Microsoft Windows Phone 8 Summit Recap

At Microsoft’s Windows Phone Summit, the company announced the new Windows 8 Phone software. Some of the new features that Windows 8 Phone will support is the use of multiple cores (with a focus on dual core by fall 2012), multiple screens, multi-tasking features, WVGA, WXGA and 720p resolution screen, Internet Explorer 10, NFC, and microSD cards.

At the Windows Phone Summit, Microsoft said that the new Windows 8 Phones will offer an anti-phishing filter (using their SmartScreen technology), faster JavaScript performance and more HTML5 feature support. With HTML5, the Windows Phone will have touch support on the device. Other information about the Windows 8 Phone is that it has SunSpider scores as low as 1,200ms.

Following the announcement of the Internet Explorer 10 on the Windows Phone, Microsoft said that the Windows Phone will have native code support for “killer games”, saying that the Windows 8 and the Windows 8 Phone will share game drivers (so there will be easy porting of Windows Games). Microsoft said that with native code support, more apps and more important apps come faster.

Microsoft also talks about NFC support on the new Windows Phone. Microsoft announces that the Windows 8 Phone will include a wallet feature (and an intention to be the most complete wallet experience). With the new Windows Phone, users  will have access to mobile payments, loyalty cards, saved deals, deals found online and the store is close by to the user, and “tap to pay” using NFC.  With NFC payments, the new windows Phone will offer secure elements for mobile payments on the SIM card. Microsoft announced that Orange telecommunications in France will be the first service to support the new NFC feature. Also the NFC support, Microsoft demoed using the NFC technology on the April 2012 edition of Wired Magazine, allowing the content to be pushed onto his phone. Other things demoed with NFC technology is close P2P connection with a slate, pushing app links via NFC technology, and app to app communications.

Another thing Microsoft announced is that the new Windows Phone will include Nokia’s mapping technology. Some of the new features of the new mapping software include offline map support, map control for developers, turn-by-turn directions and NAVTEQ map data.

Other things on the Windows Phone will have is encryption and secure boot using Microsoft’s Bitlocker technology, DLNA support through an app called PlayTo, bandwidth monitoring and bandwidth limits, IPV6 support, improved Bluetooth, Direct3D, C and C++ support. Microsoft demoed the multi-tasking features on the new Windows Phone (showing a VOIP call and another app) and speech recognition (using Audible to listen and the speech recognition to skip through chapters). Also, another thing is that the Microsoft is changing the start screen on the new Windows Phone; allowing the user to have large, medium and small tiles (allowing the user to have customization).

With the new features coming to the Windows 8 Phone, Microsoft demoed a prototype Nokia phone running the new Windows 8 Phone. Microsoft also said that the Windows 8 SDK will include a sample (Labyrinth clone) game.

Microsoft said that Windows Phone 7 apps will be supported in the new Windows 8 Phone, and that devs can choose  XAML with C# and Visual Basic, Native C++ code and HTML5 to build the app and that the app will be compiled in the cloud.

For business, Microsoft announces that there will be flexible app distribution and that device management for business will be available in the Windows Phone 8.

Lastly, Microsoft said that  Huawei, Nokia, Samsung, and HTC are onboard with new silicon from Qualcomm and that the Windows Phone will be available in 50 languages and more than 180 countries. Updates will be over the air and not though the Zune software. Though Microsoft announced the new Windows 8 Phone software, previous Windows Phone 7 will not get the new operating system; though they will get Windows Phone 7.8 for those legacy devices.

Looks like Microsoft is following the way Mobile Provider do to most Android Phones, drop support.