Yea, there’s still some work to be done there but overall I’ve enjoyed the upgrade. I love the metro style apps. Will be much better when they are supported on multiple monitors. I also have had no problem developing for NETMF on Win8.
I was fortunate to talk my boss into paying half since I needed it for my job but there are ways to get them cheaper or even free. Of course, on an at&t contract you can get one cheap if you want to pay for the service… I use Straight Talk. If you want to take a stab at writing some Win Phone apps then you could get a free 920 through dvlup.com.
There were apps I was able to write for Windows Mobile that I’ll can’t write for Windows Phone or the iPhone as really I love the OS in Windows Mobile as it didn’t have any limited API’s or restrictions, so in some ways I feel very much like mobile development has taken a step backwards at least from the system level coding. I know my wife loves her HTC Windows Phone and I really like my Surface RT, so I’m looking forward to getting my new phone and writing some apps for it and the store.
As far as setting up Windows 8 for Phone development I’ll likely setup another desktop machine tonight with Windows 8 for Phone Development.
NOTE I don’t work for Microsoft or anyone else right now for that matter, but I am a Microsoft MVP.
I can’t comment on WP8 (or WP7, for that matter) as I’ve never played with one. I can say the Surface Pro is one hell of a machine, but I can’t comment on the differences between it and the Surface RT. What I can say is Metro is a horrid UI for desktops, in my opinion (which I never claimed was humble).
It’s funny how opinions differ.
I have had 3 WinMobile 6 or 6.5 smart phones, all by HTC. I got fed up with thier inability to update the software or to get it even remotely bug-free. I finally removed WinMobile 6.5 from my HTC HD2 and loaded android. It was a huge improvement. It was faster and had better apps and generally became a usable phone.
So now I switched to an Galaxy S3 phone and can’t be happier…
Just remembered. Previous phones in order:
HTC S710, Winmobile 6
HTC Touch Pro, WinMobile 6.5
HTC HD2, WinMobile 6.5 and later Android.
All of them was REALLY slow and buggy. HTC had no inclination to fix the firmware either…
@ GMod(Errol) - The HTC 8X is a massive improvement over the older offerings, i was an android fanboy for awhile after many BB’s but the 8x is fast, easy to use and there are now plenty of apps, gorgeous screen, still and vid camera take excellent shots…all in all an excellent phone…
But of course it’s all subjective and horses for courses…
Unfortunately that was what everyone said about the Touch Pro, then the HD2… 
So after being burnt for the third time with WinMobile and HTC I decided to go another route…
@ GMod(Errol) - Like i said…all very subjective and we all want different things - so stick with the tool to suits you best 
I had a Lumia 800. I still have around 7 months left on contract but as all my PC’s cannot run the WP8 emulator I decided to splash out for a HTC-8X.
I’ve been blown away at the difference. I thought the 800 was good and that the W8 phone would be the same thing but a bit different. But the phone itself is pretty amazing. The camera I think can only be beaten by the Lumia 920. The 8X does really well in low light and it’s fast. The built in speaker puts all other phones I’ve had to shame. It worked as a speaker phone in a room of 8 people when the network went down causing our IP phone to fail. The screen just looks amazing (720p the same resolution as my 50in Plasma TV!) The phone actually feels lighter than the lumia 800. I can now also develop apps for Win8 too now as I can debug them on the device (In VB of course )
I’m waiting (very impatiently) for my upgrade period so I can get far far away from the iPhone. I needed it to develop at work; I was required to support all browsers/phones and no one had an iOS I could test on. I won’t make that mistake again.
I always loved Androids, though this next upgrade I’ll be checking out a nice Win8 phone.
Quick heads up…if you want to use the Windows Phone 8 Emulator, you’ll need to install the tools on a machine that supports SLAT (Second Level Address Translation - Wikipedia), because the emulator relies on Hyper-V, which uses SLAT.
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@ devhammer hence my needing to buy a phone to test app development on
Yup. That’ll work, too. I’ve unlocked my 920 so I can use it for testing on my non-SLAT machine.
Unlocked it? My home computer complains about not being able to use the emulator because of lack of CPU virtualization but I didn’t have to do anything special to unlock the phone. I just plug it in as-is and it works fine.
My only issue with 920 is that dust gets into light sensor and front camera lens. “Dust off” takes care of that from time to time.
I’ve had no problem with that so far. Pictures and videos have been big improvement over my Android so far. I love having a physical camera button!
I recognize that camera. My parents have one 