The tie-up of Microsoft and Nokia are banking high on the newest platform of Windows Phone with WP8. With powerful hardware and even more powerful software and tighter integration of various services than any other platforms out there, even we are hoping Microsoft to have a hit this time around.
Microsoft brought out a totally freshened up OS that was way more ahead in intuitiveness and productivity. But that came two years too late when Apple and Google’s Android had already spread over the masses.
While there are many speculations about the platform doing good, going by the raw numbers of the devices sold, it’s nothing to be showed off. Although Microsoft hopes of changing all that with WP8.
WP8 has dynamic tiles approach in answer to icons on Android and iOS. They constantly update data at the home screen itself rather than staying as meek icons. One has the choice of moving and sizing the tiles as per the requirement from a big one to display the starting of incoming mail or message or just a small tile to show notification without being launched altogether.
This whole approach of live tile brings a unique ‘breathing‘ feel to Windows Phone which makes you develop a soft spot for your phone which makes you feel that your phone too is alive and breathing with you.
Features included in Windows Phone 8:
- Hardware has been the core upgrades to the Windows Phone with support for multi-core processors and memory cards.
- Home Screen: The start screen is spread with customizable live tiles which are surely a better way of interacting with a mobile phone than just plain dumb icons.
- Internet Explorer 10 is another game changer for WP8. With a desktop class browser on a mobile device, it is nothing like the stock browser on Android or Safari on iOS. It leaves the competition miles away with the use of hardware accelerated rendering of webpages and at the same time support for flash and HTML5 better than the other two browsers.
- NFC is also incorporated on the Windows Phone but it’s not in the hardware of the device but on the SIM, which provides a flexible and safer way of transactions. This is really a novel way how mobile payments should be used and Microsoft seems to have got the edge in it.
- Wallet works similarly to Apple’s Passbook with the help of NFC module.
- Maps are another strong point of WP8 since the Nokia Map tech has a better turn-by-turn navigation than and almost similar mapping to Google Maps, with better support for offline maps too! Microsoft has another lead here.
- Marketplace: We know that Marketplace has nothing to write home about going by the number of apps (over 1,00,000), but hey, it’s still good! And it’s getting better and bigger as we speak. How many apps you intend to use anyway? Certainly one does not know even more than 1% of the total Android apps available in Google Play store, leave alone using them! We can all now stop complaining about the number of apps and focus on the quality of available apps, as that’s more of a deciding factor, as mentioned previously.
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