Windows Phone 8 release date, news and rumours
According to a roadmap leaked late last year, Windows Phone 8 is set to be unveiled any day now with a release date of later in the year.
Windows Phone 7.5 Mango may have only have appeared in October, with the smaller Windows Phone Tango also now unveiled for cheaper handsets, allowing less RAM and thereby reducing the cost of components.
And now the rumour mill is starting to churn more rapidly as Windows Phone 8 is set to be announced - so here's everything we know about Windows Phone Apollo so far:
Windows Phone 8 release date
Microsoft is expected to reveal the Windows Phone 8 operating system at its Windows Phone Summit in San Francisco, which takes place on June 20.
And according to a roadmap leaked late last year, Windows Phone Apollo looks set to be available to download later this year, at some point in Q4.
It's likely we'll see the update around November, given this was the month in 2010 that we saw Windows Phone handsets first - although we got the Mango update in September, so expect a tense autumn for Microsoft's mobile fans.
Windows Phone 8 camera
It seems the Windows Phone 8 camera app is about to get a simple and clean look, with little in the way of settings on display – however a trio of dots in the top right corner could well open up a menu.
Nokia's PureView technology is also coming to the platform - albeit only on the Finnish firm's handsets, obviously - strongly hinting that the whole camera ecosystem is going to be a much more tinkerable-with thing.
Windows Phone 8 maps
Bing Maps looks like it's getting the old heave-ho, with Nokia's Maps system coming in to replace it.
The service will be in place across all Windows Phone Apollo handsets, and will offer 3D street navigation through hardware acceleration as it abandons Microsoft's beloved Bing namesake.
Then again, Nokia's Navteq map service has long been one of the key providers for Bing Maps. Just last month Nokia's Where platform began providing traffic data for Bing Maps too, so the partnership isn't exactly difficult to believe.
Windows Phone 8 Skype
There are two things delaying Skype for Windows Phone. One is simply writing the code; Skype needs to be rewritten both for Windows 8 using the WinRT framework so it works in Metro-style applications and Windows Phone 8.
But with Windows Phone 8 getting more Windows 8 technologies, that means less work to redo. The other is architecting Skype so it's not a battery hog.
We're hearing conflicting reports on whether Skype will be fully integrated on Apollo, a separate app or – perhaps more likely – a component that carriers can choose to include or leave out.
The leaked video also promises another VoIP standard called RCSe which handset makers and carriers started talking up last year as something that would be included on many different handsets out of the box. Both options will be integrated into apps like the address book so you can directly, instead of going through a separate app.
UPDATE: Screenshots have been leaked revealing Skype appearing in a contact's profile and showing the ability to answer a Skype call with or without video. The images were sent to Nokia Innovation from an anonymous source claiming to have a handset running Windows Phone 8.
Windows Phone 8 handsets
A number of manufacturers are getting ready for the new Apollo udpate, not least Nokia - it's betting big on the new platform.
Samsung has also thrown its hat into the ring - but LG looks like it's pulling out of the Windows Phone race, following its statement that: "the total unit of Windows Phone sold in the global market is not a meaningful figure."
Nokia doesn't care though - it's still happy that manufacturing heavyweights like Samsung and HTC are on board, showing there's still life in the platform yet.
A previously-leaked video also talked about four new form factors; we think we've found those on a slide deck Albert Shum showed TechRadar last year, with different screen resolutions and aspect ratios, including a 5-7" tablet, a phone with a forward-facing keyboard for the business segment mentioned in the roadmap and a 1.2" square Windows Phone watch, like an iPod nano or MOTOACTV.
New handsets will have a microSD slot, which means Microsoft has either found a source of fast memory cards or changed the way it uses extra storage.
Windows Phone has always supported microSD but currently it formats the card and uses it as part of the pool of storage that the operating system and apps run on as well as storing multimedia files there.
If the card isn't as fast as the internal memory – and many aren't, especially as counterfeiting is rife– then the whole phone would slow down.
With the change in the underlying code, Windows Phone 8 might be using memory cards just for files that don't need to load as fast as app code does.
Windows Phone 8 interface
There have been a lot of rumours about what the new Windows Phone 8 interface - but the most interesting one is that Kinect will be one of the methods of interacting with the handset.
It's an odd one - as Microsoft is already apparently stumped as to how to fit the whole sensor into a phone - but is the kind of thing you hope to see in the race to make Windows Phone handsets stand out against the likes of iOS 6.
And we're PRAYING that the 'drag down to see if you're connected/how much battery is left' method of navigation is gone in the Apollo update - it's by far the most frustrating thing about the OS at the moment.
Windows Phone 8 upgrades
There's no official word, but Microsoft has always said handsets would get at least two major upgrades and if Mango apps can run, it seems probable that at least Mango handsets would get an update.
But now there seems to be confusion over whether the upcoming Windows Phone 8 operating system will be compatible with existing Windows Phone 7 hardware or not.
