Disregarding promises made a while ago, and turning a deaf ear to widespread online dissent, Microsoft cleared the air regarding Windows 10 Mobile updates for devices launched on WP 8.1, stating its far too short list of eligible models was final. But is it really? No, there’s still no software makeover hope for ultra-low-end Lumias packing a skimpy 512MB RAM, despite one such phone remaining the second most popular of its kind three whole years after its commercial debut. On the bright side, a slightly newer and way more powerful member of the defunct Nokia Lumia family was confirmed to ...

Not exactly an adherent of the “strike while the iron is hot” philosophy, Nokia continues to take its sweet time before unveiling concrete smartphone-designing comeback plans. In the meantime however, the Finnish multinational communications and information technology company didn’t hesitate to spend some of that Microsoft-obtained money on Alcatel-Lucent and Withings. The latter acquisition is expected to close in “early Q3”, subject to “regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions”, and will see the past makers of Asha and Lumia handhelds cough up EUR 170 million ...

Nope, it's necessarily about bringing back the HERE Maps app to Windows Phone. But where is it going to go from there? Well, nowhere, not unless Microsoft helps it along. Or Amazon. Or both. Both Amazon and Microsoft have been working on cloud server agreements with HERE, formerly Nokia-run, now in the hands of a German automaker conglomerate of BMW, Audi and Mercedes. The three plan on producing vehicles with intelligent mapping sensors to relay data about driving speeds, traffic and other bits of road information. Self-driving cars will heavily rely on this data to plan routes and ...

Smartphone software development is a numbers game, and coders want to be sure that the effort they put in to making apps is going to pay off. That's exactly why we talk about the “app gap” between platforms, as devs preferentially prepare software for the most popular operating systems – at the expense of those that don't have quite as large user bases. It turns out this practice is just as important for software maintenance as it is for initial development, and while an app may have once been available for a certain platform, the migration of users to its peers can cause devs to ...

5G is all the darn rage these days. Three of the US's top-tier carriers have committed to developing the technology including Verizon. The company took the time at MWC to promote its efforts in collaboration with Ericsson, Intel, Nokia, Qualcomm and Samsung to develop and test every aspect of its 5G standard with regards to speed, latency and scale. Some goals include bringing gigabit wireless broadband to homes, high-traffic concentrations and commercial purposes like telemedicine and mobile blueprinting. Testing is expected to expand over the course of the year. Verizon expects that it ...

The wound grows deeper from the discharge of the Nokia acquisition. Microsoft, having recently revealed the mobile unit's poor performance and forecast, has announced it would have to lay off "dozens" more jobs separate from the 2,300 eliminations the company took in Finland last year. That round of cuts resulted in the shutting down of an R&D facility in Salo. Finland is just coming out of a protracted economic recession, but will have to continue with a ballooning unemployed rate projected to be near 10 percent within the year. Former CEO Steve Ballmer recently said that Microsoft ...

For a mobile OS iteration that’s been struggling with various bugs and stability issues essentially since its very inception, putting off updates of devices running on older builds more than once, Windows 10 is sure enjoying a healthy growth within its otherwise modest ecosystem. Practically tied with Windows Phone 8.0 for second place in worldwide version popularity last month, W10M surged an additional 0.7 percent between late December and now, while the 8.0 rendition dropped 0.4 percent. That brings the freshest platform flavor very close to a 10 percent piece of the pie, at 9.5, ...

Early last week we got a glimpse at some new Nokia hardware, an apparent prototype of an in-development handset – but just what the heck was it? After all, the presence of what appeared to be a number pad cast serious doubt on this being a new capital-S smartphone. We're still not sure exactly what we're looking at, but at least we've come across a new opportunity to do so, as a fresh set of pics leak of this mysterious phone. Far more than we were able to last time, we're now able to gauge the handset's thickness – and it looks substantial. That physical keypad appears to still be in ...

Nokia had to take a year off of producing smartphones for non-compete reasons from Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia's Devices and Services unit. While we've had to witness the demise of that decision, Nokia has been beefing itself up with the acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent. And if things go according to rumor, the company is supposed to be coming back to the consumer market with three phones, all of them in testing rounds right now. The nexus of the rumors centers around a Weibo look that detailed the back of one of those phones. This iPhone-esque prototype — the device even says it's a ...

Nokia had plans for a smartwatch of its own. We've seen reports, last June, of a device tentatively codenamed Moonraker, but apparently Microsoft has cancelled Nokia's project shortly after acquiring its Devices and Services division. After all, the Microsoft Band 2 was well on its way, and Redmond was busy working on improving its first generation wearable. The images above and below are purportedly snapped off of a Nokia smartwatch prototype (the Moonraker). Not much can be discerned from the stills, but you can instantly spot a minimalistic UI (where shown) that resembles the one ...

Are we ready to hype solidified vaporware just yet? Nope. The Nokia C1 seems to be going through developmental purgatory before our very eyes will rumors, renders and redos from the community that has wanted to see the Finnish property proud again. Eventually, we thought, it'd have to turn up something worth showing off to the public. Supposedly, that was not the C1. The source, which also gave up renders of the C1 running Windows 10 Mobile, said that four (that is, two OS by two size) variants that were being worked on got canceled in favor of a more cutting-edge device. What did Nokia ...

When the Nokia Lumia 530 launched back in July of 2014, it was already an incredibly low-priced smartphone: carriers had it for $80, then $50, and by this time last year retailers were already discounting the phone down to a mere $35. If you thought Microsoft was practically giving the phone away back then, you weren't far off, but it looks like there's still some unsold stock to move, and the companies that have it now are ready to do anything they can to make those sales happen. US Mobile just filled us in on a deal it's about to get going that offers users a Lumia 530 on a no-contract ...

Wow, we've lapsed a good length of time since our last coverage of anything to do with the Lumia 830 and the Denim update. We haven't see much progress on the special flavor of Windows Phone we saw Nokia-turned-Microsoft-turned... well, Microsoft less the Nokia acquisition work on. Several Nokia Lumia models have the Denim update that gives us much of the Lumia Camera 5 features we were impressed with. Not the Nokia Lumia 830. And not just yet. The second Denim update for AT&T versions of the Nokia Lumia 830 has set claws on the Windows Phone Recovery Tool servers. The update is tied ...