Visit other sites in the Know Your Mobile network
Windows 8 supports phone features
Clues have been spotted at Microsoft's Build conference to suggest Windows 8 will have phone capabilities
Published on Sep 20, 2011
The recent Microsoft Build conference was a blinding whirlwind of Windows 8 related information, so it’s no surprise that this little gem passed everyone by - until now.
Looking at screenshots of the Windows 8 interface, blogger iStartedSomething spotted a ‘missed calls’ Live Tile, complete with a little phone icon.
Not only that but in a ‘people hub’ user profile there’s an SMS text option alongside a mobile phone number.
Lastly, it seems the prototype Windows 8-powered Samsung Slate, given out to developers at Build, contained an Option wireless chip with Wi-Fi, GPS and, most importantly, 3G capability.
The chip seems to have support for telephonic voice and radio support for quad band 2G and peta band 3G.
While some may not like the idea of using an admittedly large tablet as some kind of oversized phone, having extra options is always useful in our view.
Particularly with quality microphone and speaker-phone technology – meaning you don’t necessarily have to hold such a large device to your face.
More significantly, however, we wonder what this could mean about a potential tie-in with future Windows Phone builds.
It could be that Microsoft is laying groundwork for some kind of convergence of the Windows 8 and Windows Phone systems further down the line.
The first two clues could admittedly indicate a built-in VoIP internet calling capability, which while nice wouldn’t be anything particularly special.
However, the third point about the multi-capability chip is much more telling.
It’s still not concrete but things are looking pretty hopeful and it’ll be interesting to see what this actually means when Windows 8 tablets start to hit the market.
