Since we’ve started hearing some juicey details about Windows Phone 8, I’ve been wondering if the general user interface design might change at all. Windows Phone 7 already is a lot like what we’ve seen of the Windows 8 previews, and it still goes along nicely with the new Xbox 360 dashboard design, but I’m thinking there will be some enhancements for the next version. We can bet that the new “Metro” style live tiles will still be there since those just came to the Xbox 360 and are obviously going to be part of Windows 8, but will they be resizable? Will Windows Phone 8 pan through the live tiles home screen horizontally like Windows 8 and Xbox or will it maintain the vertical scrolling of Windows Phone 7?

What about multi-touch and grouping? It could be pretty useful to be able to pinch your start screen on Windows Phone 8 and zoom out on all of your live tiles… which could be organized into groups.

Since Windows 8 and the latest Xbox 360 dashboard both offer background image themes we can probably expect to see some expansion in that regard on Windows Phone 8. Hopefully we will no longer be limited to a black or white background and a handful of accent color options.

Personally I’d really like to see some 3D perspective effects similar to what the Zune HD had done when pioneering the Metro UI design. On the Zune HD if you tilt the device you’ll see subtle perspective changes in the UI element layers giving you a very slight but captivating three dimensional viewing effect.

What other types of theme capabilities are you hoping to see with Windows Phone 8?