My Top 5 Features Leaked in Windows Phone 8 SDK Preview
There are a lot of exciting things coming in Windows Phone 8. This list is the five most interesting and important thing for me.
1. Improved Lock Screen Notifications
3rd Party Devs have the opportunity to have notifications appear directly on the Lock Screen. This essentially gives Windows Phone a notification center without being interruptive. The icon can simply update with a counter to show how many notifications each app has. After looking at how iOS5 handles notifications popping up on the lock screen it forces you to deal with it or have a lot o screen real estate covered up. Also the ability for the user to choose Calendar, Messaging and Phone additional information on the lock screen is very welcomed. Choice is good.
2. Improved Information Backup Options
Now Windows Phone users will have the option of backing up app list & settings, text messages and photos & videos. This goes a long way to knowing you’ll be able to access older messages that you may be in need of at a later date. The ability to backup videos to the cloud is great although most would be wise to utilize this feature while connected to Wi-Fi.
3. Voice Commands For Third Party Apps
If developers take the time to include voice commands specific to their app this will be one of the most valuable differentiating features on the platform this fall. If developers are lazy and/or unimaginative Windows Phone will trail iOS and Android by a large margin. We’ve hopefully all see the INRIX app video and chumping at the bit to experience this in more of our favorite apps.
4. Bing Wi-Fi Search
The ability to locate nearby Wi-Fi spots is huge for me. As someone who likes to work in coffee shops and as many different places I can to keep my creativity flowing finding Hotspots is worth its weight in gold.
5. The improved overall experience of WP8
(video courtesy of The Verge)
So what are you looking forward to? Has the additional clarification on developer capabilities caused you to think of an awesome user feature or app? Share in the comments.
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When are they going to allow us to configure home screen backgrounds?
D-Money I don’t think that is anywhere near the top of their feature list. The amount and arrangement of the tiles take up about 95% of the screen real estate. Any configurable background would be washed out and end up being just something that lacks any impact.
Check out the app “phone 8” by casaro. If our start screen could look like some of those screen shots, the impact would not be lacking at all.
Also, I do wish for a true notification center. If I miss a toast alert, I have no efficient way to even know I had received it.
The other feature that WP8 carries forward from Windows 8 is Sharing capabilities. I like the sharing of content with other apps, eventhough this version doesn’t support 3rd party apps to be the sharing targets, but I hope the future versions of WP8 will allow this. The integration of apps locally provides the continous experience to the users who switch from one app to the other and have the same information readily available without going back to other app.