Initial Windows Phone 8 screenshots

Last week Microsoft finally took the wraps of Windows Phone 8 - and finally their partners were able to share more details about their new handsets and the associated software.

I was fortunate to get my hands on the Samsung Ativ S and ahead of a full review of the final product I thought it might be interesting to share some screenshots. Note these images are taken from a pre-release build of this handset but it does provide a taste of some of the new features.

New features include new maps (provided by Nokia and downloadable in advance to avoid data charges), Children's corner (an alternative view of your phone when you share it with others typically much younger than yourself), Xbox Music (now available in NZ), updated Camera, section locking (i.e. PIN locking some areas of your phone), Tap + Send (near field communications functions), Internet Explorer 10, SMS backup to the cloud and more.

Sadly in this release it appears podcast downloading functions are still not available with Microsoft accounts linked to NZ addresses. Don't worry, you can still listen to the NZ Tech Podcast - it's just not as easy as it should be.

This article first published at Windows Phone NZ - follow on Twitter @windowsphonenz