Although prices have not yet been confirmed, the most expensive will be the smartphones from Nokia. The cheapest should be Huawei's Ascend W1 which will go on sale without special arrangements and will be available for around 300 to 350 dollars.

The presentation was kicked off by Joe Belfiore, Microsoft's VP in charge of Microsoft Phone. The presentation began with a short lecture on the history of Windows Phone. The only manufacturers mentioned during this history lesson were Nokia, Samsung and HTC. They also said that there are now over 120,000 applications available in the Windows Store, and support for 50 languages around the world with access from 91 countries. According to Belfiore their focus is on people rather than on icons and apps on the smartphones. He also added that WP8 is a perfect addition to Windows 8, and that it has unique features like Live Tiles and Live Apps. There is no other OS that provides such high level of personalization like WP8 he said. As far as apps are concerned, Skype will be in stand-by mode all the time, there were also several games like Angry Birds Star Wars announced to come, as well as Pandora that will provide a whole year of free music without any ads. The Windows Phone SDK will be available starting tomorrow.

One of the interesting improvements was Data Sense, a method that is used to compress data, both on the phone and in the cloud, and decrease data traffic on the smartphone by 45%. The presentation continued with Kid's Corner, a parental control type of service for mobile devices so kids can use them without any concern they will have access to inappropriate content. To ease the transition from iTunes they added the WP8 Mac connector app. The next thing was Rooms, a customization that enables users to create a chat room with the ability to share calendars. After that they presented the SkyDrive, and emphasized its feature that allows users to open the document on any Windows based device, at the exact place where they left off on some other device.

They finished the presentation with giving a bit of info on already mentioned devices from Nokia, Samsung and HTC. Some of the lucky ones in the audience even got the WP8 smartphones as a gift. The devices will be available in the Europe this weekend and after that they will roll out in the rest of the world. They will all arrive in the US before Thanksgiving on AT&T, while Verizon will be getting only Samsung ATIV Odyssey.

[Ed – Microsoft has done a lot of work to make Windows Phone attractive to users, but the issue still remains that people want something from their phones that Microsoft just does not understand. While they claim that this is the most customizable, Windows Phone has nothing on Android where you can change not only the look, but the way the phone operates. Microsoft will pick up some new users with WP8, but we simply do not see them gaining the ground that they would like.]

Tell us your thoughts in Windows Phone 8 in our Forum