14 DAY TRIAL // One of the enhancements that Microsoft is expected to pack inside the upcoming Windows Phone 8 operating system flavor, but which hasn’t been officially announced as of now, is “Rooms.”
The feature has been spotted before, but little was actually known on what it was all about, and how users could take advantage of it.
More info on the matter is now available, courtesy of developers who have had the possibility to grab the new Windows Phone 8.0 SDK from Microsoft.
According to a forum thread over at WinUnleaked (via LiveSide), the Rooms feature will be available in People Hub, under the “Together” section.
Through Rooms, users can invite people from their contacts list to share content, including calendars, photos, videos, and the like, as well as to group chat on various topics.
You can get an idea of how this works courtesy of the screenshots attached to this article, which have been taken from the Windows Phone 8 emulator that was included in the aforementioned SDK.
At the moment, owners of Windows Phone devices can take advantage of a “Group” feature, but it appears that “Rooms” will either replace it or complement it with additional functions.
Previously, both Groups and Rooms were said to remain active in Windows Phone 8, though with a series of differences between them.
Basically, Rooms would be some sort of public “areas,” where people would share things with one another in a freely manner, while Groups would remain private, being visible only to the owner of the specific Windows Phone device where a certain Group was created.
There are still many details that are not known on the new feature for the time being, but all should become official in the coming weeks, provided that rumors on Microsoft and its partners being ready to launch the Windows Phone 8 platform and handsets powered by it in late October will indeed pan out.
