The iPhone 5 may have to watch out if this Windows Phone 8 leak is to be believed.
Pocket Now is claiming to have seen a video from Windows Phone manager Joe Belfiore that details the changes coming to Windows Phone 8.
Windows Phone 8 hardware may be scalable to a user’s needs and wants. Apollo, the codename for platform, will support multicore processors, multiple screen resolutions, and removable microSD card storage. It’s a move to compete with iPhone and Android devices.
What may be exciting to some users, Windows 8 devices will support near-field communication radio signals for wireless payments. It’s called “The Wallet Experience” and will be carrier-branded and controlled. There will be tap-to-share capabilities allowing content to be shared across desktops, laptops, tablets and phones.
The Windows 8 phone will apparently use a very similar OS to the desktop Windows 8 OS. This will allow developers to reuse code to make porting easy from desktop to phone. The company mentions the kernel, networking stacks, security and multimedia support as “areas of heavy overlap.”
Windows Phone 8 will get rid of integration of the desktop Zune client, instead favoring a new version of ActiveSync for their sync technologies.
The Xbox Companion app, which is already on Windows Phones, will see a new app on Windows 8 desktop that integrates the two devices. Skydrive allows users to sync their data on the cloud so they can have their entire music collection already available on a new phone without having to sync it to a desktop.
Microsoft expects 100,000 apps to be in the Marketplace by the time phone launches. The phone will have native code support, which will allow more powerful apps to be developed for the device as well as easy porting of iOS and Android apps to Windows phone.
Microsoft is also planning to integrate Skype naturally into Windows Phone 8 making Skype calls as natural as non-VoIP calls. Microsoft will provide a basic camera interface that can be upgraded with third-party apps.
Microsoft is innovating in data management with DataSmart. It will attempt to simplify the tracking of data usage. The phone will actively attempt to give Wi-Fi priority and make Bing Maps locate hotspots in a user’s vicinity.
The phone will use a proxy server to feed pages to Internet Explorer 10. This will compress Web pages to reduce the amount of data needed to view a Web site by 30 percent.
For businesses, Windows Phone 8 will add native BitLocker encryption – the same software found on the current Windows desktop OS.
There will also “line-of-business” applications that will allow businesses to deploy “proprietary, tailored software behind their company firewalls.”
What do you think of these supposed Windows Phone 8 changes? Are they enough to compete with the next generation of iPhone and Android devices? Let us know in the comments.
