Official: Microsoft to reveal Windows Phone 8 on October 29th

It has been speculated for some time now that Microsoft would hold a special press event for Windows Phone 8 to finally show off the OS and sure enough, it has come true.
On Monday, October 29th at 10AM, Microsoft will show off to the world their new mobile OS originally codenamed ‘Apollo’.
The announcement is coming just days before the first expected availability of new Windows Phone 8 devices, thought to be occurring on November 4th.
Windows Phone Central will of course be there in sunny San Francisco to cover the event and bring you all the news as it happens. Then we're off to BUILD 12 the very next day.
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Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central, head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and for some reason, watches. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.
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Eye candy for Halloween
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Can we get a poll going for who's not getting a 920 since its for att only. I'd like to see how much the results change now that we know. Or do we still not know? I'm so confused on who's getting what from Nokia. I'm going to just wait and see what's out next year for my carrier.
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I'd rather wait until T-Mobile and Verizon weigh in their offerings. That makes more sense, no?
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Yes.
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Agreed.
Daniel, do you think it would be farfetched to believe there "might" be a Lumia 922 heading to Verizon, as the 920 does not have a CDMA chip in it, which the Verizon iPhone 5 does (as it needs to support CDMA and LTE on Verizon's network)? -
I am going to wait until I find out from Daniel Rubino if there is text reflow in Windows 8 before I decide. Seems I can't get an answer from him as to if the Windows SDK seems to show it having it or not for Internet Explorer.
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Is the san Francisco event open to the public?
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Definitely not, sorry :-/
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@Daniel Makes sense.
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+1 on the poll. I too will not move to at&t just for a device.
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Nor I.
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+1 on the poll. I'm not moving to AT&T to get the phone I want, and I'm not paying full price for a device that will only get 2G data. We all know a 920-level device won't be coming to TMo, so no need to continue torturing ourselves hoping otherwise.
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I won't either, I'm sticking with T-Mobile and get my Ativ S..
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Why is everyone so tight about switching. Tmoservice sucks and their customer service is a joke. I paid out 3 contracts to leave that mess behind. Data speeds on Att made the choice so much easier as well as the phone selection.
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Not everyone's experience is the same. My TMobile service is near perfect. I only once went without service and that was when I went quading in some deserted part of the country in my state. Other than that, art was my last carrier and I paid to get out with them. They kept constantly charging me for some thing I cancelled 4 months in a row, and I couldn't even get service in my house. I need to get microcell just to get a crappy signal. Tmobile all the way and Ima get the 920 and wait for the service to kick in later this year.
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I dont see what the big problem is wit att. I've never had a problem with their device before besides when I got to the mountain side of the island and some beach areas but att is just fine other then that plus I tried looking at Verizon plans and there price is more expensive then my current att plan. And all my friends with mobile pay a good price but have super crappy connection in a lot of places.
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FINALLY!!
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I hope presentation will be smooth.
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If the event is anything like last years event for the launch of Mango that they held in NYC I'm sure it will be great!
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Will be following event on my new Surface. I hope
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+1
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+2
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I need to wait on line all night to hope to get a surface..
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+3
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With no nokia for vrzn and tmo
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Nice!
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25 DAYS!?! GAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!
I hope they have all the phones there to show off the OS, and are fully prepared for smooth demonstrations on each one. I impatiently await the 29th, -
I hope there are secrets revealed.....os related. With 7.8 and 8 adding the small icons does anyone else feel that it is moving towards "a grid of icons". I know they are live tiles but it makes me think. Excited none the less.
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Hmm not really, with bigger screens it makes sense. Also its not forced. You can choose how you wish. I just wish they offered the chance to save tile sets/accents as themes. Missed opportunity if not :-/
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Or at least back up size and position of start screen tiles. Didn't see mentions of that in the back up leak.
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The current backups preserve all phone settings, including tile pinnings and locations. IDK what the new system will do though
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I wish they would let us change the colors of each tile.. put it the way we want it.
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I believe it has already been confirmed that you can change the color of each individual tile.
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here is a secret, you can change the size of icons to small, medium or large, that would avoid your grid of icon feelings.
just dont tell anybody else, it is a secret....thank me later. -
It would still be a grid. The icons would just take up 1, 4 or 8 spaces in said grid. Just a thought.
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Yawn.
This is the 22nd reveal/announcement. Let me know when I can walk in the store and actually get one. Microsoft needs to take a page from Apple and have their reveal event and announce everything the week before.
I'm tired of waiting and all the hush hush. -
+1
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+1000
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I'm pretty sure that's the reason they've attempted keeping things secret for the last few weeks. It seems highly likely that they want to do a big reveal and then say "And you can buy this next week."
