New images of a Nokia Lumia 800 handset running on wpbench revealed a list of Greek names for what we can only assume are codenames for upcoming Windows Phone-powered Nokia handsets. Shared by the My Nokia Blog, the images came from a user running the Windows Phone 7 benchmark on his Lumia 800. The names include Nokia PureLambda, Nokia Phi, Nokia Pure Phi and Nokia Alpha.
Windows Phone fans currently face a limited selection of new devices, however a few companies, including Samsung, continue to release new offerings powered by Microsoft's mobile OS. Electronista checked out Samsung's Focus 2 earlier this month at CTIA's spring conference for a quick hands-on preview, however our full review takes a closer look at the latest budget-priced Windows Phone offering to arrive at AT&T.
AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega suggests the Windows Phone platform may see a significant boost from Microsoft's Windows 8 OS when it arrives on the market. Speaking at the JP Morgan technology conference, the executive noted that he was "very upbeat about what they are bringing to the market."
The burgeoning Chinese smartphone market stands to earn companies billions of dollars in coming years. Though this has not been independently confirmed, Microsoft now claims that Windows Phone has edged out the iPhone with a seven percent share compared to Apple's six percent, despite Apple's emphasis on the emerging market.
Microsoft filed a recently uncovered patent application in November 2010 for a service allowing users to transfer apps and app data between devices, even if those devices run on different operating systems. The technology could prove to be a selling point as Microsoft looks to draw users away from iOS and Android.
Fresh off the announcement of its new mobile phone, Chinese search company Baidu has told TechCrunch that it has big plans the Baidu Cloud Smart Terminal system that runs its new phone. Baidu wants to see Baidu Cloud make an appearance on all major mobile operating systems, including Windows Phone and iOS.
Voyager Mobile, the new prepaid carrier that was due to launch on Tuesday, has announced it needs to delay the debut due to a malicious network attack on its website. Instead, the service and site will launch in the "very near future," though exactly when this will be remains to be seen. The carrier promises to bring contract-free, all-in plans that start at just $19 per month when users bring their own hardware.
Nokia's Lumia 900 represents the pinnacle of the company's new smartphone strategy, pairing premium components with a unique design and Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system. In our full review, we try to determine if the LTE radio, large display and other high-end features will help Nokia and Microsoft fulfill their dream of finally reestablishing themselves in the US smartphone market.
First introduced at Mobile World Congress, Nokia's Reading app and related e-bookstore for the Windows Phone-powered Lumia range of smartphones will launch in Europe. The two will reach users in France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain, and the UK, PaidContent reported. The idea is to bring local-language e-books to markets that haven't yet seen a widespread adoption of the medium.
Nokia is still in the beginning stages of its smartphone transformation, which focuses on the Windows Phone-equipped Lumia lineup. The Finnish company did not bring any new hardware to CTIA this week, however representatives did allow Electronista to take an early look at several of its Windows Phone apps, including the augmented-reality utility City Lens, that aim to differentiate the Lumia series from other smartphone platforms and other devices in the Windows Phone realm.
Nokia is continuing its push to differentiate its Lumia line of handsets from other manufacturers' Windows Phone offerings, announcing today a range of partnerships with various app makers that will see the Lumia get timed exclusives for several apps. The deals mean that apps like Groupon, AOL Entertainment Hub, and others will, for a limited time after launch, hit the Lumia before coming to any other Windows Phone handsets.
Nokia has just added a beta app to its Windows Phone offerings. Called the Nokia City Lens Augmented Reality Browser, it allows users to point their cameras at a new neighborhood and get information superimposed atop each storefront to see more information. Users can then click on the location to get even more data or walking directions to the spot.
AT&T held a special event in New Orleans to detail its home automation and security system, however the carrier also brought along Samsung's Focus 2. Electronista had a chance to try out the company's latest Windows Phone device, which represents the third model to feature the Focus label and the carrier's first to be equipped with an LTE radio for 4G data speeds.
