Displaying items by tag: Windows Phone 8

After the Samsung commercial in which they stated that the next great thing is already here, referring to their Galaxy S3 and where they listed the features they have comparing to the much shorter iPhone 5's list, Nokia has released their own commercial. In this commercial they mock the Apple's device. They have also released a video advertisement on YouTube that features the iPhone 5 and their new Lumia 920. The movie does not include any dialog but it's pretty clear what the message is.

As expected HTC presented their Windows Phone 8 devices yesterday. Windows Phone 8X and 8S will both be branded as Microsoft Signature Windows Phones. The 8X model will feature a 4.3-inch Super LCD II display with 720p resolution, a 1.5 GHz dual core Snapdragon processor and 1GB of RAM. As with most smartphones these days the 8x will have an 8 Mpix rear camera with BSI sensor and LED flash, while the front will be 2.1 Mpix with the ability to record 1080p HD video. A nice thing to know is that unlike Nokia's new phones the 8X can record video with stereo sound. The 8x will also have Gorilla Glass and optical lamination touchscreen. Storage capacity is 16GB which cannot be expanded with microSD cards. NFC, WiFi a/b/g/n and LTE (NA only) or HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (EMEA) are also supported. To take care of sound they brought in Beats Audio that gives the phone decent multimedia boost.

HTC has been sending out invites for their presentation happening tomorrow. A few weeks ago they were pretty mysterious about whole thing. There have been much speculation about what will they release and the current consensus is a new Windows 8 devices. Today they decided to give a hint via their Facebook page, in the form of a picture that shows what appears to be a corner of the device they will announce. It is possible the device could be The HTC 8x a.k.a. HTC Accord. We have had a few leaks on this new device with several pictures, but nothing is yet confirmed.

It looks like we will have the Instagram app on new Windows Phone 8 devices. The Famous Photo editing and sharing application has recently been purchased by Facebook and this is could be a sign that they are keeping their independency. The app is available for both Android and iOS for free currently and according to multiple sources it should be coming to new the Windows platform by the end of the year. The interesting thing is that the app is apparently produced by Microsoft. The main reason for it is that the Instagram team doesn’t feel that their time and work is worth producing app for this struggling mobile OS.

For quite some time Nokia was in a near death state and it was harder to believe with every moment that they were able to get out of despair. With or without WP8 people simply lost trust in the company. The first results of the Nokia and Microsoft partnership were the Lumia 800 and 710 which came at the end of 2011 beginning of 2012. They came with new Windows Phone 7 and failed pretty hard. They just couldn’t find customers with the competition from iOS and Android devices. To make it easier for you to get perspective, Nokia sales were around 10 times lower than iPhone's. That was a huge slap in the face to both Nokia and Microsoft. Today they presented us two new Lumias; the 920 and 820 models. These two phones could be what Nokia needs to come back from the dead, but if things don’t go as planned we just can’t see what else could save them.

Since practically every single smartphone powerhouse has announced their big events, HTC just had to join the masses. They have decided to keep everything veiled by mystery, but some rumors are that it could include Windows Phone 8. The event will take place in New York City starting at 11:30 AM EST. The announcement states “Join HTC to see  what's next”, and if rumors of a WP8 device are true they could fall in the shadow of Nokia’s new Lumia devices that will be presented tomorrow, also in New York. There are three HTC devices that are expected to be revealed, from entry-level to new flagship range.

Despite Nokia's failure with Ovi Music Unlimited they have decided to give their music streaming aspirations a second chance, so Lumia users will be able to listen streaming music for free. The service was available in Europe since last year and now it will be available in US too. The music service will be completely ad-free, and music will be picked and kept up to date by an expert team of US musicologists. It will offer 150 exclusive playlists so everyone will find something they like. This announcement comes days before they will have news event with Microsoft in which they are expected to launch one or more WP8 smartphones.

After we announced few days ago that Nokia will be launching its Apollo series, featuring “Arrow”, “Phi” and “Atlas” models, today we have the first leaked photos of Arrow. The Nokia Lumia 820, should be a mid-range device that will run Windows Phone 8 as we can see in the pictures. These pictures show a fairly slim device with a white casing, one led on the back (probably a flash), and of course there is also a fairly big camera lens. We can also see in the pictures that it has some basic Microsoft software like Internet explorer, Microsoft Office and the Xbox software.

Info on Samsung's Windows Phone 8 smartphones has leaked. So far there are specifications for 2 devices and approximate prices for the European market. It is believed that Samsung’s WP8 devices will be based on Galaxy S III. The lower end of the two that we have information about is the GT-I8370, codename Marco. It will feature 4-inch Super AMOLED display with WVGA resolution (800x480). The main camera is 5 megapixels while the front one will have 2 Mpix. The 8GB of integrated memory will be expandable with microSD memory cards. The processor is a dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon Krait running at 1.5GHz. The Estimated price for the European market is between 350€ and 450€.

It seems that Nokia is taking cues from Microsoft and trying a little trash talk. For those of you that do not know what cue I am talking about here it is one where Microsoft’s president of Windows Phone, Andy Lees talked trash about both the iPhone and Android. He commented that Android simply hits you with “a grid of apps” and that with the iPhone he stated that Siri was not “super useful”. All of this was in a push for Windows Phone 7.x and in the end Lees got a new job inside Microsoft which simply says he is a “president of the Microsoft Corporation”