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Microsoft unveils Windows Phone 8

Earlier today, Microsoft unveiled its new mobile operating system Windows Phone 8. In their announcement, they introduced some very welcomed new features for Windows Phone 8 like multi-core chipsets and higher resolutions for Windows Phone. Microsoft has now allowed higher resolution screens with WVGA (800x480), WXVGA (1280x768), and 720p resolution supported on Windows Phone 8. The long awaited microSD support feature has also been announced with Windows Phone 8. Microsoft also introduced NFC in the upcoming new Windows Phone 8 phones. With the NFC, Microsoft showed off a new Wallet feature with Windows Phone 8.

Microsoft's new Wallet feature looks like a blend of Google Wallet and Apple's Passbook. This new feature will let you put your Loyalty cards, Membership cards, Credit cards, Debit cards, and it lets you access saved deals (like Google Offers). With all these features that you can put into your Windows Phone, Microsoft may make mobile NFC payments more popular. With all these cards on your phone, it will be much more convenient to pay for items, and it will unclutter your wallet. The Wallet feature also supports NFC 'Tap to Pay'. Microsoft also made the Windows Phone mapping better in Windows Phone 8.

Microsoft made Nokia's mapping technology built in with Windows Phone 8. Nokia's mapping technology offers great features for people with non-Nokia Windows Phone 8 devices to be able to have access to global NAVTEQ Map data, offline map support, and turn-by-turn directions. This will be very great for people, because Nokia Drive was a very good mapping program. Microsoft also revamped the start screen on Windows Phone 8.

In Windows Phone 8, you now have the ability to re-size the live tiles on your screen. You can make the live tiles that you use more and are more important to you bigger, and you can make the live tiles that are not so important to you smaller. The live tiles are re-sizable to three sizes: small, medium, and large. The small size is about the size of an iOS app icon, the medium size is the size of a regular live tile square, and the large is as tall as a regular live tile and as wide as wide as two live tiles. This is a very good way to condense a lot of needed information into a small area on your screen. We think that this new Windows Phone 8 start screen may be the most innovative start screen ever. Sadly, the existing Windows Phone 7.5 devices out there will not be able to be upgraded to Windows Phone 8, so Microsoft made Windows Phone 7.8.

Windows Phone 7.8 is for the legacy Windows Phone 7.5 devices. It has some of the features of Windows Phone 8, but not all of the new features. In Windows Phone 7.8 you do get the ability to re-size the live tiles on your screen. If you happen to own a Nokia Lumia device, you get some more neat features with the update. You get Nokia Counters, which lets you monitor data usage, manage costs, and set data limits. You also get an update to Nokia Music 3.0 which offers Gig enhancements, mix radio, and offline playback. With Windows Phone 7.8 you also get some camera extras. The camera extras are a self-timer, the ability to do a  action shot, panorama, and a smart group shot. These features are to work together to "improve the core camera performance" .

Although Microsoft did a fantastic job with Windows Phone 8, they messed up on some crucial things. One very important thing that Microsoft messed up on is that they completely ignored the people that bought Windows Phones recently. Microsoft just almost completely did not care for the people who helped give Microsoft its support and success. They also did not care for the people in 2010 that had a gut feeling that someday Windows Phone would be a great operating system and bought an early Windows Phone. They also ignored the thousands of people who just bought one of Microsoft's and Nokia's biggest product pushes ever, the Nokia Lumia 900. This is very troubling for people who may buy a new Windows Phone 8 in the Fall, because they might think of why they should buy a Windows Phone when they will just be outdated really fast and not be updated. If Google did this with Android, or if Apple did this with iOS then people would be incredibly angry with them. Want more information and pictures about Microsoft's new mobile operating system? Check out the sources for more information.

Source: Engadget

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