AT&T will soon begin offering the Samsung Focus 2 handset. Powered by the Windows Phone 7 operating system, it will support AT&T's 4G LTE network and cost just $50 on a two-year contract. The phone otherwise has a 4-inch Super AMOLED touchscreen and a five-megapixel camera out back with a front VGA camera.
The first image of Samsung's upcoming Windows Phone smartphone, the SGH-i667, codenamed Mandel, has shown up on Chinese forum WPXAP. While the model number is shared with the Focus S on AT&T, the Mandel supports LTE networks, as revealed by FCC testing in March. It is also likely to arrive at AT&T, though exactly when isn't known.
Rumors of the demise of LG's Windows Phone 7 line of handsets appear to have been greatly exaggerated. Today, the Korean handset maker, in an interview with Pocket-lint, reaffirmed its commitment to Microsoft's current phone platform, walking back on some statements that appeared in the press yesterday.
Microsoft is taking a harder stance against app developers violating the rules in its Windows Phone Marketplace. In a recent blog post, the Windows Phone team spells out new changes to developer and app policies aimed at cutting down on copyright infringement and clutter in the app store.
LG isn't looking to produce another Windows Phone in the near future, a spokesman said Monday. While there would still be development, the representative wanted to minimize expectations of anything imminent when asked by the Korea Herald. The Microsoft platform's low market share was put at fault as likely making it difficult to justify going beyond Android.
Habitual smartphone experimenter Steve Wozniak in a podcast (embedded below) gave strong compliments to Windows Phone. Having picked up a Lumia 900 weeks earlier, the Apple co-founder still picked the iPhone as his favorite but argued to aNewDomain that Windows Phone was better than any Android phone. It had the "most beautiful" visual experience of any platform, Wozniak said, and its presentation made him feel like he was "with a friend, not a tool."
Nokia faced its third credit rating cut in a month on Friday in signs of a further confidence problem. Standard & Poor dropped Nokia's rating to junk status based on a shortfall in cash strength. While its existing cash was a "positive factor," the firm said, it expected the phone designer's cash to drop from a predicted 4.9 billion euros ($6.5 billion) to no more than four million euros ($5.3 billion).
Samsung has achieved a milestone in toppling Nokia for the crown of top cellphone maker, Strategy Analytics estimated in a new study. Using unofficial figures for Samsung as well as official data elsewhere, it had Samsung leading with 93.5 million cellphones sold, or 25.4 percent of the entire space. Nokia's rapid decline in smartphones saw it tumble from 108.5 million phones at the start of 2011 to 82.7 million a year later, or 22.5 percent.
Former Nokia and later Symbian Foundation executive Lee Williams in an interview Wednesday blamed current CEO Stephen Elop for the company's current troubles. The former Symbian S60 Senior VP told CNET that Elop had "no overarching vision," allegedly unlike his predecessors. Before him, Nokia was purportedly always focused on the future and would "never give up" its stance as the lead.
Chinese handset manufacturer ZTE and Virgin Media are teaming up to launch the ZTE Tania in the United Kingdom. The Tania, set for a May UK launch, is ZTE's first Windows Phone 7 device. At launch, the Tania will be available for £199 on pay as you go with Virgin, or customers can pick it up for £17.99 a month on a 24 month contract.
French music streaming service Deezer on Wednesday spread its service Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The service has more than 20 million users worldwide and offers about 15 million tracks from 2,000 music labels, including majors Universal, Warner, Sony, and EMI. It's browser-based, though mobile listening options exist through Android, iOS, and Windows Phone apps.
Microsoft's restarted music plans will see them escape the platform and feature limits of the Zune Music Marketplace, according to new leaks. Tipsters for The Verge had the service, codenamed Woodstock, being available not just to Windows, Windows Phone, and Xbox users, but Android and iOS as well. It would also be playable on the web, although without needing a plugin.
Should rumors prove accurate, Microsoft will soon have a new OEM partner offering Windows Phone 8 handsets and Windows 8 tablet products. Chinese smartphone giant Huawei is reportedly looking to debut new phones and tablets running Microsoft's upcoming system by the end of the year.