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Like Apple? They revealed iOS 6 in June and didn't release it until September. Microsoft will reveal WP8 this month and release devices a week later.
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And Apple released the SDK then; when Apple introduced the iPhone 5 they also announced prices and availability.
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If you think about it, this is an unusual year with unusual set of circumstances for MS and Nokia. Windows 8, Surface tablets and WP8 to be released, plus Nokia, Samsung and HTC announcing phones way in advance of an unannounced OS. I don't think this scenario will happen again for a long time. Next year you can pretty much expect phone announcements closer to their official release.
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I CANT WAIT!!!!!
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Now, who said Microsoft went to bed with HTC and forgot Nokia?
That "Meet Windows Phone 8" is quite obvious that the yellow Lumia 920 is WP 8´s grand-opening flagship phone. -
Isnt the front camera in a different location on the 820/920?
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AND the glass is flat. IDK what phone that is. The 920 has curved glass and a lass wide spraker hole. The 820 has the ffc on the right side and no speaker hole. The HTC phones have the larger speaker grill.
Is this the speculated MS WP8? -
You can tell it isn't the 920. But it could be a new Nokia, or new HTC Titan, since HTC copied the color styles.
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New Nokia maybe, but the style of the speaker grill doesn't match the others in the HTC line
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That yellow isn't bezel, its the background. The bezel is the thin band
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This isn't a Nokia phone. In fact, the picture isn't any anounced phone I've seen.
This has a thin, metal banded edge. I think we're looking at the Surface phone.
http://cdn0.sbnation.com/entry_photo_images/6855313/wp8date_large_verge_medium_landscape.jpg -
^^^ I think so too
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Oh, come on guys, that's a simple rendered mockup, just not to use a specific phone for the announcement. I think they didn't want to focus on either Nokia, HTC or Samsung, that'd make sense ;)
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Very well could be. Though, with Nokia going ATT exclusive, I would really like another option.
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+1000
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Could be the WP8 emulator?
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It 100% is the WP8 emulator.
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@CyclingNut +100 yeah!
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Could the phone in this image be a third Nokia or HTC phone?
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Boss
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*Prays for new features that haven't been leaked/disclosed already* Oh, and something Instagram related...
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+10000000000
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I believe you Daniel but you really should put a source or how you know this information.
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I'd assume WPcentral got an invite from Microsoft..
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I think the image is the actual invitation that got sent out.
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@J4rrod I can't put the source as it came via email. That's our invite used in the image.
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Today we are re announcing the announcement that we will be announcing the new WP 8 on this date along with the announcement for the release date.
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Yeah, what he said
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niiiiiice so win8 released friday than treated to wp8 monday oh yes!!!
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I no longer care. With Nokias announcement of exclusivitey on CrapT&T, a carrier that you couldn't pay me enought to use, I'm pretty well done with Windows Phone. I'll not be purchasing a second tier device and I'll not switch carriers just for a phone. Microsoft should kick Elop and Nokia square in the nuts, repeatedly.
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good luck with those second tier os choices
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I'll gladly take Scamdroid or Crapple over going with the criminals at CrapT&T.
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Seriously.
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so they offered you $500 to use it, you wouldnt...ok i believe you
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$500 would not be anywhere near enough money to get me to use it on CrapT&T. Maybe if they added 6 more zeros behind that number I'd do it, but no way would I do it now. One court case involving those f****** criminals at CrapT&T was enough for me to never do business with them again. Believe me now?
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I somewhat feel your pain, I'm on VZW too. However I'm still waiting to see what they annouce by the end of the month to make sure we're not just assuming way too much.
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As I'm not up for an upgrade until the second week of November, they have until then. After that, all bets are off.
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rightisray. what is wrong with the 8X? it's a good device. why can't you pick that.
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Wow. I chose a windows phone for the OS first then the phone hardware. The HTC 8x and Samsung Ativ running WP8 OS is better than anything Apple or Droid offer.
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The way that Nokia is securing exclusive apps (that are on lesser OS) and is making much better exclusive apps than the other two make me say no I would not go with either one. The app selection is still very limited and even though I have argued with friends for windows phone and bought my HD7 on launch day I would have a hard time going for the others. I really thought Microsoft was trying not to have exclusivity but if the Nokia on ATT is completely true, lesser OS here I come. :[
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Sorry about your experience with att, I feel your pain. They messed my husband over too. Would you ever consider going prepaid to get your Lumia? Some of the services will let you use an ATT (read GSM) phone in their network. Yes, you pay more up front but it's cheaper overall and you aren't locked in.
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Yes! Fully planning on getting a 920 and putting a straighttalk sim in, assuming I can pick one up for less than $500 off contract from AT&T. 3G is fast enough for me.
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The 8X is not a second tier device.
