Get ready for the next big step in Windows Phone-kind, folks. Nokia and Microsoft have just officially sent out invitations to the press for an event scheduled on September 5th (sound familiar?). Technically while it will be taking place at the same time, this event is not Nokia World 2012 since that has changed format to be a partners-only shindig -- plus this press conference is taking place in New York City which suggests this is more Microsoft's show than Nokia's.

If that wasn't enough, the invite itself is an excellent teaser of what's going to be on display.In case you couldn't tell for sure, that's a Windows Phone 8 Start screen depicted in the invite as we can just barely see the small tiles cut off near the top. One of those tiles is definitely the Facebook app, which has us intrigued if there's anything important to that distinction. Meanwhile Nokia Maps gets a huge chunk of real estate in the bottom right corner, while the bottom-left corner indicates that this is an event destined for the chaos of New York City. Finally there's that Calendar tile which appears to be normal, until we took notice of that little double-arrow icon in the bottom-left corner of the large tile. For those who never knew, that means there are multiple appointments overlapping at a certain time so could this be a hint that there's something besides just a press conference Nokia and Microsoft will be doing that day?

So far the rumors have all indicated that Microsoft will formally announce Windows Phone 8's consumer features at the event, while Nokia will have new hardware to show off to the masses for the first time.

Source: MobileTechWorld