UPDATED: Windows Phone Summit rolls in with plenty of announcements

The new, more customisable start screen

UPDATE: You can now catch the recording of the summit here.

A lot has been revealed and here’s our attempt at quickly going through all the most interesting tidbits:

Touted as the big announcement was the Shared Windows Core. This basically means shared Windows kernel between Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8. This makes developing and porting apps and games really easy and highlights the connectivity between these sister platforms.

In addition there were eight different platform feature announcements for Windows Phone 8:

1. Windows Phone 8 will support the latest and greatest hardware. This includes multi-core chipsets and removable MicroSD support for storage expansion and easy content transfer. The resolutions were also revealed here: 800×480 (15:9), 1280×768 (15:9) and 720p (16:9).
2. Internet Explorer 10 will be built in. The surfing experience will be identical with the desktop version and the phone version with better HTML5 support and 4x faster Javascript performance.
3. Native game development platform based on DirectX. Games developers can write the same game for Windows 8 and Windows Phone thanks to the common platform. Gaming middleware from game engines to all sorts of libraries are also available. The middleware partners include Havok, Audiokinetic, FMOD and Autodesk.
   
4. Better sharing with NFC. Many different NFC features were demoed extensively, ranging from contact sharing and payments to gameplay enhancing sharing features.

   Through the magic of NFC, tapping a business card on the phone transfers contact info.

5. Partly thanks to the NFC features, Windows Phone 8 is meant to be the most complete wallet experience. This includes credit/debit cards, different membership cards, the ability to access previously saved deals and NFC “Tap to Pay”. Wallet hub will be included in every Windows Phone, even those without the SecureSim needed for payments.
6. Built in Nokia Map technology will give the users better map data and map control for developers.
7. Windows Phone 8 will have business class encryption and security features.
8. Last, but not least, there will be a new start screen. It’s superficially similar to the old one, but more customizable. All the live tiles can be resized and rearranged and new colors are available.

In addition to these main platform feature announcements we also learned some answers to previous pressing questions. While Windows Phone 8 is backwards compatible with 7.5 apps and games, the bad news is that it is not for currently existing devices. Instead, the 7.5 users will be able to update their phones to 7.8. The update will include a few Windows Phone 8 elements, most notably the new start screen.

Windows Phone 8 updates will be delivered over the air so there’s no need to fumble around with cables anymore. All new devices will also have guaranteed official support for at least 18 months.

UPDATED: Windows Phone Summit rolls in with plenty of announcements is a post from: Windows Phone Fans