Still playing catch up to dominant mobile operating systems like iOS and Android, Microsoft was betting big on its new Windows Phone 8 OS. Bad News: According to numerous reports, Windows Phone 8 is full of bugs. Users are reporting random reboots, screen freezing, and poor battery life on Windows Phone 8 smartphones like HTC's Windows Phone 8X and Nokia's Lumia 920.

The first buyers of Microsoft's flagship Windows Phone 8 smartphones are complaining of a number of issues. Microsoft and Nokia's support forums are overflowing with comments from irate consumers. Most of the complaints have been seen with the Windows Phone 8X and the Nokia Lumia 920.

The main issue plaguing the HTC Windows Phone 8x looks to be random rebooting.

"Had no reboots today," wrote one member of the Windows Phone Central forum. "Then opened the FB app and half an hour later got a reboot."

A forum member in Prague wrote that he experienced two random reboots after owning his HTC handset for only three days. "Quite annoying," he noted.

HTC has not commented on the matter, but one of the forum members in contact with the company's support team wrote that he believed the team considered an urgent fix was in order.

At least one forum member reported that the rebooting problem wasn't limited to phones running Windows Phone 8. "I'm still on a WP7 handset and had a brutal number of reboots over the weekend," wrote the user.

Similar complaints appeared on Microsoft's Windows Phone community forum.

"It was fine for the first week, but is now rebooting several times a day," a forum member wrote of his HTC handset. "Every time so far (that I've noticed) has been when it's sitting on my desk doing nothing."

Another irate consumer, this time of the HTC 8X said that the smartphone worked fine for a couple of days and then he had to reboot the device for a couple of times in a few hours.

"I have a few friends who are having problems with both the Lumia 920 and HTC 8X and they are working fine without any hiccups. This suggests that the issue is more related to a select few handsets which have been purchased in the US," posited PC-Tablet.com.

Though HTC has not issued any statement regarding the bugs, Nokia has acknowledged that it received a small number of complaints and is investigating the issues. In a statement issued to ZDNet, Microsoft said: "We are currently investigating reports of these incidents."

For the Lumia 920, random freezes appear to be a more commonly reported issue. Some users have reported that freezing appears to happen when using Bluetooth peripherals in conjunction with the phone, and at least one customer said their 920 locked up within 10 minutes of leaving the AT&T store on launch day.

Some Lumia 920 users have also noted that their phone became "bricked" when attempting a factory reboot, meaning it would not actually restart at all.

Users are attempting various fixes on their handsets with varying degrees of success. Some are uninstalling the Facebook app, or the Skype preview app; one owner suggests the e-mail problem may be related to a merging of Hotmail and Skype contacts, and others suggest apps like Words with Friends or even possibly the camera function on either device.

Others have disabled the tap-to-send near field communication (NFC) feature on the 920, which appears to improve battery life.

Some users have tried wiping their device clean. The wiping route appears to have solved the e-mail problem for some, while others are stuck on the opening screen. At least one user also reported a reboot problem with a Windows Phone 7 device, but most complaints concern Phone 8.

While no doubt frustrating for users, these are the kind of bugs that generally accompany rolling out a new OS. Similarly, iOS was buggy when Apple debuted it in September, and as recently as Nov. 19 Google was scrambling to fix similar issues (random rebooting and quickly draining battery life) with its new OS, Android 4.2.

Nokia Lumia 920

As early reviews for the Lumia 920 roll in, this looks to be one of the instances where much of the hype is actually true. Reviewers especially loved the phone's new PureView camera technology, which some said was even better than the camera on Apple's iPhone 5. The Lumia 920's crisp display, and unique design characteristics also wowed, while the lack of apps in Microsoft's catalogue, and bulky size of the device tended to disappoint. 

Nokia's Lumia 920 comes equipped with a dual-core Snapdragon S4 at 1.5GHz, 1GB of RAM, a 4.5-inch IPS LCD with a 1280x768 resoultion (332 ppi), an 8.7 megapixel camera at the back (1.3 megapixel at the front), NFC and too much more to mention.

The Lumia 920 features a 4.5-inch PureMotion HD+ ClearBlack display with Gorilla Glass and a touch-screen that's so sensitive it can be used while wearing gloves and responds to the touch of fingernails. Its 8.7-megapixel (MP) camera features floating lens technology said to enable great shots even in low light, when the shutter remains open longer, by eliminating the blur from subtle hand movements.

According to Nokia, the camera can take in five times the light of a typical smartphone.

HTC Windows Phone 8X

HTC's Windows Phone 8X features the same SoC as the Nokia Lumia 820, and with a screen-size of 4.3-inch with a 1280x720 resolution, we have a market-leading ppi of 341 (it could be argued, and rightfully so, that over 300 the differences are difficult to appreciate without the use of a magnifying glass). This phone is also NFC-capable, and offers an 8 megapixel camera at the back and a surprising 2.1 megapixel offering at the front.

Jeff Bradley, AT&T senior vice president of devices and developer services, called AT&T's lineup of Microsoft-running smartphones "the best designs for the fantastic experience of Windows Phone 8."

The HTC 8X, introduced in New York two weeks after the Lumias, features a 4.3-inch 720p high-definition display, a front-facing 2.1MP camera said to be "more than an afterthought," as most front-facing cameras are, and a rear-facing 8MP camera with an f/2.0 aperture and an ultra-wide lens, capable of capturing the faces of four people at once when held in self-portrait mode.

The 8X costs $100 to $200 with a two-year contract from AT&T, T-Mobile or Verizon Wireless, depending on color, capacities and carrier.

Verizon also plans to carry the 8X for $199 on a two-year contract by Thanksgiving. The phone will come in blue, red, and black.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, introducing the 8X alongside HTC CEO Peter Chou, said it was a "magically thin" handset with a "beautiful design at the heart of both the hardware and the software." He added, "This is the first phone to, from the inside out, put people first."

AT&T is exclusively offering an 8GB version of the HTC phone in California Blue and a shade of yellow called Limelight for $99.99.