http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/02/windows-phone-8-detailed/

Seems a Microsoft video leaked out from a manager talking about Windows Phone 8 and it provides quite a number of details on what to expect. Engadget has a nice bullet point list, so I won't repeat it all here. But some of the cool things to me...

* Support for dual core processors.
Yeah, Windows Phone 7 still only supports single core processors. It's not necessarily a bad thing, some could argue a really fast single core is better than a slower dual core.
We have quad core A9 processors out now, such as the Tegra 3. But there are some some next gen dual core A15 processors that will probably eclipse the quad core A9 processors. So Windows Phone 8 being restricted to dual cores probably won't be a bad thing.

* Support for 4 resolutions.
Most (maybe all?) Windows Phone 7 seem to be stuck at 800x480. The HTC Titan 2 is coming out with a 4.7 inch screen, yet is only allowed to use 800x480, which sucks a little to me with such a large screen. I imagine support for larger resolutions is incoming.

* Micro SD support.
I believe some Windows Phone 7 phones have supported this unofficially. With Microsoft hardware requirements I hope this means micro SD will now become a requirement and not optional feature. Kind of a bummer that Google appears to have withdrawn official support of micro SD, hope they reconsider. Glad to see Microsoft embracing it.

* Windows 8 Kernel
Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 will use the same kernel, network stack, security components, and media support. Not sure if it's good or bad, but it sounds good to me.

The list goes on with a number of other cool integration and features.

That seems like an incredibly bizarre decision to me. Not officially supporting one of the most widespread ways of expanding your phone's storage? Glad to see MS going the other direction.

 

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They will support it for a few years and ditch it just like Google.

 

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From what I gleaned, it's "support for multi cores" not dual, since much like the HAL in Windows, it's either single or multi, not tied to just dual. I'm sure there is a theoretical limit still there, but I would find it hard to stomack that they would only release this for dual when these have already been out a while and quads are coming out now too.

 

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It isn't hurting apple. (this is coming from an apple hater)

 

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Unless the SD card is hot swappable and easy to access I won't mind not having it.
Transfer speeds to the SD cards are way too slow unless you take them out of the phone and plug directly into the PC. I don't think carrying a pocket full of SD cards to keep replacing what's in the phone is an attractive idea either.

A large (read 32GB+) on-board storage is much faster and cleaner solution.
The cell phone manufacturers just need to stop being asses and start charging normal prices for the storage, something around $1/GB would be fine. 64GB on-board storage should be the norm with a 128GB option standard.

For usability I want to see USB sticks that can plug into the micro USB connectors (maybe with an adapter to allow the use of all regular USB sticks) of the phones for transferring files the way we do between normal size computers. Having a micro SD card on top of that would be nice, but the card should be viewed just as additional and easily removable storage, not as main storage and/or necessity for the phone.


As for the Win phone 8's 4 resolutions - why do all these big OS devs still code for individual resolutions? Innovate for god sakes - code with vectors so the UI is scalable according to individual device and to any resolution. Code once and done.

 

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I've seen some Android phones where the internal storage was slower than a quality micro SD card. But that's another matter. Haha.

Regarding the "dual core" vs "multi-core" thing. It could be Microsoft is intentionally limiting it to dual cores, because they want to reduce fragmentation and have developers just focus on making their apps optimized for dual core processors. Microsoft seems to be putting specific requirements on hardware to deal with fragmentation.


The support for 4 resolutions may be about being able allowing applications to have different UIs and layouts depending on the resolution, like Android 4.0 just added. If it is running in 800x480, it'll use a phone layout without any extra columns, if it sees 1280x720 it would switch to a more elaborate layout.

Is there no easy way to defragment a phone?

 

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