HTC Windows Phone 8X

Looks like a lovely phone. At the risk of sounding a little 'Android' fanboyish, I wouldn't mind this hardware with the Android operating system on it... you know seeing as I can't have the iPhone 5 with Android on it... (yep that's a poor attempt at humour).

Design wise it looks oddly familiar... oh yes, that's right. It's dead spitting for the new Nokia Lumia 920 phone! (http://www.cnet.com.au/nokia-lumia-920-339341626.htm) If I were them I'd be spitting all the way to courts for stealing their design. To make matters worse, Nokia are pretty much putting all their business behind the new Windows 8 Mobile OS whereas HTC has fingers in both Windows and Android pots. From the Looks of things Microsoft aren't beyond playing the hardware companies against each other which in my mind seems foolish. I would've thought the last thing you'd want are your flagship OS phones busy suing each other especially when you're trying to compete against the more organised likes of Blackberry, Apple and Google. I seriously doubt that any litigation will occur as Apple has proven that it only brings bad press and distaste from their customers.

Nokia have stated that HTC is "tactically rebranding" it's phones which kinda smacks of "tactical tact" in the face of a clear rip off. HTC has recently taken big hits from Samsung stomping all over the smart phone market with the GSIII and their recent releases, whilst not bad, just don't reach the lofty heights that their earlier devices brought to the company. Looking at the choice between the HTC phone and Nokias offering, I'd go straight to the Nokia.

The one unknown for me is Windows 8 Mobile. I don't know anyone that uses it day to day and it's not really gaining in a big way in terms of market share. In an enterprise (i.e. corporate) scenario Windows 8 Mobile might bring more rewards to Microsoft where their only real challenger is Blackberry. In my experience Apple has been making headway into the enterprise environments with the iPad, but not so much with the iPhone. With a vast share of the enterprise operating system market, Microsoft are in very good stead to challenge Blackberry at what they do best, enterprise e-mail integration. Who knows, we might be seeing more of these devices in the office... something I'd prefer to Apples offering which requires quite a bit of 'shoehorning' to get to work in a secure way.

It's great to see some really nice Windows 8 Mobile phones coming onto the market as innovation only drives more innovation.  Something that Apple seem hell bent on preventing.  On that note, I was amazed to still see people lining up outside Apple stores and puzzled as to the end user experience with getting a new toy.  There is something rather nice warm and fuzzy being able to get home and have a whole bunch of new things to play with when you get a new device.  I don't see where that experience is going to come from with the iPhone 5?  You get home with your nice new device and... it does all the same stuff as your last phone, just on a slightly larger scale...