Microsoft's latest mobile operating system, Windows Phone 7 was announced at Mobile World Congress in 2010. Windows Phone 7 features a clean and minimalistic interface known as Metro UI. The operating system features a start screen with "Live Tiles" that can display notifications and information at a glance and specific "hubs" where content from social networks and stored locally on the device is gathered. Expected in late 2011, a major update known as "Mango" will bring many more features such as Twitter integration, multitasking and a mobile version of Internet Explorer 9. Read on for the latest Windows Phone 7 news, reviews and videos:
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by Anton D. Nagy | August 16, 2012 2:36 AMRead OnIt was good while it lasted! Even though it's been a bumpy road, it has now come to an end; the ChevronWP7 team warned users back in June that on August 11, unlocks they purchased and applied will expire and that Microsoft will proceed to re-locking phones starting August 11. Thanks to the latest official post on the ChevronWP7 website we now get a confirmation (not that we needed one). They say "all Windows Phone developer unlocks via the Chevron Labs service expired August 11, 2012". Upon syncing with Zune, Microsoft will re-lock phones unless you have moved to a paid App Hub account ...
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by Anton D. Nagy | August 11, 2012 1:55 AMRead OnNobody knows exactly when the Apple vs. Samsung courtroom drama will ever stop (if) and what will the outcome be. According to some court documents the Cupertino-based company has asked Samsung, back in October of 2010, for royalty fees also saying they "would have preferred that Samsung request a license in advance". A total amount of $30 was requested for any touch-screen-enabled phone, let it be Windows Phone, Android of another platform (Bada, Symbian, etc.) and $40 for each tablet -- amount which would decrease to $30 over two years. There were also some discounts planned: phones ...
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by Adam Z. Lein | August 7, 2012 10:23 AMRead OnThere's some news today that the in-app purchasing feature for Windows Phone will only work with Windows Phone 8. CNET, The Verge, and others are reporting that in-app purchasing will not be available in the Windows Phone 7.8 update for existing devices. If you're a current Windows Phone user, you might be confused since many of the Xbox LIVE games available already support in-app purchasing. The feature first appeared when the Xbox LIVE Game called "Beards and Beaks" was released in September of 2011. Since then many other games have supported in-app purchasing of additional game ...
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by Anton D. Nagy | August 1, 2012 2:00 AMRead OnThe official Windows Phone 7.5 Tango update for the HTC Trophy on Verizon should land very soon (might even grace your phone today, according to recent reports). The carrier announced the refresh which updates the phone's OS to Windows Phone 7.5 MCR3. As far as the new additions are concerned, the Trophy will get Tango-specific WiFi Hotspot capability as well as enhanced multimedia messaging capabilities with multi-picture attachments, video attachments as well as the ability to send and receive ringtones. If the reports turn out to be true, you should receive an update notification after ...
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by Anton D. Nagy | July 19, 2012 7:19 AMRead OnWe've talked about it briefly on our Pocketnow Weekly Podcast -- and we occasionally touch on it whenever Nokia's and Microsoft's share of the market comes in discussion -- but now it appears that the speculations can end. The Finnish company made its financial records for the second quarter of the year public, and with the numbers, we find out details about Lumia sales. It appears that Nokia sold four million Lumia devices in the second quarter -- compared with one million reported for the last quarter of 2011 and two million in the first quarter of this year -- managing to double its ...
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by Anton D. Nagy | July 15, 2012 2:37 AMRead OnThe Pink Nokia Lumia 900 becomes available for pre-orders today, July 15, but that's not the only good news (if at all for most) that Nokia and AT&T have prepared for you. Starting today, the price of the phone on AT&T has been dramatically reduced so those who didn't purchase it yet have one more reason to grab one. Starting today, instead of $99 and a two-year contract you will be able to buy an AT&T Nokia Lumia 900 for $49.99. Whether this is one (last) push for the phone -- in light of the Windows Phone 8 news and the platform's coming -- is yet unknown. Should you buy a ...
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by Anton D. Nagy | July 10, 2012 3:53 AMRead OnThe Nokia Lumia 900 seems to be among the most popular Windows Phones on the market at the moment and fans of the platform can grab the device from AT&T in white, black and cyan. Nokia is announcing the addition of another color, probably trending with the summer (or targeting female customers): pink. If you want to grab one and be different, you can pre-order it starting July 15 either in a brick-and-mortar AT&T store or online. Of course, Nokia can't stress it enough that the colors of the Lumia 900 (pink included) are not painted on top of a plastic but are deeply residing ...
