I think it’s safe to say that we are well into announcement season. So far, we’ve had a tonne  of gaming announcements coming out of E3, iOS 6, OSX Mountain Lion and MacBooks from Apple’s WWDC, Microsoft Surface and now the Windows Phone developer summit.

Did you watch Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 announcement? If not, then don’t worry! Here is your roundup of all the goings-on from today’s event.

In terms of Momentum, the key figure was that there are now over 100,000 apps available for Windows phone. To add to this, there are also a couple of the reputable brands in the Windows Phone app store such as Draw Something.

First of all, if you currently own a Windows Phone running Windows Phone 7 or Windows Phone 7.5(the latest version of Microsoft’s operating system for phones), then I have some bad news for you. Your phone will not be able to run Windows Phone 8( I am dead serious). That being said, it’s not all bad news! Microsoft have announced Windows phone 7.8 which will be available for Windows Phone 7 users around the same time as Windows Phone 8.

So to the main star of the show:Windows Phone 8 which will be coming out in the autumn(fall for the of you in the USA). What’s new? Well, the first thing that you will notice is that your phone will have a new home screen.

Well, Internet Explorer 10 is coming, so will Direct X(the stuff used by some of the games on Windows PCs) and you will also have micro SD support so that you will be able to move your apps to a Micro SD card.  In terms of screen resolutions, Windows Phone 8 will support screen resolutions of 1280×720 (AKA 720p HD), WXGA and WVGA.  In terms of payments, Windows Phone 8 will also have support for NFC(near field communications) payments and a feature similar to Apple’s PassBook in the upcoming iOS 6.  The other  feature that has been built into Windows Phone 8 is Nokia Maps.

If you are a user of different VOIP apps, then Windows Phone 8 will also have some integration of VOIP as well(including Skype of course).

So that’s pretty much all of the announcements that came out of today’s Windows Phone developer summit.   I am really thankful that Microsoft will allow you to run your Windows Phone 7 apps on a Windows Phone 8 device.  Whilst I am on the topic of compatability, I am also giving credit to Microsoft for giving Windows phone 7 users at least a small group of features from Windows Phone 8. That being said, Microsoft have copied Apple and Google with regards to the PassBook and NFC payments features. To make matters worse, I think that Microsoft have made a mistake in locking Windows Phone 7 users out of upgrading to Windows Phone 8.  What do you think of all of these announcements? Do you think that Windows Phone 8 could provide good competition to the iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy S3?  Leave a comment with your thoughts below.

Author: Adi Khajuria