Microsoft today introduced a new operating system for Windows Phone. The system will no longer be built on Windows CE, but will contain a brand new kernel. .NET support will also disappear from the system, and Windows Phone Marketplace will compile MSIL assemblies into native code for all devices. However, current owners of Nokia Lumia phones are out of luck – Microsoft will only offer them an update from version 7.5 to version 7.8.
Windows Phone 7.8
Current Windows Phone users will probably not get rid of Windows CE. The system is so inefficient that the background task is barely able to download an XML file, convert it into an object representation, read the necessary data, and save the results using the Entity Framework’s equivalent of the Entity Framework in a database. Without support for background application processes with access to sensors, we will not see any new kind of applications.
Fortunately, no one will know at first glance that you only have Windows Phone 7, because the start screen will look the same as with Windows Phone 8. However, if Windows Phone 8 supports application processes in the background, users with current Nokia Lumia phones will have a difficult life.
Windows Phone 8
Windows Phone 8 is no longer a layer on top of Windows CE, but it is a new operating system with a new core. It supports IPv6, NFC, microSD, secure boot and BitLocker. Internet Explorer 10 will include a SmartScreen Filter and Chakra will interpret ECMAscript 4x faster.
The long, meticulous, and systematic modification of the Windows kernel, which ran as part of the MinWin project from Windows Vista through Windows 7 to Windows 8, consisted of dividing the kernel into multiple layers so that each layer was dependent only on the layer below it. The result is Shared Windows Core – Windows Phone, Surface, Windows PC and Windows Server all have the same operating system core.
For corporate environments, central device management will come in handy. The system has a new Company Hub, which includes applications that employees can install, fresh messages from the department, and a profile from Active Directory.
The system does not support the .NET platform. Instead, the assembly from MSIL is compiled into native code in the Windows Phone Marketplace. Something like this has never been seen before. In. NET development for devices that do not support .NET.
Windows Phone 8 supports games directly in native code. They can literally touch the hardware and take full advantage of its optimization. Games can have a better 3D engine, a more realistic model of physics and collisions of objects, and detailed dynamic transformations.
VoIP over 3G or LTE calls look the same to the user as GSM calls. The entire GSM infrastructure becomes obsolete and only makes sense from the point of view of backward compatibility.
The Speech API allows developers to convert audio waves into a string that is much easier to process. However, support for the Czech language is not in sight.
The system stores personal data for the needs of the NFC chip in the SIM chip, so if you still have a phone that does not have a SIM chip directly integrated into the motherboard but is replaceable, you will not find that after selling the phone, its new owner will pay with your credit card, similar to Android.
System updates can be downloaded over-the-air. Developers will have access to a newer version of the system before users can debug their applications accordingly.
The tiles will have three sizes and, just like in Windows 8, each application will be able to offer all three dimensions. A large dimension is the same as a calendar or pictures. The medium is the same as the size for version 7.5 and 4 small tiles are filled with the middle space.