It’s been just a few days since Samsung announced the latest addition to its Windows Phone line-up, the Focus 2, destined for the US. But the company is keen to share some love with other markets too, and has just announced another new Windows Phone, the Omnia M.
Don’t get too excited though – this isn’t a new flagship by any means. Although there’s a 4.0” Super AMOLED display, the rest of the specs are decidedly low-end. The device includes a miserly 4GB of storage and a meagre 384MB of RAM. There’s also a 1GHz processor of unspecified origin, along with a 5MP rear camera with LED flash, and a VGA front-facing cam, for use with services such as Skype, Tango or Samsung’s own ChatON service.
Last month, we reported that Samsung apparently has three new Windows Phones due for release this year. Two of those are believed to be Windows Phone 8 handsets, and are expected much later in the year, but the third device was said to be the SGH-i667, known also by its development codename, ‘Mandel'.
We've known about this device for a while, as it's occasionally popped up in benchmarks, analytics and good ol' fashioned rumours over the last few months. But the new handset has finally been caught on camera by wpxap.com (via WPCentral).
On Sunday, Microsoft released the first non-beta public version of its Skype app for Windows Phone users. However, a list of known issues for the app revealed that it is not supposed to work on Windows Phone units with less than 512 MB of on board memory. That meant that, in theory, some Windows Phone devices with just 256 MB of memory, including the recently announced Nokia Lumia 610, shouldn't be able to run the Skype 1.0 app.
However, that's not really the case, at least according to Nokia. In a statement to Engadget, the company announced that it had "some challenges early on" in getting the Skype app to work with the low memory on board the Lumia 610. However, it now reveals that the app will in fact run on the device. The smartphone should be released in parts of Asia by the end of April. The announcement didn't go into detail about what sort of "challenges" Nokia has to deal with to get the Skype app running.
Earlier this month, Google released a big update to its previously released Windows Phone search app, adding new features. At the moment, it's the only app made by Google that support's Microsoft's mobile OS. However, it looks like that situation could change sometime in the near future.
Stefan Keuchel, an official Google PR rep for Germany, posted a message on his German language Twitter account, (via WPCentral.com) that in basic translated terms says that a Google+ app for Windows Phone devices is in the works. Unfortunately, there's no specific release date yet.
Nokia impressed a lot of people at last week’s Mobile World Congress when it launched its new 808 PureView handset, packing a whopping 41MP camera; indeed, that handset went on to scoop the week’s biggest accolade, winning the award for ‘Best New Mobile Handset, Device Or Tablet’.
The big disappointment for some was that the 808 runs the Nokia Belle operating system (formerly Symbian Belle), rather than the Windows Phone OS found in the company’s Lumia device family. It seems that the decision was made to release the device with Belle, as that was the platform on which the handset’s impressive PureView technology was developed over the course of five long years.
LG is preparing to launch a Windows Phone-based device in the near future. It's been called the LG Fantasy in some online reports and the LG Miracle in others. This weekend, some new screenshots of a prototype version of the new smartphone found their way onto the Internet. The shots were first posted on a Romanian online trading site. That site quickly took them down but GSMArena.com managed to save them.
The screenshots show that this smartphone is indeed the same one that has been pictured in previous photo leaks. However the final name of the smartphone is still in question. It remains unclear if LG will use the Fantasy or the Miracle name for this device or perhaps use yet another label for the smartphone.
Microsoft clearly wants to get the word out about its Windows Phone devices. The mobile operating system, despite solid reviews, is still not getting much love from the general public in terms of sales. However, the company has been trying to do some out-of-the-box marketing for Windows Phone such as the recent "Smoked by Windows Phone" campaigns and more recently the Droid Rage Twitter campaign.
Now Microsoft is asking for Windows Phone fans for their marketing and PR ideas. In a post on the official Windows Phone web site, it states, "We’re looking for ad concepts, contest ideas, social media campaigns, and whatever other wacky but worthwhile ideas you can up with ..."
Before the end of this year, we should see three different flavors of Windows Phone being delivered to devices, recent reports suggest.
First of them will be Tango, which is said to arrive in the March-April timeframe, and which should bring support for 120 languages and for entry-level hardware into the mix.
Next, we’ll see Tango 2 being released on devices sometime in mid-2012, yet info on what it will bring new to the ecosystem hasn’t been unveiled as of yet.
Microsoft is testing out a Skype application for Windows Phone that could make its debut by the end of next month.
That's according to the Verge, which reported today that the app would have a Metro UI-style look, keeping it consistent with the rest of the Windows Phone user interface.
This version of Skype reportedly will be a standalone app when it launches and be integrated into the People Hub part of the phone with the release of Windows Phone 8. Skype could be introduced as early as Mobile World Congress, which begins in the last week of February.
Windows Phone 8 is an inevitability, but it has been one that many users have been unsure of. Due to the probable change to the core of the operating system, there have been doubts of whether it will remain cross-compatible with apps. A tweet from Microsoft's Director of Developer Experience has confirmed it, as WPCentral confirms.