Microsoft in an update instituted two major changes in how Windows Phone owners would get apps. It was now planning to pull the Windows Phone Marketplace option from the Zune desktop app on Windows PCs. Customers now had to either browse the web store, and push apps to their device, or else shop directly from the phone.
Nokia's emphasis on color for the Lumia 900 may be driving strong sales at the company along with leading to more colors. Both online checks at AT&T and new verifications by CNET on the retail situation have confirmed that, while all examples were in high demand, the cyan and new white versions were "especially difficult to find," according to an AT&T spokesperson. Shipments were going out daily, but AT&T couldn't say when it would have consistent supply.
Facebook will soon be releasing a new version of its app for Windows Phone, according to a post from the Facebook for Windows Phone team. The update will add a Metro flair to the app and implement a number of new features. Some of these features were popular requests among Windows Phone users, while others are late-arriving implementations of common Facebook features.
Updates for the Nokia Lumia 710 and Chinese market-specific 800c have been spotted on Navifirm, allowing upgrades to the variant of Windows Phone 7.5 (WP7.5) known as Tango. The upgrades are only currently available in China, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Vietnam.
Smartphones have broken the reign of the traditional Japanese cellphone for the first time, comScore found late Monday. As of February, smartphones were overall more popular than keitais, the often feature-heavy but complicated basic phones that have dominated Japanese use for more than a decade. Local brands like Sharp still led at 23.5 percent, but they were either flat or down slightly as frequently foreign smartphone brands took hold.
The total mobile user base is significantly less oriented towards Android than phone market share would suggest, according to research. An InMobi study saw iOS extend a slight lead in North America based on ad impressions, going from an 0.6-point lead at 33.1 percent in the fall to a 2.7-point gap at 36.8 percent in the winter. It had Apple, not Google, growing faster for at least the past several months.
Less than a week after Microsoft revamped its SkyDrive cloud storage service, the company has released an update to its SkyDrive mobile app for Windows Phone. Users can now manage permissions for folders, providing access control for individual folders or files. The system takes advantage of the People Hub for quick sharing with contacts.
Mobile security firm NQ Mobile scored a coup Monday after it landed ex-Windows Phone marketing GM Gavin Kim. He would now be NQ Mobile's Chief Product Officer, a position created with Kim in mind. The role would let him both lead some aspects of development as well as establish "strategic partnerships."
Skype picked an uncommon weekend introduction to post the finished version of its VoIP app for Windows Phone devices (Windows Phone Marketplace). The new version from Microsoft's recent acquisition adds some of the core features that had been missing in a preview version from February, including Skype Out calls to landlines, the ability to add and find contacts, and numerous improvements to performance. It could already make typical Skype-to-Skype calls and chats in an interface tailored to Windows Phone's Metro interface.
White models of the Nokia Lumia 900 are now available in AT&T stores, according to photos posted by Mobility Digest . The white version of Nokia's flagship Windows Phone 7 smartphone, previously revealed in an accidental post on the company's Facebook page, arrives two days prior to that model's intended April 22 release.
In a stylish new promo video (below), Nokia has chosen to show the photo and video capturing prowess of its 41-megapixel 808 PureView smartphone. Instead of simply recording the phone at work, the video itself was shot entirely using the 808, taking advantage of its 41-megapixel resolution to zoom in and out of scenes without losing detail.
NVIDIA helped validate some leaks regarding its future Tegra roadmap in a presentation at HTC's Freqs event in Seattle on Thursday. Along with the known Wayne, its codename for Tegra 4, it also mentioned a Tegra 3+. What it would entail wasn't mentioned, but the name implied a clock speed boost or other minor updates that wouldn't fundamentally rework the quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 chip.
Microsoft saw its Windows unit partly return to form on Thursday as it once again reported gains. Following Windows division losses in the fall, the group has seen its revenue go up four percent to just over $4.6 billion. The segment succeeded mostly on the back of business desktops and infrastructure, Microsoft said, suggesting that home users and pro notebooks were still struggling.
