I'm here at the build conference, where it was announced that we finally got access to the Windows Phone 8 SDK. I’ve been browsing the SDK reference, and found a bunch of stuff that I think is going to make this phone huge.
To me, it’s not about the new improved tile interface, the camera lenses or skype integration. It’s what’s under the hood that is really going to make a difference, allowing us to finally build amazing apps that sometimes were hard or flat out impossible.

So a lot of it is missing features that I felt has been holding back the WP7.5 platform (and will continue with 7.8 which is a sorry excuse of an update that’ll confuse consumers), but I can honestly say that I think the feature-set in the WP8 SDK is a home run and there’s nothing big missing from there that I need (even some stuff I didn’t think I need that I now do :-). I know some of these features are available on other platforms already (flamers move on), but the combination of all of these is what makes this all great.

Enterprise ready

We finally get a full enterprise story with your own “enterprise store”. Before WP8, the only option to deploy apps in the enterprise was developer unlock all the phones, or put them in the store as betas (that expires after 3 months) or make them publicly available but hidden behind a login. None of them was a very good solution. We now get a proper enterprise marketplace for easy deployment and update of enterprise apps.

Bluetooth devices

We now get access to bluetooth devices. This is huge and can spawn a new type of eco system. In my work area that means could mean super-high-precision GPS receivers and laser range finders just to start. But in other areas this could be for instance credit card readers and barcode scanners to do on-the-spot purchasing.

Background downloader

Allows you to queue up large downloads while your app is not running. Great for loading larger amounts of data that your app needs for a specific job or for being offline for extended time.

Hot-swappable storage

With hot-swappable storage you can quickly provision large amounts of data to bring with you in the field. Again this could be huge for the enterprise solution. Having to provision data over the air could be an issue even with the background downloader (think gigabytes of data). Imagine highly detailed maps for a specific region you’re about to enter – you bring the right SD card for that area, and someone else brings another SD card with data for their area.
And for those who just want to throw music on there and needs more space: It’s greatc for that too :-)

Direct3D

Direct3D support! We now get direct access to the GPU. This allows us to write high-performance rendering for games, maps, etc. Note: There’s no Direct2D support (but I’m sure someone will build that on top of D3D for us soon, since it really just an abstraction on top of the 3D libraries).

Native code support

We can now write/reuse/run native code on our smartphones. You might not want to write C++, but there are huge amounts of libraries today written in C++ that we can now use. Think of for instance the Sqlite Database. Where I work we have huge amounts of native libraries that has taken years to develop and would be near-impossible to port to .NET, not to mention they require the fastest possible processing of large amounts of data, and C++ is more or less unmatched for that purpose. This doesn’t mean you have to write your entire app in C++. It could just mean that you bring in a native library (like Sqlite) and code against it from C#. The integration is very similar to WinRT (in fact they call it WinPRT – ‘P’ for Phone, and shares a lot of libraries too). So you might never have to worry about native code, but you can still get the benefit of other 3rd parties’ hard work!

.NET

Having .NET (and C#/VB.NET) is not really a new feature, but having worked in the ISV space for many years, and delivering SDKs to smaller ISVs, I know how important it is to have a .NET SDK. Many smaller businesses often have a developer or two, and most of them I find to be .NET developers. The fact that they can write a quick app for their enterprise in an environment that are familiar to them will be huge. This is probably the biggest differentiator to all the other phone platforms.

New Windows Phone 8 SDKs (slide from Build Keynote)