14 DAY TRIAL // Nokia’s Lumia handsets have been long rumored to be on their way to get a taste of the upcoming Windows Phone 8 operating system, and some more hints at this appear to have made it to the Internet recently.
An advertisement for the device supposedly shows new functionality of the phone’s homescreen, with live tiles that behave differently than they should on a Windows Phone 7.5-powered device.
The ad can be seen on PC Advisor showing a Contacts tile that flips over to provide some additional info, all in a manner unusual for the current flavor of the mobile platform.
Moreover, a similar behavior can be observed on the Photo Hub tile, which splits to provide details on photo count and to show the latest photo.
As WPCentral notes in a recent post, Windows Phone does not do either of these things normally. However, they appear to be acting naturally in the ad, which suggests that they actually belong there.
If this is indeed true, it means that the ad actually offers a glimpse at the functionality that might be introduced in the upcoming version of the OS, Windows Phone 8.
Of course, all might be only a marketing error, and that the ad does not show an actual representation of Windows Phone 7.5. A Photoshop makeover is clearly a plausible theory.
Nokia is one of the big players in the Windows Phone area at the moment, courtesy of a deal that it signed with Microsoft last year and it does not come as a surprise that it is working on devices powered by the upcoming platform version.
However, Microsoft hasn’t yet confirmed plans to have the OS loaded on existing devices, although it said that existing applications would benefit from compatibility with it.
The Windows Phone 8 platform version is expected to make its debut later this year, and all the necessary details on what it will have to offer and on its compatibility with existing hardware will be unveiled at that time.