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^THIS^
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It sounds like you're letting your emotions get the better of you. The 8X and Ativ S are not second tier phones. Its just that the 920 is so beastly that it makes you think that. In fact, the 920 easily beats most beast phones out right now. So if you can't get the 920, why get a crapdroid or cryphone 5 when you can get a perfectly awesome WP8 device?
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They better unveil a feature or two that involves nuclear physics or something.. Otherwise this whole secrecy was stupid. I guess on October 29th, we will finally find out whether or not Microsoft is digging its own grave.
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Yep.
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Well said
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I have this scary feeling most everything has already been leaked.
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excited to see the full features of wp8. cant wait to make the jump from android
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Such a long wait! Days go by so slow when waiting :D
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Off topic: that lock screen picture looks neat. Wouldn't mind that being one of the pre-loaded images on WP8 ;)
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Could be using the Bing auto backgrounds :-)
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Is that the Surface?!? ;) If only Microsoft will surprise everyone and announce the Surface phone as well! Then Nokia and their exclusivity can go suck it! ;)
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It's not the surface phone. It's the WP8 emulator.
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Are they going to reveal a Microsoft phone??
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*facepalm*
I don't really care at this point. I'll be playing with my Surface RT that I get on the 26th. Microsoft's idea of rolling out product is completely stone age. -
I thought all the buttons were on the right side of Nokia windows phones? Could be wrong but the button placement is different on that picture. I hope that's not what the surface phone looks like. Kinda getting tired of the Lumia look(shape).
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It's the WP8 emulator
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Every inch of my brain is telling me that orange box needs some padding.
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From the yellow/orange band around the WP8 emulator it looks like the whole invite was supposed to have a yellow/orange background.
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"Then off to Build 12 the next day" ... Tough life you live there Rubino ;)
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On my birthday!! Sweet!!!
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Oh my God! What are the odds? Oh wait, 1/365...
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Hahaha!
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Finally its coming
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I don't think microsoft should take this apporach next time around....kind of dumb that all the devices were announced before the os....
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I doubt they will. This was a coincidence (W8, WP8, Surface).
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Anyone else find it odd that the phone in that picture is surrounded by a few pixels of a background from something else? Who did the invite? It's like they got lazy with it and just cut the phone out of something else and pasted it onto that image and didn't even clean up the edges!
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Just saw a similar story at Engadget and all they showed was an image of the phone itself it didn't have the "meet windows phone" part on it so this must have been a quick image slapped together for the article in which case not a huge deal. Still lazy. But not a big deal.
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can't wait ......................................
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Woohoo! That's my birthday!
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Regarding the supposed AT&T exclusivity some have mentioned, I thought I saw an article on the site that mentioned/implied the only exclusivity on the 920 was that AT&T would be the only one getting the cyan model. Maybe Daniel could clarify?
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i know this is a US-website, but here are readers from other countrys too...so it would be very nice if you could also mention the time in UTC. that would make it much easier to calculate the time for our timezone, than calculate it from one of the US-zones.
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I'm hoping for 32gb or microSD expansion slot
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Please, please be a among of the super secret unveils of WP8 be
1. Full support of USSD so I can finally ditch my old WM which I am still using when I need to do USSD for prepaid cards
2. SD card supports installing applications/games from WP store to SD card and run them from the card. Emailed HTC on the 8S so far they know, installing applications/games to SD is not supported on WP8.
3. xBox videos and music come to world wide so I won't feel so ripped off for paying full price (as US counterparts) for a castrated xBox gold subscription; in Singapore iTunes movie (still watered down but the library is growing) finally came but please don't let us live an iTunes world only, we need competition
4. More reliable push/toast notifications; whatsapp, kik, tango etc reliability in delivering notifications are quite bad either will get them or delayed or never.
5. Seamless integrations/interactions with all MS "tile" based devices
6. API to allow 3rd party video players to access hardware decoding of h.264 so they can fill in the missing gap of supporting HD videos packaged in mkv etc
7. Have a better dialer that is context sensitive to my people hub and will go directly into dial mode instead of being a two step process
8. Full Bing services worldwide, right now I have set my region to US for the missing features which should never be the case
9. API for creating multi player games between WP and xBox
10. Enthusiast mode for us who want to get and install the latest WP builds without carrier and OEM intervention -
Actually text reflow is important if MS is serious about WP8 gaining enterprise traction. It is a mission critical piece of business class user functionality. And it needs to be both in IE and in Office - and Office needs to read PDFs using reflow as well.
The dumb part is prior to Windows Phone all the MS mobile OSes had these exact features which were inexplicably not included in WP. -
It probably won't be the Lumia and the fancy camera that it has, but HTC is coming to Verizon and TMobile. I will be happy with the 8X.