Analysts at Citigroup and Piper Jaffray helped trigger stock market jitters on Thursday over the implications of LTE chip supply as it relates to Apple. Following Qualcomm statements after its quarterly results that there was a supply shortage of its 28 nanometer chips made at TSMC, Citi's Glen Yeung and Piper's Gene Munster both suggested that was a direct sign of Apple choosing a 28nm MSM9615 cellular chipset for its next iPhone. To Yeung, a ramp down in existing 45nm parts combined with the shortage was a sign Apple was switching production and lowering orders of older hardware as it got ready to produce the new.
As part of the call discussing its fiscal results, Verizon on Thursday both narrowed down its shared data plan schedule and reiterated that it was still interested in Windows Phone. The shared data would be coming in mid-summer, CFO Fran Shammo said. The tier is expected to significantly reduce the cost of having more than one smartphone in a family.
Microsoft Evangelist Nuno Silva has corrected his comments on upgrading devices from Windows Phone 7 to Windows Phone 8. Previously, Silva said in a video interview that all Windows Phone Devices, even first generation models, would get Window Phone 8. He claims to have "confused app compatibility with phone updatability", giving the wrong impression.
Nokia saw its dire quarterly results joined by both an executive shift and a key phone launch. The company's executive VP of sales, Colin Giles, will leave as of June 30. The exit gave the company a chance to simplify its structure, as all its regional senior VPs would now talk directly to the executive of Markets, VP Niklas Savander.
Windows Phone marketplace application Touchpad Free and its paid counterpart by Nullar Game Studio have been upgraded. The prior version turned a Windows Phone into a wireless but simple two-button trackpad; the new v2.8.0 adds two-finger scroll and Windows 8 gesture support.
Best Buy and Microsoft have teamed up on a Behind the Tiles series of events to spur on Windows Phone sales that borrow a handful of Apple cues. Running from Thursday to as late as May 17, some stores will be holding workshops that both let users try the overall lineup and undertake a "deep dive" into the Lumia 900 with an instructor. The events will be catered, and even developers and enterprise users will get the "latest info," Microsoft said.
Microsoft may soon provide some of the first real details of Windows Phone 8 (Apollo), including signs that it will keep or even expand its flexibility. An upcoming Reading, UK summit whose agenda was caught by NetbookNews presented a possibly complete picture of Windows Phone 8's feature set and app support with an eye towards supporting carriers. Among them was mention of "customization & differentiation opportunities," suggesting carriers and hardware makers would still have some opportunity to tailor the software to their own ends.
Windows Phone saw mixed performance Wednesday as talk of strong sales was dampened by an abrupt executive departure. Nokia briefed AllThingsD that the Lumia 900's demand was still high and it was producing phones "as quickly as possible" to meet demand. Very few were opting to replace their phones to solve the missing data bug and were instead updating firmware, suggesting that the shipments weren't replacement units.
(Update: no?) Talk of Windows Phone 8, or Apollo, dropping backwards compatibility with existing phones may be false. A video interview (below) with Microsoft Evangelist Nuno Silva posted by Portugese site Zwame suggested that "all" Windows Phone devices, even from the first generation, would get the next version of the mobile OS. He was explicit in mentioning early models, such as the LG Optimus 7 and Samsung Omnia 7, as qualifying.
A quartet of European carriers' executives have leaked word that Nokia's Lumia line still wasn't manifesting significant sales. Keeping the sources anonymous out of client sensitivity, Reuters understood that stores rarely if ever had customers explicitly ask for a Windows Phone, or else were being steered towards Android or iPhones like they are in the US. Carriers were urging Microsoft and Nokia to either discount the phones more heavily or put in heavy marketing, neither of which they were seeing.
Moody's on Monday downgraded Nokia's debt rating a level from Baa2 to Baa3. The credit rating giant based its decision on Nokia's lowered outlook and saw it as a reflection of longer-term, more systemic issues. The company was being pinched both at the low end, by a wave of very cheap phones and Chinese discounts, and at the high end by a "more challenging" transition where Symbian was falling faster than Windows Phone could replace it.
