Company Hub

The address bar also can be customized a bit more than before, as you can now choose between three different functions for the main button found within: your options are stop / refresh, favorites and tabs. To add to the list of new features, IE10 now has "find on page," Do Not Track and NFC link sharing. IE10 also includes a SmartScreen filter, which is a lifesaver if you accidentally wander into a malicious site.

We'll admit that Enterprise isn't a huge area of coverage for us, and we typically refrain from going into excruciating detail in that area. One feature designed for the Enterprise, however, is actually too clever for us to simply shun. WP8 includes support for special private hubs that can only be accessed by employees or IT professionals. Known aptly as Company Hub, this is a place set aside for companies to offer news, calendars, notes and employee-specific apps that can't (and shouldn't) be accessible via the public Windows Phone Store. These types of apps have been available for iOS and Android for quite some time, but we enjoy the idea of each employee having a one-stop shop on their phone for all of their pertinent information, rather than having to sideload everything they need.

Google frustrations

Any of our readers who have given Windows Phone a chance over the last two years likely have seen that Google and Microsoft haven't played well -- at least, not when it comes to the latter's mobile OS. A quick search of the Windows Phone Store, in fact, shows only one app developed by Google Inc. This means that you don't have any native apps for Gmail, Reader, Voice, Talk or the vast multitude of other services. Third-party apps are available to help cover this gaping hole, but most of them aren't up to par with the experience Android users have on their devices. Good luck getting privately shared calendars to show up -- our various methods didn't turn up a way to do it. (Our regular Google Calendar and publicly shared calendars worked just fine.) Heck, even the web view for its services (most of which look great on iOS) appear the same way you'd expect it to show up on your kid's prepaid featurephone: slow, unintuitive and frustrating. Lastly, we haven't even seen any efforts from either company to integrate Google+ or Talk into the OS like what was done for Twitter and Facebook. Indeed, Windows Phone -- despite its various improvements -- still lacks a punch in this area, which makes it a tough sell for Android fans to move over.

Miscellaneous