The gaming industry is one of the largest ones out there, and no, I am not talking about the casino one. The one I’m referring to are the computer games that you and I have grown up with and developed a liking for, so strong that it, at times, borders on obsession. Computer games have redefined what powerful hardware and graphics could be used for and can achieve, and rightly so, because the level of detail that today’s popular titles deliver is as close to motion picture as you might imagine. Couple that with immersive storylines and realistic gameplay, and you may find yourself hooked to the screen for hours upon hours.
Windows Phone is Microsoft’s fledgling response to the overshadowing forces of iOS and Android in the smartphone industry, and having partnered up with Nokia to bring a very slick user experience on WP7.x, the two companies are a collaborative force once more, and at the forefront of the big Windows Phone 8 push.
If you've only been following the movements of the smartphone industry during the last couple of years, you may not have heard of HTC's HD2, but the old relic of a device - which first launched running another antiquated product in Windows Mobile 6.5 - has been modded to run the brand-new Windows Phone 8 ecosystem. That's right, while Microsoft has given Windows Phone 7.x users the sad news that their beloved device won't be upgradeable, the three year old handset designed by the Taiwanese maker has been pictured running Windows Phone 8.
If you are a smartphone fan who prefers to step away from the likes of iOS and Android then this last week will have been an extremely exciting time with Windows Phone 8 hitting the market on some pretty powerful devices, and immediately starting to gain some traction in the smartphone industry. While it's going to take Microsoft a long time in current mobile market to compete on numbers with iOS and Android, the initial reaction to WP8 are generally positive. The Redmond company themselves are now trying to add to the Windows Phone 8 experience with the official preview release of their Skype app for the platform.
Windows Phone 7.x was never considered to be a slow operating system. In fact, considering it only supported single-core SoCs, it was very smooth indeed, but one nagging problem was always the speed of app launching. That issue is never more evident than when compared with the much newer Windows Phone 8, and a video test complied by Winsource shows just how much of an improvement Microsoft has made to its smartphone OS.
Despite having seen a deluge of new smartphones arrive to market in the past couple of months alone, we're always on the lookout for a new gadget to drool over, and if you thought the Galaxy Note II - with its 5.5-inch display - offered an incredible amount of real-estate to play around with, wait until you get a load of what Chinese company ZTE is cooking up.
In an effort to convince existing smartphone owners to switch to Windows Phone 8, Microsoft has released an update to Windows Phone sync tool for OS X. Check it out after the jump.
The software development kit for Windows Phone 8 has been a fairly closely-guarded secret up until this point, but in an announcement at BUILD 2012, Steve Ballmer has confirmed it is now ready to download.
