Syncing
Windows Phone uses the NTFS file system—the same as "grown-up" Windows—and exposes itself to computers as MTP, just like Android phones running Android 4.0 or later. That means you can drag and drop files to your heart's content, as long as you have a Windows PC. There's no way to drag and drop files to or from a Mac. (No, Android File Transfer doesn't work.)
You can also sync with special apps for Windows 7, Windows 8, and Mac OS. The Windows 7 and Mac apps let you sync with iTunes libraries. The Windows 8 app looks great—it's fully Windows 8-style—and it syncs music, photos, and videos with the standard Windows 8 library folders. I had no problem adding music and videos from Windows 8, and I dragged and dropped plenty of Office files onto the phone using Windows 8's Desktop mode.
I found one ongoing, annoying bug in the music syncing, though. The apps and phone broke some of my albums up into multiple albums with almost the same name, based on a bug in the files' metadata which neither iTunes nor Windows Media Player could see, but that Windows Phone was sensitive to. Hopefully that will get fixed.
I'm okay with recommending Windows Phone 8 for syncing with Windows 7 and Windows 8, but I didn't have a solid experience with Macs. The new Connector program requires OS X 10.7 Lion or later. On my Mountain Lion MacBook Pro, it had trouble transferring music and videos to the phone. Even if it worked, it would only transfer music, videos, and photos from iTunes or iPhoto/Aperture libraries—there's no drag-and-drop and no way to transfer arbitrary Microsoft Office documents, for instance.
Conclusions
I keep wanting to say "Windows Phone has a lot of potential," as if this OS is a version 1.0. But it isn't; it's the third version, and it's been around for two years. It just hasn't been a serious contender until now, because of the lack of decent hardware and the shorter list of apps.
I'm also irritated by the various bugs I found in my early code, from the Facebook app that sometimes didn't load updates to the album-splitting bug in the music player. As of today, Mac syncing just plain doesn't work. That all feels more "version 1.0" than a solid third rev.
I still think Windows Phone does a great job balancing elegance and configurability. The hubs offer a great way to open up lots of smartphone power in an easy-to-use manner. Social networking is linked everywhere. It's simple to use with the default tiles, but allows for a lot of customization. It's genuinely fun.
New aspects of the Windows Phone 8 OS and SDK should bring better apps to the platform. The ability to write native code will allow for faster apps, better games, and easier ports from platforms like iOS, and sharing its core with Windows 8 will hopefully create a virtuous cycle with writers of Metro apps for PCs and Windows RT tablets.
The new hardware support is the other big plus. The HTC 8X and Nokia Lumia 920 don't look like anything else on the market (thanks in part to their bold colors) and they'll finally be able to keep up with Android phones and iPhones on specs and performance. Of course, the question there is not whether this round of phones will keep up, but whether Windows Phone can grow, so phones six months from now still look relevant. That was Windows Phone 7's problem.
Let me add one more point to the mix: The relatively few people who have bought Windows Phones have loved them. The Windows Phone platform tied with iOS in our 2012 reader survey, and the HTC Trophy tied with the iPhone as our readers' favorite Verizon smartphone. Both got satisfaction numbers considerably higher than competing Android devices.
Windows Phone isn't going away. It's a key part of Microsoft's Windows 8 strategy. Microsoft is very profitable, very wealthy, and very patient. This OS is a major player.
But Windows Phone buyers must be willing to be mavericks, even potentially pariahs in an Android-and-Apple world. While Windows Phone punches way above its market share in apps, more likely than not, you won't be able to run the specific hot apps your friends are talking about.
That said, just as before, I think Windows Phone 8 has a future. How bright that future is depends on working out some kinks, and on marketing. This OS has always had the potential to be a much stronger number-three player, maybe to the extent of 15-to-20-percent market share, but carriers and phone makers have never really gotten behind it. If Verizon Wireless and others really push Windows Phone, this could be the version that finally breaks through.
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Reviewed By Sascha Segan from pcmag.com