As the world has witnessed the disastrous fall of BlackBerry over the past month, it's now readily apparent that Windows Phone has won the contest to be third place among smartphone platforms. It's a distant third — both iPhone and Android have much bigger slices of most markets — but the new No. 3 has momentum, and today it's getting an extra boost in the form of a major software update that will support larger screen sizes.
The update — the third for Windows Phone 8 in less than a year — will finally let phones running the OS brandish screens with 1,920 x 1,080 resolution, also known as full HD or 1080p. Since the update is already in the hands of Microsoft's OEM partners, some "phablet" size Windows Phones are likely imminent (Nokia is holding an event in Abu Dhabi on Oct. 22).
See also: How Microsoft Could Rebrand Itself [PICS]
For 1080p screens, the Windows Phone start screen takes advantage of the extra pixels by creating a third column of live tiles. All the same sizes of tile are still supported, but now users will be able to get more of them on the screen. Microsoft also updated all the pre-loaded apps (Music, People, Photos, etc.), scaling them to take advantage of larger displays.
"On those larger-screen devices, we didn't want to just stretch the existing UI to a bigger screen," says Greg Sullivan, Microsoft's senior product manager for Windows Phone. "The larger screens aren't that great if you don't actually take advantage of the increase in real estate."

While catching up with the Galaxy Notes of the world was clearly priority one for Microsoft, the update ticks a few more items off its list of mobile features: There's a driving mode that will limit notifications, easier tethering with Windows 8.1 devices, a rotation lock (about time!), and support for Qualcomm's powerful Snapdragon 800 chips.
The new abilities will certainly please users and give Microsoft's hardware partners more to work with, but given what Apple and Android OEMs have been cranking out over the last several months, it's fair to ask: Are biometrics such as fingerprint scanners, 64-bit processing architecture and support for digital pens (styli) in the works for Windows Phone?
"When we went with Windows Phone 8 to the new core, the [Windows] NT kernel — the engine that runs Windows 8 — that enabled a whole bunch of stuff," says Sullivan. "That brought us symmetric multi-processing to begin with, and that scales up to an architecture that supports 64 cores. We have the head space; it's just a matter of doing it."
While the trends all look good for Windows Phone right now, the landscape recently experienced a quake that we don't yet know the full effects of: Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia's hardware business. The deal hasn't been finalized yet, but are the likes of HTC, Huawei and Samsung as excited about making Windows Phones as they were a month ago?
"If we can accelerate the platform and grow the buesiness, that's going to be good for anybody who's in that business. We're absolutely committed to a third-party hardware ecosystem for our platform, and part of the rationale in the acquisition was to make it better [for them]."
Think Windows Phone can keep the momentum going for the long haul? Let us know your thoughts on the mobile platform war in the comments.
Images: Fred Dufour/AFP/Getty Images, Microsoft