For anyone who missed the Mix11 keynote, some videos of it have been preserved here. Brandon Watson is Microsoft's Director of Developer Experience for Windows Phone, so his response can be taken to be the truth. Speaking technically however, it is unclear how Microsoft plan to make it work. If Windows Phone 8 boasts a higher resolution it will be odd to see how apps work, and whether they zoom in to be used or not. That in itself could be problematic for developers of Windows Phone 7 apps.
Date: February 2, 2012
Place: Kiev, Radishcheva street 10/14, Building B, business center, "Irv" level -1 (classroom, "Parthenon")
Speaker: Alexander Krakovetskiy - the developer, regional director of Microsoft, ASP.NET MVP, the leader of the Vinnitsa Microsoft User Group
Attendees of the seminar will be able to obtain information about the ecosystem Windows Phone, the design language of Metro, the main features of the platform, as well as ask questions.
Objectives: To give students an overview of the platform, Windows Phone.
Nokia's re-entry into the smartphone market with its Lumia line of smartphones is powered, as most of you know, by Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system. Now a new study by iSuppli claims that sales of Nokia's phones could cause Windows Phone to overtake Apple and its iOS-iPhone devices by 2015.
The study says their predictions are due in part to the upcoming launch of the Lumia 900 smartphone. iSuppli states, "The Lumia 900’s flashy feature set, along with Nokia’s strategy for selling the product, shows that the company is targeting the North American region, a market that, even in the height of Nokia’s dominance, historically had been an Achilles’ heel for the company."
South Korean mobile phone maker Samsung is reportedly getting ready to bring to the market in Europe new devices running under Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system.
In fall last year, the handset vendor unveiled to the world two new Windows Phone devices, the Focus S and Focus Flash, both of which landed on shelves in the United States via wireless carrier AT&T.
Apparently, only Focus Flash is set to become available in Europe, marketed as Omnia W, mainly due to the striking hardware resemblance between Focus S and Galaxy S II (even if the latter runs under Google’s Android operating system).
Microsoft has seen a rapid growth of applications that are being submitted to the Windows Phone Marketplace, for example late in December the number of apps for Windows Phone users reached the 50,000 mark. Now the official Windows Phone Developers blog is reporting that Microsoft will soon make the Windows Phone Marketplace available in several new countries.
Those countries will include China, which is the second biggest smartphone audience in the world next to the US. The other countries that will be added are Argentina, Indonesia, Malaysia, Peru and the Philippines. In all, 41 countries will have access to the Windows Phone Marketplace apps when those additional territories are added.
HTC has been one of the biggest, if not the biggest, hardware supporters of Microsoft's Windows Phone mobile operating system. The company released two new Windows Phone-based devices in 2011, the HTC Titan and the HTC Radar. Now the web site PocketNow.com has posted up what it claims to be a leaked picture of the next HTC Windows Phone product, the HTC Radiant.
The case of the new phone seems to be similar to that of the HTC Titan but as the article states, the front side of the HTC Radiant has a large front facing camera lens. The back side of the phone shows that the dual-LED flash has been moved to the right side of the camera compared to the Titan.
If you are a mobile application developer, chances are you have heard of PhoneGap. If not, PhoneGap is the only open sourced mobile framework that supports 7 different platforms. In a nutshell, it makes coding your application on all of the major mobile platforms a much simpler process.
If you have been using PhoneGap and have been waiting for it to fully support Windows Phone, today is your lucky day as version 1.3 has rolled out, via Port 25. This is good news not only for developers but also users of Windows Phone as it is now easier for developers to push applications to that platform. You can see in the chart below all of PhoneGap's support.
Yesterday Chinese company Lenovo announced its new lineup of Android smartphones and tablets, which are mostly aimed at the Chinese market.
During the launch event, Lenovo’s Product Manager, Chen Yue, confirmed the company’s plans to release a Windows Phone device in the second half of next year.
An alleged Lenovo Windows Phone was pictured in the wild back in October, but no other details on the smartphone’s specs sheet were unveiled at that time.
It's a feat no less than impressive. Microsoft announced today that the Dell Venue Pro is now receiving the Windows Phone 7 Mango update via Zune. What they didn't announce, is that the release on that device marks all devices being officially updated to Windows Phone Mango.
The only other Mobile OS developer that's been able to do a similar feat of strength is Apple, however they're only pushing the software to devices they've made, making the success of the Windows Phone rollout even more impressive.
Russian Windows Phone users won't be enjoying the integration with Bing that most end users currently experience; Microsoft has agreed to replace their search engine with Yandex on Russian devices, Yandex announced in a recent press release.
Yandex is the search engine to beat in Russia, where it controls almost half of the market, well ahead of Google. Yandex will be the default search engine on Samsung's Omnia W and Nokia's Lumia series. HTC is planning to issue an update to apply Yandex to their phones.
Microsoft continues to gain more applications for users of its Windows Phone 7-based smartphones to download. According to a study done by AllaboutWindowsPhone.com, the Windows Phone Marketplace is now home to over 40,000 Windows Phone applications. That's compared to 35,000 apps just a month ago and 30,000 applications in the store in August 2011.
