Windows Phone 8 Will Pack More Features than Unveiled

Windows Phone 8, the next-generation mobile operating system from Microsoft, was made official only a few weeks ago, yet the hype around it is already growing.

Apparently, there’s a good reason for that, as Microsoft didn’t reveal all the features and capabilities of the platform during the unveiling event in San Francisco the other week. In fact, the company seems to have showed only a minor set of new features that will make it inside the Windows Phone 8 platform when it becomes official, Greg Sullivan, senior product manager for the OS, says. In a recent interview with Pocket-lint, he confirmed that most of what was unveiled at said event was meant for developers and IT pros, and not for end-users. “We showed a lot at the Sneak Peek event, in San Francisco, if you were a developer or an IT pro. Of the end-user consumer visible features and capabilities, we showed a minority of features at the event,” he stated. While he wouldn’t provide info on what was not unveiled, he did say that Windows Phone 8 was bound to set the ground for Microsoft’s future development in the mobile area without the need of major changes as before.

This applies both to developers, who will find it easier to come up with applications for the platform, and to consumers, who will receive a much better experience that before. "This release has a significant amount of new functionality for developers and IT pros in particular, and because of the planning cycles involved in getting them the information they need to take advantage of the release when it hits," Sullivan said. "We (Microsoft) provide a general-purpose platform that provides a choice of manufacturers and a choice of folks building on it, and that really makes it difficult for us to launch hours after we announce it."

Windows Phone 8 was announced to arrive on shelves with support for better hardware, including multi-core processors, microSD cards, and the like, as well as with a series of visual changes and new features throughout the OS. Windows Phone 8 also comes with a shared core with Windows 8, which allows for more capabilities to be included into the mix, while also simplifying the work of devs and OEMs, as Sullivan said. Microsoft hasn’t provided a specific release date for the first devices powered by Windows Phone 8, but rumor has it that it should be released sometime in October.

Windows Phone 8
Image credits to Microsoft

Posted in: Mobile Phone, Preview, Software