Microsoft Windows Phone 8

Windows Phone 8 has a customizable lock screen which apps can feed information to - the weather, for instance.

Windows Phone 8's home screen is made of configurable tiles, some of which are "live" and update information dynamically.

Your full list of downloaded apps shows up to the right of the home screen.

Windows Phone 8 uses the Internet Explorer 10 Web browser, which represents pages faithfully but isn't as fast as the iPhone 5's browser.

Windows Phone 8 lets you classify your friends into Groups, where you'll see their contact cards and social network updates on one page, and Rooms, which allow for group chats, notes, and calendars.

The people hub has always been one of the central features of Windows Phone, a supercharged contact book that shows you all of your friends'

Rooms in the people hub let you create group chats, such as this one with three people discussing what's going on.

The dialer in Windows Phone 8 has large, clear number buttons.

"Lenses" are apps which can take over the Windows 8 camera. PhotoStrip, for instance, shoots a bunch of pictures in a row and then shows them like you got them from an old-style photo booth.

The bold Windows 8 design language carries through into the music player.

The Windows Phone 8 music player has a pretty basic interface, but I like how they show what's playing next.

Some (but not all) artists in your music library will show these bios, where you can learn more about them.

Windows Phone 8 apps tend to have a very unified interface, with panes that you scroll through horizontally.

Windows Phone 8 does a great job of showing complex, HTML-formatted emails with graphics.

Microsoft's Bing Maps are better than Apple's, but nowhere near as good as Google's. You don't get free turn-by-turn voice-guided directions or transit directions.

Zoom in beyond a certain level, and the map turns into a satellite view.

One of the cooler WP8 features is custom local recommendations based on where you live and what your Facebook friends like.

Wallet should be like Microsoft's version of Apple's Passbook, where you keep all your passes and loyalty cards. It also lets you store your payment card details for Microsoft's stores.

You can browse the Windows Phone 8 app store by looking at category lists or editorial recommendations. There are a lot of apps here, but many apps popular on other platforms are missing.

One of Windows Phone 8's strengths is high-quality games that integrate with games on XBox consoles.

Your XBox Live achivements carry over onto Windows Phone 8, and of course you can win points for participating in mobile games.

Microsoft Office is a big selling point for Windows Phone 8. The OS includes versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote, but oddly no way to read PDF files.

The keyboard in Windows Phone 8 has some predictive text capabilities but wouldn't add apostrophes to my contractions sometimes.

Outline view is a phone-only feature in Microsoft Word which lets you jump to a specific paragraph or section of a Word document.

You can both view and edit presentations in Powerpoint for Windows Phone 8.

Windows Phone 8 includes OneNote, Microsoft's Evernote-like cross-platform combination notes/to-do-list app.