Last updated April 12, 2019
Windows Phone 8, heavily anticipated for months, has finally seen a public release. It has been two years since Microsoft launched Windows Phone 7, an OS that never drew much interest in the face of fierce competition from iPhone and Android handsets. It remains to be seen if Windows Phone 8 can break out of this mold and gather a large public following.
The new OS is slated to run on a variety of phones from manufacturers such as Samsung, Nokia, and HTC. In all, there should be no fewer than eight different models of phones running the Windows Phone 8 OS, and all should become available before 2012 has run its course. Individual models will start to hit the market as soon as this weekend in some parts of the world; they are not expected to reach the US cell phone market until sometime in November.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer attended the official launch in San Francisco and had high praise for the new OS, predicting: “People all over the world are about to fall in love with Windows Phones.”
If they do, they should take care to do a bit more than merely buy a new handset. It is also just as important to recycle cell phones that are no longer in use. This generates some money in many cases, but in all cases, it helps the environment, protecting it from toxins that can leach out if cell phones are tossed in the trash.