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Windows Phone 8 Officially Unveiled
BogenDorpher writes with news that Microsoft has officially introduced Windows Phone 8. The new version of their mobile operating system will bring support for processors with up to 64 cores, as well as resolutions higher than 800x480 — up to 1280x768. It will also include better support for NFC and microSD cards. One important thing to note is that Windows Phone 8 won't be coming to current Windows Phone devices.
You're probably not a designer - these guys are crazy about things being pixel perfect, which can be hard to achieve with vector graphics. Apple does the same thing here.
For Metro, though, it makes less sense due to its emphasis on simple flat shapes and typography over colorful icons. Yes, personally, I also don't see much point in not using vector graphics for a Metro app and having it scale seamlessly. And the UI framework already has flexible layouts and such, so really there's no excuse to not make it all scale nicely.
Interestingly enough, there is no set of predefined resolutions for Win8 Metro. So there isn't much consistency here. I hope that WP would eventually follow the big brother, of course.
The conference was for developers, mostly. They said they weren't gonna unveil the end-user featureset that they have until closer to launch, probably to avoid what happened last time: all of the Mango features they unveiled were promptly implemented by Apple.
Why would you limit the max res like that?
to make us buy windows phone 9 supporting HD in 2013/14... which probably won't work on current windows phone 8 devices.
Sorry M$, everything was good until " Windows Phone 8 won't be coming to current Windows Phone devices". A 2009 iPhone runs 2012 iOS 5.1.1, and I have to tell you it's been pretty nice not having to throw away my phone every time a new OS comes out and being able to download the "latest and greatest" apps because everything new works on my old phone. After all, it's a phone first, not a PC, I don't like the idea of having to throw out my phone with all my contacts and info and all the cases and chargers and everything I've spent supporting it. I don't mind the constant upgrades on a PC, that's the nature of the beast, but I don't want to go through the same mess with my phone. Oh, and my 2009 iPhone will support 2013 iOS 6. Wow, say what you want about Apple, but sometimes they just get it.
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No, they leveraged the "Secure" part of "Secure Digital" cards and had issues with some cards that weren't fully compliant since no one else really implemented the secure half. They need it for DRM, after all, and have probably come up with a workaround for it.
What does "better support for microSD cards" mean? Were they having problems with reliable reads/writes?
Not quite - they were having problems using them in a way that's sensible:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2450831
In short, once you put an SD card into a WP7 phone you can't take it out (or the phone won't boot) and you can't read it on any other devices. Each card model also needed to be "certified" before use.
>>>It worked very well for desktop Windows - Microsoft writes the minimum requirements in order to force hardware manufacturers/OEMs to actually make powerful devices,
And this is what we call "spin". Also known as "false". With every WinOS released (except 7) Microsoft wrote the requirements to make it EASY for manufacturers to qualify with older hardware. Like when they claimed XP could run on 64 meg (but it ran like a snail). Or that Vista could run on 512 meg, but instead made my brother's new P4 PC randomly freeze for 2-3 minutes (while vista thrashed the HD swapfile). Microsoft has always *under* specced their OSes to try and boost sales for older computers that barely run the poorly-coded memory hog.
Vice-versa Apple sells hardware, so they tend to over spec their OS requirements, in order to make older machines obsolete and force an upgrade if you want the new OS (or the latest Safari or latest iTunes). Example: When I tried to upgrade to 10.4 and discovered my 400 MHz Mac was blocked by Apple ("does not meet minimum specs"). I found an online hack to override Apple's block (an illegal act under DMCA) and discovered 10.4 worked just fine on my machine. Apple was just trying to force me and others to buy new machines.
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