Unannounced Windows Phone 8 features leaked

Windows Phone 8 is all set to release in autumn this year. Post its announcement in June at a presentation held in San Francisco, many are expecting the new operating system to bring Microsoft back in into the smartphone arena. While some features made it to the event, others have recently surfaced owing to a Software Development Kit leak earlier in the week.

The SDK, which was leaked on a Chinese website WPXAP, consists of an emulator that provides more details of additional features in Windows Phone 8. The Verge published a video of the said emulator discovering the unannounced features.

The Start screen has resizable tiles that can be moved around. Users can now choose app notifications to flash on the lock screen. A backup feature will allow users to store messages, apps and settings on the cloud.

Existing Sky Drive integration offers greater support for photos and video back-up as well.here's also a new built-in app called Data Sense that lets users track their data use limits thereby keeping a check on over usage.

With regards to browsing, Internet Explorer has new settings options that allows to swap the address bar button between favourites, fresh and tabs.

Users can customise their phones with a colour palette offering up to 20 vibrant colours to choose from . Photo albums have been redesigned to allow selection of multiple photos for adding favourites, deleting and sharing them. Other added functionalities include cropping and rotating photos.

Speaking of camera, a Lenses feature will be built-in whereby apps using the device's camera will be brought on to a singe UI. Screenshots will now be made possible by clicking the Start and Camera buttons simultaneously, a feature that was highly missed in Windows Phone 7.5.

Windows Phone 8 will now also grant users access to the Xbox Music store that is likely to replace Microsoft's earlier Zune service. The Music and Video hubs will have a new interface resembling Microsoft's SmartGlass, a wireless streaming app for PC and mobiles.

These new unannounced features from Microsoft are yet to be made official. Though they appear basic, but do seem necessary when it comes to flaunting a smartphone's capabilities.

Also see: 8 new features in Windows Phone 8