Pocketnow.com has learned new details about the new Windows Phone 8 that include a number of features and themes that were accidentally revealed by senior vice president and Windows Phone manager Joe Belfiore in a video intended only for partners at Nokia. The Windows Phone 8 codenamed “Apollo”, is the next version of Microsoft’s mobile operating system that is scheduled for launch after the upcoming Tango update.
According to Belfiore, the overall theme of the Windows Phone 8 hardware ecosystem will be scale and choice in order to address one of the platform’s shortcomings in competing with Android and iPhone based devices’ specifications. More specifically, Windows Phone 8 will have support for multi-core processors and microSD card support will also be added.
NFC (Near Field Communication) will also be supported, with emphasis placed on the phone’s push into contactless payments. The “wallet experience,” as he calls it, will have the capability to be carrier-branded and controlled, either by a secure element on the SIM card or utilizing hardware. In addition, NFC will allow desktops, laptops, tablets, and phones to share content.
Rather than just share a UI with the next generation desktop and tablet OS, Windows Phone 8 will use many of the same components as Windows 8, allowing developers to re-use most of the code when porting an app from a desktop to the phone. Belfiore specifically mentions that areas of heavy overlap include the kernel, networking stacks, security and multimedia support.
The Xbox Companion app, currently found on Windows Phones, will see a partner client on Windows 8 with Skydrive support promising seamless sharing of data between devices.
At the launch of the new Windows Phone, rumoured to take place sometime in the 4th quarter of this year, Microsoft expects to offer 100 000 apps in the Marketplace. There is also likely to be support for app-to-app communication . A revamped Skype client that hooks directly into the OS, enables Skype calls to behave almost identically to regular calls with a camera app that Microsoft will allow OEM’s to customize.
The biggest news on the app front is likely the addition of native code support, which will enable more powerful applications as well as ease the porting of code from programs initially developed for iOS or Android
In terms of data management a highlighted feature by Belfiore is called DataSmart, a new data management system that will keep track of your downloaded data usage. This is achieved by the phone automatically connecting to Wi-Fi when in range.
Overall, it seems that the above changes are designed either to make the Windows Phone 8 run parallel with other platforms or make it more similar to Windows 8 for desktop. Either way, Microsoft is catching up.