The study claims that 165 new applications are being added every day with 15 percent of them being games in the last 30. The vast majority of applications, 68 percent, are free to download. Nine percent are paid with some sort of free trial program while the other 23 percent are paid apps. Assuming the submissions rates don't change, Windows Phone Marketplace is set to reach the 50,000 application mark by January 2012.
One of the appealing features that Nokia's new Windows Phone devices come to the market with is Nokia Drive, which spells navigation powered by Nokia Maps.
Nokia's GPS navigation is one of the best there is when it comes to such service on mobile phones, yet it still lacks some important features, such as the ability to use it when offline.
At the moment, users need to have an Internet connection when in need of routing, although the app allows them to download regions to the local storage. However, that should change in the near future, it seems.
One of the problems we've seen with Windows Phone devices thus far is that if you've seen one Windows Phone, you've basically seen them all. After all, how much can you do when all the phones feature the same basic specifications and are dominated by a similar touchscreen. The answer usually is "not much."
Or so we thought... Nokia has proven to the industry that it can do Windows Phone better than the competition. Its Lumia 800 features one of the best hardware designs found on a smartphone today -- on any platform -- it also comes bundled with Nokia-developed software that makes the company look like they've been writing Windows Phone apps for years. In short, it's a fantastic smartphone that truly takes Windows Phone to the next level.
Date: November 24, 2011
Place: Kiev, Business Center Eurasia, 4th Floor Conference Room «Microsoft Ukraine", ul. Zhilyans'ka, 75
Will be considered the main features of the updated platform: multitasking, better development tools, etc. ..
Program
09:00-09:30
Registration
09:30-10:30
Developing applications for Windows Phone 7.5, development tools,
Andrei Terekhov, director of strategic technologies, Microsoft Ukraine
Microsoft is currently sending out Windows Phone devices to developers interested in coming up with applications for the company's mobile platform.
The software giant promised these devices a while ago, and they were spotted recently getting ready to take off.
Apparently, the first of them have already arrived on developers' hands, so that they can start testing applications on real devices, and not on the simulator.
Qualcomm’s reign on Windows Phone chipsets is soon to end, as ST-Ericsson have teamed up with Nokia to deliver new Windows Phones with their NovaThor platform on the inside. ST-Ericsson claim that their technology would help bring WP devices to new markets and price points.
As The Verge points out, the NovaThor line-up currently consist only of dual-core chipsets, which don’t exactly fit with the statement that they will be bringing it to new price points. The ST-Ericsson chips will no doubt have to go head-to-head with Qualcomm’s own Snapdragon series three chips that have already presented themselves in several Android devices, such as the HTC Sensation.
With the new Mango update to Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system now widely available, it looks like we will be getting an updated Mango-based version of the Windows Phone 7 Facebook app. Pocket-Lint.com reports that during Nokia World on Tuesday, it was revealed that the Mango-based Facebook app should be released sometime next week.
The cool thing about the Mango edition of Facebook is that users will have the ability to "deep link" into the app. No, it's not a kinky cyber sex act, it simply means that you will be able to see your Facebook messages and your News Feed on the homepage of your Windows Phone 7 smartphone. So you will be able to quickly see if someone gives you an unwanted Mafia Wars 2 invitation.
A new flavor of the AccuWeather application is now available for download via the Windows Phone Marketplace, offering support for the latest flavor of Microsoft's mobile operating system, called Mango.
The new software release comes with various enhancements included inside, as well as with a series of tweaks aimed at enabling it to take advantage of new Windows Phone 7.5 features.
The app will offer current conditions for places that users search for on Bing, while being capable of offering weather info in languages that include English, French, Italian, German or Spanish, so that they would match phone’s language setting.
A new flavor of HoloPhone3D is now available for download for the owners of handsets running under Windows Phone, namely version 1.5, which appealing new features included inside, such as 23 interactive holograms.
The app delivers a 3D hologram experience on handsets running under Microsoft's platform, all available for only $0.99 (around 0.75 Euros). A free trial with 4 holograms is also available.
The features list of the new application release includes great 3D graphics rendered in smooth 30 fps, impressive lighting and shadows, and amazing physics environments with full multi-touch support.
Windows Phone Mango, the new version of Microsoft's mobile operating system, has been available only for a few days, yet users who already have it on their devices can enjoy a number of over 1,000 applications optimized for them.
Microsoft's Joe Belfiore himself confirmed the milestone via Twitter: “Devs are on a roll! The marketplace already has more than 1000 apps that are optimized for Mango. Go Devs! Keep it up!”
The Windows Phone 7.1 SDK was made available for download a few months ago, and app builders already took their time to release software for the new OS version.
Samsung Omnia W is no news for Windows Phone fans who are anxiously waiting for the highly anticipated Mango-based devices that are expected to be launched in the next weeks.
Although Samsung said in a statement that it will launch a new Windows Phone Mango smartphone next month, the Korean handset manufacturer confirmed today that the Omnia W will be available in Italy by the end of October.
According to Samsung, the smartphone will be launched in other European countries, as well as global markets, soon after the Italian launch.
