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Unannounced Windows Phone 8 Features Demoed on Video

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Microsoft gave use some information about Windows Phone 8 when it announced the OS, but there’s still some features the company hasn’t talked about yet.

The Verge spotted a few of these new features in a leaked Windows Phone 8 SDK and made a video to show off a few of them. A lot of the new features are small features in Settings including new colors for Live Tiles, and the ability to choose what apps can put notifications on the lock screen.

The Settings app also includes the new Data Sense utility that tracks the amount of cellular data the phone uses. It’s just like the Android version, but has some different features. Windows Phone 8 users can set the time period they want Data Sense to track, and can easily make wet it to track data usage based on the billing cycle. After the inputs their settings they can put a Data Sense Live Tile on the Start screen for easy access and at-a-glance tracking.

The camera app in Windows Phone 8 also has an upgrade, with the option to add “lenses” to the app. In the simulator the user only has the option to use Bing Vision, but there is a button to add more lenses below that. We assume this is Microsoft’s way to let manufacturers enhance the camera app while still maintaining control over the core functionality. It sounds very similar to Nokia’s Camera Extras features.

Microsoft’s leaked simulator also include the new Xbox Music service, which looks a lot like the Zune music service. It’s still built into the music app, and doesn’t appear to have any subscription options listed yet. We should hear more about it soon.

We also expect Microsoft to detail some of these smaller features in the months leading up to Windows Phone 8. The new OS will likely release in November of this year, just a month after Windows 8 and likely a month or two after the iPhone 5.

2 Comments

2 Comments

  1. Rob

    07/29/2012 at 4:08 pm

    I like Windows 8. I have a Razr Maxx with ICS but I’m really tempted to switch. I loved Windows Mobile in 2006, lol, but it didn’t change much after that. Tindows Phone 8 has a slight flavor with some of the functions, but the phone is obivously miles ahead of the WM.

  2. Thick_propheT

    08/02/2012 at 4:48 pm

    Not impressed. This is what WP7 should have been when it came out.

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