Microsoft is also making steady strides with its app ecosystem. And many of them including apps for ESPN, Pacman, The Weather Channel and USA TODAY look and behave splendid on the Windows Phone.

Windows Phone 8 is Microsoft's latest stab at a smartphone operating system, which on one hand fundamentaly changes nothing from Windows 7, i.e the design, concepts and the apps themselves are all substantially the same as they were in Windows Phone 7 but this time they are offering many different features like the Windows CE kernel used in version 7 has been replaced by a Windows NT-derived one.

The start screen of Windows 8 also went through a revaluation from its past version. The operating system also went through a complete overhauling from the past version of radical OS of Windows 7.

But the biggest and most visible difference in Windows 8 is that it has a more improved and customized start screen. Previous version of start screen had only two sizes of tiles on home screen: a standard square and a double-width rectangle. Further, the original start screen had an empty gutter down the right hand side with an arrow to indicate that you could swipe sideways to reveal a full alphabetical app list. But Windows Phone 8 makes the start screen a lot better through a number of small changes. The tiles now occupy the full width of the screen; there's no gutter, and while the arrow indicator is still there, it's now at the bottom, below all the tiles. And finally, the tile size is now up to the user, not the app.

Windows 8 phone also has a separate 'Kids Corner' which helps busy parents to keep their official things and apps away from their kids. In Kids corner you can lock e-mailing, videos, songs and let your kid focus on playing Angry Birds only.

It also excludes Internet Explorer from Kids corner which also seems worth it. This feature is surely creating a unique buzz for this smart phone in the market. Microsoft has also added a new rooms' feature - an invitation-only area where you can conduct private chats restricted to the members of a group, or share calendars, notes and photo albums.