Microsoft confirms Windows Phone 8 launch on October 29 in San Francisco
Summary: It's finally official: The Windows Phone 8 launch is October 29. Phones should be out starting in early November.
From the "you heard it here first" department: Microsoft has finally confirmed what loyal readers of All About Microsoft have known for a month-plus. The company will officially launch Windows Phone 8 on October 29.
The launch venue will be somewhere in San Francsico, according to this invitation which Microsoft mailed to us media types on October 4.
It's important to keep in mind what "launch" means in this case. October 29 is not the day that Windows Phone 8 devices will be in stores. It isn't the date that all carriers will be opening up for pre-orders. (That pre-order date will likely be sooner for most.)
October 29 is the date when Microsoft will hold its "big reveal" for Windows Phone 8 and finally, at long last, disclose the full set of features it has baked into the Windows Phone 8 operating system, codenamed "Apollo." It's also the date, if Microsoft sticks to its revised schedule, when the Windows Phone 8 software development kit (SDK) should be available publicly to all developers. (Yes, it's later than expected, wanted or needed by many.)
Here in the U.S., we already know there will be Nokia Lumia 920 and 820 on AT&T (with the Lumia 920 exclusive on AT&T for some unknown period of time) coming out in November. The HTC 8X and 8S are set to roll in early November, as well, on Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile. We don't have pricing yet for any of these phones.
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Talkback
Good
I probably will go for the 820, as that one has the smallest screen.
I do think the oems have gone out of their way to release some quality hardware, but the screen size is a bit much. Any chance for a Nokia 920 design with a screen similar in size of the Lumia 800 which remains my private phone ? Pretty please Nokia !
Any news on the WinP7.8 feature list?
WP 7.8
Three months after the release of Windows 8, is my guess
If you send out WP 7.8 now, many will take that and put off buying a new phone with Windows 8, as they would have to wait for W8, so go with what you get now.
They'll likely want to give Windows 8 a few months head start.
7.8
It remains
From the feature set, the only thing I am indeed missing is native support for VOIP, for the rest it is of nu use to me or is not support by the device I own anyway.
To be honest, I love the Lumia 800, not only is it a gorgeous phone (which is obviously a matter of taste) but by far it has proven to be the most reliable phone I ever owned. At the moment it has an uptime of over four months (no shutdowns, reboots or battery going flat), the reason for the last downtime was a combined os and firmware upgrade.
I am not the least angry about the no upgrade verdict and have no intention to replace the phone with another one. I will get a wp8 as replacement for my business phone (nokia E72) and might think about replacing the 800 in a year or so, hoping that by that time a phone with similar screen will be released running Wp8, if not I might have to deal with a bigger screen, as Android will never be an option, and the iphone imho lacks in the phone department and is a me too phone.
What makes you think they went down. Nokia says they went up
Frankly, I couldn't care less for 7.8 comming out
That is me of course...
Finally...the wait is almost over
Thats the one thing that neither MS nor it's WP partners have done.
MS insistence on non-upgradeability?
WP7 was not MS's most shining moment
While I was researching Android, I discovered that even the latest and greatest Android version will work on WP7 era hardware. It won't work well (from what I've read) but it might have been a public relations nod to at least give people the option. I'm a bit torn on that because while it at least gives people the choice, it also gives MS haters the opportunity to point to sluggish performance of WP8 on single core phones and suggest that WP8 sucks on everything. Android suffers from that. Android has the reputation for being laggy even though it is only laggy on really low end hardware.
Microsoft had a whole bunch of options when it came down to how to handle WP7 and WP8, none of which were fantastic options. All of this is MS's fault though because they allowed their success in mobile to make them stagnant and lazy. That Apple came out with iPhone instead of MS is 100% MS's fault and every misstep MS has made since then, many of which have forced MS customers to pay the price, have been a result of MS's laziness in the mid 2000s.
All in all, I think MS deserves kudos for picking what was most likely the very best path forward. They released a new UI (they had to) and they've finally released a new OS (they had to, I suspect WinCE was what couldn't support multiple cores). However, just because it was the best path forward doesn't absolve MS of the blame for leaving themselves with a bunch of lousy paths forward.
If I was a betting man, I would bet that WP8 will eventually fail and I say this as someone who is going to buy the Nokia Lumia 920. Let's all hope for the best and prepare for the worst. It will be bad for consumers and bad for the market if WP8 fails because it truly is a remarkable OS, so much better than iOS and Android.
I personally couldn't care less
I haven't seen or touched WP8 yet
All theories aside
Over nearly 2 years I've had multiple updates and this phone has been faultless. When I move to Windows Phone 8, I have plenty of friends who are interested in grabbing my WP7 handset, especially knowing they'll be getting 7.8. The easy integration with Office, SkyDrive and my work email and servers makes Apple and Android seem even more awkward.
I've developed an educational game for WP7 over a period of 3 weeks and the development process was easy, as well as using the best software development tools currently available.
Over the time I've used WP7, I've also used iPhones and Android and going back to that primitive UI is always a pain, to stay nothing of the stuttering lags on the Android phones running their multiple cores.
I don't really care about what MS could have done, the point is they made a better phone and they're continuing on this path.
Time to forget about media consumption toys and move to real tools.
Agreed
Yup
On the other hand, the shock value of WP8 vs. W7P might be more significant. After all, W7P phones are running WinCE, which was originally designed back when PDAs ran at 100MHz or so. That's one reason it's so responsive, but also why it had to be replaced. And the replacement is a spin of the whole desktop Windows, after all. Linux didn't change significantly from Android 2.3 to Android 4.1, and many of the Android improvements are of the nature of breadth rather than depth... it's not adding a great deal of computational complexity. Some, but not a great deal. So it still runs on the older devices.
Re: They didn't insist on it, it's that the hardware can't handle it.
No.wonder the customers are staying away.
Android
Re: Android On a single core is a complete nightmare