Windows Phone 8 Finally Launches with Wide Support

On Monday in San Francisco, Microsoft has the launch event for Windows Phone 8, the latest version of the company's 2-year-old smartphone platform. It's Microsoft's newest attempt to regain a foothold in the smartphone market. This new version Windows Phone software comes with broad support from smartphone makers, cellphone carriers and app developers as the software company tries to position new Windows gadgets as strong alternatives to Apple and Android devices.

Windows Phone 8 is the successor to Windows Phone 7, which launched two years ago but has had little traction in the market. Windows Phone 7 wasn't much of a competitor to iOS and Android in large part because it ran on uninspiring hardware, but Windows Phone 8 will help fix that by supporting current Qualcomm processors, along with high-resolution screens and the latest wireless specs.

                    

Back in San Francisco on Monday, Microsoft transformed an area of a civic-center auditorium into a temporary swanky, chill lounge, complete with mood lighting and lit wall panels echoing Windows Phone’s live tile colors. Microsoft executives touted the fun of the new phone, emphasizing how users can personalize it to what’s important to them.

                     

“People all over the world are about to fall in love with Windows Phones,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said at the Windows Phone 8 launch event in San Francisco on Monday.

Windows Phone 8 (WP8) is elegant, personable, and different. It absolutely shines for those who use their smartphones for a lot of calling, texting, and Facebooking, and especially people who connect to Microsoft anything—whether that's Outlook, Hotmail, Exchange, Skydrive, Office 365, or Xbox. If iOS bores you and Android intimidates you, Windows Phone will likely dazzle you.

                      

One light spot of the software les in the Kids Corner, which lets you lock down parts of the phone when you hand the device over to a young one dying to play "Angry Birds" or "Fruit Ninja." You can determine what apps you'd like your child to have access to and configure it so they can't get into your email or Twitter account.

In addition, Microsoft said it will also catch up in offering third-party apps. There are 120,000 applications available for Windows Phone, but some apps that are popular on other systems are notably missing from Windows Phone because it can be hard to get developers interested in writing programs for a small number of smartphones. Belfiore also announced the Pandora app will come to Windows Phone Store 8 in 2013 and that it will include a year of free music with no ads.

                      

The new software will run on more powerful phones with flagship models coming from Nokia, Samsung and HTC. Together, they’ll launch eight Windows Phone 8 smartphones before the year is out, starting this weekend overseas and later in November in the U.S. Samsung officials believe that Windows Phone 8 devices like the HTC 8X and the Nokia Lumia 920 will do a better job facing off against the iPhone 5 and the Samsung Galaxy S III in the new round competition.

Nokia Offers Xpress-on Covers for the New Released WP8 Phone-Lumia 820

At the Nokia & Microsoft Press Conference held in New York on September 5, Nokia officially launched midrange Windows Phone 8 model-Lumia 820. Its hardware configuration is slightly inferior to Lumia 920, but has good cost performance. Nokia Lumia 820 provides a variety of colorful and fashionable styles for option, and the cell phone’ cover is replaceable. It uses the unibody design, and the screen is 4.3-inch display with ClearBlack OLED material allowing identical outdoor readability to that of the Lumia 920's screen, the resolution is 480 × 800 pixels, and supports Nokia Wyatt screen display technology, which optimizes the display effect in the sun.

                                                 

In terms of other features, Nokia Lumia 820 is internally built with an 8 megapixel Carl Zeiss lens, supporting 1080P HD video recording. And it is powered by a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor and features 1GB RAM +8 GB storage spaces, which lead us to believe that performance won't be an issue with the smartphone. The device offers Wireless Charging, NFC Enabled, 3G and WI-Fi Connectivity, Bluetooth, MicroUSB with 1650 mAh Battery along with GPS, A-GPS and GLONASS.

                                                  

Nokia Lumia 820’s optional accessories are very characteristic. This smartphone can be equipped with rechargeable cover and wireless charging pillows. And Nokia has began to popularize the public wireless charging points in the United States, I believe in the near future, Nokia mobile phone users are expected to go out without chargers. In addition, the newly launched Nokia Lumia 820 will be available with red, yellow, grey, cyan, purple, white and black for users to choose from.

Nokia Vice President Marco: We Did not Bet on Microsoft WP8

Before the starting of the year’s most important conference in New York, it rained cats and dogs, but the heavy rain still did not withstand the media reporters all over the world. On Sept. 5 Nokia officially released two PureView technology supported Windows Phone 8 handsets. Prior to this conference, Reuters said Nokia’s fate would be decided by these two new phones. We can also see that Nokia is trying to resurrecting the champ with PureView technology from the whole conference. Marco Argenti, senior vice president of Nokia, he told digital reporter that Nokia did not completely bet on Windows Phone 8, and five business was still in continuous development .

                                                          

Windows Phone 8 is expected to go into general release with the Windows 8 operating system this fall, WP8 is designed to run on next-generation phones that have multi-core processors, new graphics engines, higher screen resolutions, microSD storage, and near field communication radios (for mobile wallet functions).

To outsiders, Nokia has been completely betting on windows phone platform, Symbian platform transfer, Qt abandon, Vertu sale. But it seems that the truth is not like what we can see, at least here in the eyes of Nokia’s senior vice president Marco Nokia, Nokia also has other businesses. Macro presents that Lumia, Asha, Nokia Location Map, Nokia Siemens and handset fundamental patents are five pillars of Nokia's smartphones markets.

                                                          

For Nokia, it indeed does not entirely bet on Microsoft's Windows Phone system. But whether the future will focus on the Windows Phone platform, Macro does not give an exact response for the moment.

Marco is in charge of the application development part of Nokia so as to have a deep understanding about the entire ecological environment of Nokia Software. Marco told reporters that due to the deep collaboration of Nokia and Microsoft, Nokia developers would have more benefits. For example, they would have privilege to get access to the newest SDK. Marco pointed to Lumia 920 which was in his hand and said “we have joined Nokia recommendation features in stores, thus more applications will be uploaded to Nokia pages.”

                                                    

According to the recent statistics, the number of software in Windows Phone platform has more than 10 million, and is still in fast growth. For Nokia, though Windows Phone is not completely betting, it must not cause any lost. After conference Nokia shares have crashed 10%, showing that the confidence in the market for this product is not that enough. Next month will be a new test for Nokia, the release speed and prices will also affect the future trend of Nokia, and the talkative Marco will also have to go all out.

When asking Marco what is the biggest challenge in Nokia? Marco said it was innovation. Yes, for users, the diversified competition is a sign of a thriving industry, and innovation is the fundamental driving force of all companies that always occupy the leading position in the world.