Microsoft Brings Windows 8 Mobile

Yesterday, Microsoft stressed the Windows element while previewing Windows Phone 8 and focusing on how the next version of the phone's operating system will share the core features of Windows 8. Developers can easily create applications that work both on Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, it said.

At Microsoft's Windows Phone Summit in San Francisco, Vice President of the Windows Phone division Terry Myerson and Joe Belfiore, who heads the design of the software, unveiled the Windows Phone 8 Platform Preview. It includes use of the standard "Windows core," new hardware support, and new digital wallet features.?The presentation revealed a new Start screen with a fresh way of resizing the Live Tiles and was pointedly aimed at developers, not consumers. Belfiore suggested that features that matter more to end-users would be disclosed later, in advance of the operating system shipping this fall.

There was news for those of us who have Windows Phone 7 devices:?they will not be upgradable to the new Windows Phone 8, but may instead get an interim version, known as 7.8, which just adds in the new Start screen.

The biggest change is moving to the same "common core" used in Windows 8 for PCs and tablets, replacing the Windows CE core used in Windows Phone 7.0 and 7.5.?The common core includes the operating system's kernel, networking, file system, and multimedia and graphics support. In introducing this, Belfiore said the Windows kernel is already used by more than 1.3 billion people. It will allow for greater choices in hardware (from low-cost smartphones to higher-end ones), a more consistent user experience across Windows 8 and?Windows Phone, and applications that can be easily ported between the two environments.?For instance, he noted that because of the common driver model, vendors can build hardware drivers once that will work on both Windows 8 and Windows Phone.

Later, as Belfiore did demos, just about everything was shown using both a prototype Windows 8 phone and a Windows 8 tablet (the Samsung Core i5-tablet used at Build last year), trying to reinforce the idea that Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 work together.?Microsoft pushed the notion that moving applications between the platforms (presumably using the Metro UI parts of Windows 8) is very simple, with just a few changes for the differences in screen sizes.

Belfiore's keynote focused on eight major platform changes.?Windows 8 will support the "latest and greatest" hardware, he said.?Windows Phone 7 was limited to single-core processors and a single display resolution of 800-by-480 pixels.?The new version will now support multi-core processors, and Microsoft suggested it and its partners will focus on dual-core processors this fall, but with the potential to move to quad-core processors later.?It will now scale to support 720p (1,280-by-720) and WXGA (1,280-by-768) resolutions, in addition to WVGA (800-by-480 pixels).?Despite this, Microsoft said that existing Windows Phone apps will run well on the new screen resolutions, but can also be updated to use the new resolutions.?Windows 8 will support microSD cards for expansion, which will allow phone makers to create cheaper handsets with less built-in memory, and then let users upgrade.?Supporting multi-core processors, better resolution, and microSD cards are good features, but this is mostly Microsoft playing catch-up.?Both Apple's iOS and Google's Android already support multi-core processors and higher resolutions, and Android phones have long offered microSD expansion. (iPhones, of course, famously do not have such slots.)

Another widely-anticipated feature is Internet Explorer 10, which Belfiore said shared a lot of code with the Windows 8 version, including game rendering engine, features such as SmartScreen anti-phishing technology, and better HTML5 and Javascript performance.?He showed some performance comparisons on the SunSpider Javascript benchmark test versus other phones that looked good, although as usual, I'll wait to judge until we see the final product.

Windows Phone 8 will now include support for "native code" development, including support for native C and C++ code with the same Direct X APIs used by Windows 8.?Microsoft said this will make it easier to port games from PCs and tablets to smartphones, and even to port such applications from iOS and Android.?The demos of a game called Marble Maze looked good.

The platform now supports near-field communications (NFC) natively, both for secure payments (tap-to-pay), and for transferring content between WP8 smartphones and Windows 8 PCs and tablets (tap-to-send).?Again, it's a nice feature, but something a number of Android phones already have.

