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If you're growing weary with iOS and can't abide Android's fragmented nature, alternatives are thin on the ground. The BlackBerry standard offers a viable choice for business-focused use, but even that is slowly morphing into something more akin to a traditional smartphone, with the recently-launched BlackBerry Z10 ditching the keys and doing its best impression of Apple's iPhone.It therefore falls to Microsoft's Windows Phone platform to give Google and Apple a bit of competition, although since its initial launch in 2010 it has struggled to wrestle away a significant amount of market share. The newly-released Windows Phone 8 update is a concerted effort to rectify that; Microsoft has lifted hardware constraints on manufacturers, upped the screen resolution and convinced hardware partners - such as HTC, Nokia and Samsung - to join the party. The result is definitely an improvement on what has gone before, but after sampling the lead WP8 handset - HTC's 8X - we're not entirely convinced that it will be giving Android and iOS any sleepless nights.
Microsoft has raised the spec limitations with Windows Phone 8 and as a result we're seeing hardware manufacturers introduce more powerful devices. The HTC 8X contains a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 chipset running at 1.5Ghz, and is aided by 1GB of RAM. This is a big step up from previous Windows Phone 7 handsets, and established users will swoon at the increased screen resolution, too. You'll find 16GB of memory for storage inside the device, although there's no MicroSD card slot, sadly.
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