management. WP8 will also include BitLocker Drive encryption and ability to side load apps by sidestepping the Marketplace.

Other features include multitasking support to apps and enhanced VoIP support (with Skype remaining a separate app). The company also showed its new speech engine, licensed from Audible. Apart from launching apps using voice commands, developers will be able to integrate Audible's API in their apps to use speech commands. 

Windows Phone 8 smartphones
The first set of Windows Phone with WP8 operating system will be built on Qualcomm chips and will come from big names like Nokia, Samsung, HTC and Huawei. 

WP8 for existing Windows Phone 7.5 handset?
There is a bad news for the existing Windows Phone owners. As triggered by many hardware add-ons, they will not be entitled the WP8 update. However, Microsoft have been considerate enough tobring in Windows Phone 7.8 update that will introduce the new start screen on the existing Mango phones. The official date has not been announced for the WP7.8 release yet.