Microsoft is taking a somewhat unusual approach to a digital wallet by introducing a Wallet hub app and APIs that let third-party developers build applications to process transactions.?What makes this so unusual is its use of "Secure SIM" cards.?Operators seem to like this because it gives them more control over the payment processing than Google Wallet does. For consumers, the advantage is that you could move a Secure SIM between phones.?Orange will be the first to market later this year, but Microsoft said it was also working with ISIS, the consortium of North American carriers on a version that should be out next year.?The demos of this looked good; the Wallet hub organized a variety of things from credit cards to frequent buyer programs to coupons, and allowed in-application purchases from a choice of accounts.?That is different from what I've seen from the other platforms, and should give consumers more options.

As expected, Windows Phone 8 will now integrate Nokia's mapping technology, including the global Navteq map data, off-line map support, map controls for developers, and turn-by-turn directions.?The off-line mapping is the most unusual feature here, and I can see why this would be convenient in places with weak coverage, or to reduce wireless data consumption.

The?remaining of the real developer features were a variety of business features. This is important because Windows Phone has lagged the other major mobile operating systems in this regard, which is surprising for a company that sells so much to businesses.?Windows Phone 8 will offer BitLocker encryption (just as used on Windows itself) with secure boot, the ability for companies to sign and deploy corporate applications, and device management using many of the same tools used for managing PCs.?As before, it will include Office and SharePoint integration.?These could be big wins for Microsoft in the enterprise, moving Windows Phone from the least enterprise-friendly major mobile OS (because it hasn't had encryption) to potentially, the most friendly (because it supports the tools enterprises already use).

The final of the eight big changes shown was the change to the Start screen, including the ability to resize the Live Tiles. (You can also fit more tiles on the Start screen because it appears the vertical bar on the right side has been removed.) A nice feature, but not a huge change.

Later, Kevin Gallo, who runs the Developer Platform for Windows Phone 8, showed more of?the native code solutions, including how the platform will now support shared C++ and APIs, Direct3D, the Havok game engine, and the SQLite.?He said Visual Studio 7.5 will be the primary development environment, with the Windows Phone 8 SDK available later this summer.?Other things he mentioned included multitasking improvements, such as keeping Skype or other Voice-over-IP applications or location-based apps such as turn-by-turn directions running in the background as other things happened.?Gallo also showed off improvements in the speech platform, with new APIs that let developers such as Audible allow for both app launching and command-and-control via speech in?its applications.?This seems a bit more than the competing platforms offer, though even on stage, speech recognition was less than perfect.

Myerson came back to talk about Windows Phone 8 devices, saying that Nokia, Huawei, Samsung, and HTC will all have new smartphones coming out using Qualcomm chips.?He acknowledged that getting updates to users has been difficult, but said Windows 8 will now be designed so that all updates will be over-the-air to make this easier.?He added that Windows Phone 8 will not run on existing Windows 7 smartphones, but that users will get an update to Windows Phone 7.8, which seems to mean mainly the changes to the Start menu.?The company now has more than 100,000 apps in the marketplace, and Zynga has agreed to port Words With Friends and Draw Something to Windows Phone later this year.

Overall, there were a lot of changes but many of these seem like just the obvious things that Windows Phone needed to have to compete with iOS and Android, such as support for newer processors and higher-resolution screens.?The biggest difference between Windows Phone and its competitors remains the Live Tiles feature of the Start screen. The big news here, though, is that Microsoft seems finally able to push the connection between Windows and Windows Phone in a much deeper way in hopes that will attract enterprise customers and developers.?Still, we didn't see any really big end-user features. The changes in the Start screen and the Wallet additions are nice, but not huge.?I'll be interested in seeing what Microsoft has on the consumer front before Windows Phone 8 ships this fall.

Source: http://forwardthinking.pcmag.com/operating-systems/299394-microsoft-brings-windows-8-mobile

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