What to expect at Microsoft's Windows Phone Summit

Microsoft’s Surface tablet announcement came out of nowhere and bowled us all over with an excellent design and a very functional cover for the screen. Continuing their hot streak, we now have their Windows Phone Summit to look forward to tomorrow. All Microsoft revealed in the invite is that it’s a “sneak peek of the future of Windows Phones”. Well, if you’ve been following up with the rumours and speculations, then logic dictates that they will announce the next version of Windows Phone, a.k.a Apollo or WP 8. This will coincide perfectly well with their tablet announcement of yesterday as well as the new Metro apps that will work across platforms, breathing new life into the stagnating Windows Phone marketplace. It’s unlikely that Microsoft will do away with the current marketplace, but simply change it to the Windows Store where WP 8 users can access Metro apps as well as legacy WP7 apps. The big question on everyone’s mind is that will existing phones be eligible for a WP 8 update and if so, how many of them?

Excited?

The Surface was the special new hardware that Microsoft created specifically to showcase Windows 8 and Windows RT, so will they do the same for mobiles as well. Can we expect to see the a ‘Made by Microsoft’ mobile phone? From past leaks, we have a strong feeling that Microsoft will show off Nokia’s new range of Windows Phone handsets. Last month, a bunch of codenames of new Nokia handsets surfaced, out of  which the PureLambda was running v8.0.9842 of Windows Phone OS. Could the ‘Pure’ part in the name hint at a possible PureView styled handset for Microsoft’s OS? Nokia have stated in the past that the PureView’s 41MP sensor won’t be making it to other handsets anytime soon, but that doesn’t exactly sound like a denial either so it could happen.

Windows Phone 7 had a couple of limitations from the hardware point of view – display resolutions of 480 x 800, microSD card support, NFC support, TV out and so on, which may not be a big deal individually really, but all accumulated together did give Windows Phone 7, a few negative marks. Even on the software side, recording was limited to 720p and UI customizations weren’t aplenty. Of course, WP 8 may suffer initially due to lack of a variety of apps, but since this is just a sneak peek, we assume that should be fixed by the time it launches. All will be revealed tomorrow, so stay tuned.