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.

The once-mighty BlackBerry brand of smartphone from Research In Motion may have lost its way somewhat over the past couple of years, but a couple of browser tests carried out by The Gadget Masters suggests there’s still plenty of life left in the old dog yet. Testing the BlackBerry 10’s browser against Internet Explorer and Safari on Windows Phone 8 and iOS respectively, the BlackBerry come out on top. More details, and a demonstration video, after the break.

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.

Microsoft certainly means business with Windows Phone 8, and it’s easy to see why. The second major re-imagining of Windows Phone of recent years, this time around is arguably Microsoft’s last chance to make its mobile operating system stick. With strong competition coming from Apple and Google, Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 is struggling to make any real impact.

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.

BlackBerry has, for the past seven or eight years, been one of the foremost mobile brands utilized by businesses thanks to its reputation as offering a secure experience, but with Research In Motion – the company behind BlackBerry, struggling to come to terms with the changing face of the mobile industry, many small companies will be looking elsewhere for their primary mode of communication.

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.

Today has been, on the mobile front, one of the most significant occasions in recent times, with both Google and Microsoft grappling for the attentions of the on-looking tech world by releasing some pretty significant products.