A Verge source close to Microsoft has suggested that phones running the Mango (Windows Phone 7.5) flavour of the Windows Phone software will not receive an upgrade to the next iteration.
However Microsoft Evangelist Nuno Silva has been spotted in a video on a Portuguese forum stating that Windows Phone 7 handsets will get the upgrade to Windows Phone Apollo, which is due to launch later this year - although he has since retracted that statement.
Windows Phone 8 apps
This isn't news; Microsoft announced it at the /build/ conference last September, evangelist Brandon Watson confirmed it on Twitter and there's even a job advert on the Microsoft site for someone who can set up "automated testing of marketplace apps written for Mango but running on Apollo".
When the news broke that Windows Phone 8 might not be backwards compatible, it was still good news for developers: app compatibility is going to be baked into Windows Apollo, but there might be some fragmentation thanks to the low-RAM specifications on some handsets meaning cheap phones won't have the grunt to run some apps.
Windows Phone 8 NFC
Windows Phone 8 phones will also have NFC chips, so you can use them to tap on readers to pay with a credit card, go through a ticket barrier or pair with an external device (your laptop for wireless file sync or a Bluetooth keyboard perhaps?).
Carriers will be able to brand the payment wallet, both on network-locked phones and when you transfer a SIM into an unlocked phone (the same way that putting an Orange SIM into an unlocked phone gives you access to the Orange Collection in the marketplace).
This could be one reason that Microsoft has been drawing so much attention to having what it claims are better privacy policies than Google lately. It also means the secure boot and BitLocker data encryption Windows Phone 8 gets from Windows 8 will be important for consumers as well as making it more popular with businesses.
Windows Phone 8 kernel
The biggest news revealed regarding Windows Phone 8 is how many components of the Windows 8 architecture it will include: networking, security, multimedia support – and at least part of the kernel.
Although Microsoft dismissed the details in the video as just "a wishlist" after the leak, a Microsoft job advert from last year suggests the situation may be more advanced, talking about system software that will run "in user-mode and kernel-mode".
That's not another way of saying native code and managed code (although there are changes there); user mode and kernel mode are two security levels in the Windows NT kernel in desktop versions of Windows, used to give programs different levels of access to the system. If they're coming to Windows Phone 8, it's a strong argument for the kernel now being based on Windows.
Windows Phone 8 for developers
There is more native code access in Apollo too. Developers can already write native code on Windows Phone today – but only if they're working for an OEM or directly with Microsoft.
Opening that up to more developers would let them create more powerful apps and would explain references in the video to making it easier to take apps designed for Windows 8 and bring them to the phone, especially as apps will now be able to pass information between each other using similar mechanisms to the 'contracts' for searching and sharing in Windows 8.
Perhaps that will finally allow you to take screenshots of your phone too…
Developers and phone makers – especially Nokia – will get much more control when they write software to work with the camera; these 'lenses' will let them add features or change the interface of what Windows Phone chief Joe Belfiore called the "basic" built-in camera app in the leaked video..
Windows Phone 8 SkyDrive
Windows Phone 8 will share data with PCs more seamlessly, via SkyDrive; accessing music from your PC and using a new sync tool instead of the Zune PC software. Another Windows Phone job advert talks about a "next generation architecture for backup and migration of settings and data on the phone".
That would be useful for switching to a new handset but it might also let you share bookmarks with a Windows 8 device using the same Windows Live account.
Apollo also gets a mobile version of the IE10 browser which will work with Microsoft proxy services that compress Web pages by up to 30% so they load faster and use less of your monthly data contract.
If you're on Wi-Fi, the phone will use that instead of 3G (Local Scout will include details of Wi-Fi hotspots nearby) and a DataSmart app, much like the mobile broadband features in Windows 8, will show you data usage stats on a live tile and let you manage how you use your data allowance.
Windows Phone 8 goes beyond Qualcomm Snapdragon
Apollo will also finally support ARM systems that don't come from Qualcomm (all Windows Phones so far have been Qualcomm-based). ARM CPUs aren't like Intel chips; they don't come pre-built with chipsets to integrate them onto a motherboard and drivers for all the pieces.
ARM integrators like Qualcomm and Marvell and ST-Ericsson licence the instructions for the ARM CPU and do the work of integrating a GPU, chipsets, firmware and drivers for everything down to the buttons on the handset (that's called a board support package), which means every ARM platform is different.
Nokia has announced that it's going to use ST-Ericsson's dual-core NovaThor platform instead of the Qualcomm Snapdragon, and Qualcomm with have dual-core versions of Snapdragons ready for manufacturers like Samsung and HTC.
Windows Phone 8 on small screens
At the other end of the market, one of the new form factors looks to have a much smaller screen. That's the kind of handset we expect to take advantage of Microsoft relaxing the hardware specification by making the front and rear camera, compass and gyroscope all optional, giving Windows Phone a shot displacing the Android phones that NPD In-Stat says will be 80% of the cheap smartphone market by 2015.