Hi guys,
I'm just done watching the Windows Phone Summit online, and there's some exciting changes for Windows Phone users.
The biggest change is that Windows Phone 8 is dumping the Windows CE core in favour of the Windows NT Core instead. This means Windows Phone 8 is getting the same Kernel, driver models, and of course the Direct X API. The upshot of this, is that any game programmed for Windows Phone 8 or Windows 8 Metro will be portable between the two platforms with a minimum of coding change. Windows Phone 8 is optimised for multi-core devices, while conserving as much battery life as possible. In addition to this the phone will benefit from Nokia's maps system. The benefit of which means that you will get offline maps as well as online maps, as well as turn by turn instructions provided by Nokia.
This announcement comes on the back of Windows Surface, Microsofts first attempt at re-imagining the tablet since Apples iPad became so popular.
The downside to all this is that existing Windows Phone 7.0 or 7.5 users will not be getting the Windows Phone 8 upgrade. Instead users will be getting a minor update to version 7.8 the idea behind this is to add additional support for new metro apps, but full support for future apps is doubtful as they will be designed around a completely different kernel. This basically makes the recently launched Nokia Luma a dead end phone just months after it's launch.
For those of you with a spare 2 hours, you can watch the whole summit here:
