
Microsoft first talked about Windows Phone
8 back in June at the Windows Phone Summit, where it detailed the 8
major new features coming to the next version of the mobile
operating system. Samsung, Nokia and HTC have each unveiled their
preliminary lineup of WP8 devices during the past couple of
months.
Yesterday Microsoft officially launched Windows Phone 8
worldwide at an event in San Francisco and also showed off some
previously unannounced features (although information about some of
them had leaked a while ago). Aside from those revealed at the WP
Summit, these are the biggest new features coming to WP8:

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Data Sense
This amazing new feature gives you great control over your data
plan. To start with, when you browse the Web, the Data Sense
technology automatically compresses all images on the cloud before
downloading them to your phone, letting you browse up to 45% more
Web pages on the same data plan. It helps you find Wi-Fi hotspots
when you're on-the-go and intelligently defers data-intensive tasks
to when Wi-Fi is available. Data Sense also shows your data usage
on a per-app basis and even notifies you when you get close to the
plan limit.
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Rooms
Rooms let you create groups of contacts within the People Hub.
You can then send private messages and share notes, calendars,
pictures etc. privately with the members of the Room. A
Family Room will be present by default on all phones. Some
parts of the Rooms feature, such as sharing calendars, will also be
available to iPhone users who are part of a Room.
-
Kid's Corner
Kid's Corner is intended to keep kids from using parts of the
phone that their parents don't want them to use. It allows parents
to whitelist the apps, games, videos and music their children can
have access to. This means problems like kids sending accidental
texts or making unasked for purchases should be a thing of the
past. Kid's Corner is activated simply by swiping left on the Lock
Screen, and also has a Start Screen of its own. Model and actress
Jessica Alba came on stage to talk about how she uses Kid's
Corner.

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New apps
Microsoft said that the count of apps in the Windows Phone Store
has crossed the 120,000 mark and that 46 of the top 50 apps on
other smartphone platforms will become available on Windows Phone
shortly. One of those apps, arriving early 2013, is the popular
Internet radio service Pandora. Microsoft will
sponsor one full year of music free of cost and free of ads. The
new and improved Skype app will be "always on", so
you can receive Skype calls at any time, and making and taking
Skype calls will work exactly like a regular phone call.
-
Live Apps
Basically, any app that can have its own Live Tile on the Start
Screen is now called a Live App. But here's what's new: In Windows
Phone 8, a Live App can also deliver real-time information straight
to the Lock Screen. For example, you can have Bing
automatically update your Lock Screen wallpaper to the day's Bing
home page image.
CEO Steve Ballmer later shared details about availability and
pricing of the new phones. The five Windows Phone 8 devices
announced so far -
Nokia's Lumia 920 and 820,
HTC's 8X and 8S, and Samsung's ATIV S - will go on sale in
November. Different variants of these phones will be available on
AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile in the US.
Image credit: Microsoft News Center (modified)