Microsoft has introduced a ready-made WP8
Microsoft said that the first smartphones for Windows Phone 8 will be on sale on the shelves of Europe this weekend, and also shared new details about its mobile OS. The world press, having played with the platform, is not enthusiastic about it yet.
While clouds were moving over New York, in sunny San Francisco, Steve Ballmer and his comrades happily presented a mobile “eight” ready for release. There was no repetition of the “passed” in June. They only talked about new features:
Rooms – allows you to send messages, share calendar data and the like with several recipients at once (a kind of analogue of the “contact group” from Skype). You can create as many “rooms” as you like by interests, and also include Windows Phone 7 and iOS users in them (Rooms is not exclusive to WP8).
Kid’s Corner – blocks certain functions in the phone at the user’s request. It is assumed that this will save you from emptying your credit card if the child wants to buy a couple of games from your smartphone, or if you do not want your girlfriend to not be able to “accidentally” read SMS to old friends.
Data Sense – compresses mobile traffic using some clever algorithm, saving it for you.
Live Apps – displays information from social and not only applications on the lock screen (something similar has already been implemented in Android 4.1).
As you can see, there were no big surprises at the event, unless, of course, you count the appearance of Jessica Alba on stage and the announcement of a whole scattering of ports with Android and iOS, like Angry Birds Star Wars, Draw Something and Where’s My Water. By the way, yesterday Gameloft announced the transfer of 12 of its titles to the WP8 platform.
As for the release date of the first devices on WP8, then everything is not so banal. HTC 8X, Samsung Ativ S and Nokia Lumia 920 will be available in Europe this weekend (in Canada, a Finnish smartphone can be bought from today). American users will be able to purchase them no earlier than mid-November. At the same time, most likely, new phones will appear in Russia. At least Nokia promised to release its new line of devices in our steppes in November.
By the way, a WP8 review has already appeared on The Verge. Dieter Bohn and Chris Ziegler rated the platform at 7.9 points, noting that you should buy a smartphone on this OS now only if you want to try something new, and not the best platform on the market.
Their colleagues from the Phone Arena, who managed to test HTC 8X, quite expectedly complain about the lack of high-quality applications developed by third-party developers, despite the support of WP7 software. And when they get to the results, they say that the device looks interesting among other gadgets on WP, but compared to competitors working on other platforms, it “pales”.
In general, as in the WP7 story, it turns out that the platform still has a very weak ecosystem. Time will tell whether Microsoft will be able to rectify this situation and whether users will accept the platform.