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by Anton D. Nagy | July 9, 2012 2:03 AMRead OnRichard Kerris, Nokia's Vice President of Worldwide Developer Relations, unveiled that "it wont be long" until Verizon fans will finally get the opportunity to use Nokia devices. Currently the Finnish phone maker has no offering on Big Red and future possible customers are either left waiting for a Nokia phone or have to leave for another carrier in order to grab one. Unfortunately, no exact time frame was made public. As far as the PureView technology is concerned, the one which debuted on the Symbian-powered 808 which is, as of now, available in the U.S., it will come to Windows ...
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by Anton D. Nagy | July 6, 2012 3:19 AMRead OnSome Nokia Lumia 710 and 800 devices are already getting the Windows Phone 8773 update -- dubbed Tango, which is running out-of-the-box on the Lumia 610 -- but it sure looks like the Finnish phone maker will not stop right here. A new update popped up on NaviFirm and it looks to be Windows Phone 8779. The update's regions are listed as being countries like Thailand, Pakistan, India, Lebanon, and Tunisia so it could only bring features which would improve the user experience in these markets. With many features already included in the Tango refresh -- like internet sharing, flip phone ...
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by Adam Z. Lein | June 29, 2012 8:58 AMRead OnBack when Windows Phone was first released in late 2010, of course there was a Twitter app available, but no one ever bothered to set up the server-side option for pushing live tiles or notifications for twitter activity like mentions, direct messages, or anything. That made room for a whole host of 3rd party Twitter apps that were much more functional with all the Twitter functions you'd expect. Today we finally see an update to the official Twitter app that finally brings push notifications for direct messages, mentions, new follows, favorited tweets, and retweets. Above you ...
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by Anton D. Nagy | June 29, 2012 3:17 AMRead OnThose who were eagerly anticipating BlackBerry 10 devices will be deeply disappointed as Research In Motion has postponed the arrival of the gadgets until 2013 -- because development has "proven to be more time-consuming than anticipated". Unnamed sources said that the Canadian company is considering its options after admitting that the company might not survive with its current strategy. One of these options would be to follow Nokia's example and strike a strategic alliance with Microsoft to deliver BlackBerry handsets running on the Windows Phone platform. Such an option could also ...
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by Adam Z. Lein | June 27, 2012 8:00 AMRead OnA while back we showed you some photos of an iOS device and Windows Phone side-by-side while running various popular apps so that you could see how different the design principals were for the two platforms. For many of you it was very interesting to see how app developers modified their design so drastically for Windows Phone as compared to the same type of app they developed for Apple's iOS. Some of you wondered about how Windows Phone apps compare to the same versions made for Android. Well, that's what we're going to look at today. App designs on Android don't seem to really follow any ...
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by Anton D. Nagy | June 27, 2012 7:22 AMRead OnA Windows Phone update should land shortly for Nokia Lumia 710 and 800 devices as promised earlier by the manufacturer. The targeted release date for these updates should be today as it is scheduled to go out "globally from June 27th in a phased update through Zune". You can check on the update to see the status by following the link below. It gives you detailed information pe region (and we checked, for the moment all the statuses are "waiting for approval" but this should change soon). As a reminder, the refresh should bring three important things to your Lumia 71- and Lumia 800: ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 22, 2012 5:14 PMRead OnWith the shuttering of the ChevronWP7 Labs unlock project, Windows Phone continues to not seem like the most accessible platform for homebrew development. Some users turn to custom ROMs, fully unlocking their handsets, but that isn't an option for everyone. There's another solution, though, which is starting to look more and more attractive, letting users run native code on their phones through some digital signature trickery. Windows Phone verifies apps that Microsoft has approved for execution in such a native mode by checking a digital signature against the company's certificate, stored ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 19, 2012 3:40 PMRead OnEarlier this month we learned about a couple promotions Nokia was planning that centered around the release of this summer's Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises. Part of those plans included the release of new Batman Xpress-on covers for the Lumia 710. We heard a few details about how these might be released, but were left with plenty of questions remaining, including if existing owners of the 710 would be able to pick one up. Now Nokia has published the full rundown on the offer, and it's even more generous than we were hoping. Better than giving existing 710 owners the chance to buy one ...