Tag Archives: WINDOWS PHONE

Nokia and Microsoft put ‘the’ agreement to paper

Posted on April 21, 2011 by Shaun

Nokia and Microsoft have press released the signing of the agreement that will bring Nokia to the Windows Phone fold. The interesting bits are in red below.

Espoo, Finland and Redmond, US – Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) today announced the signing of a definitive agreement on a partnership that will result in a new global mobile ecosystem, utilizing the very complementary assets of both companies. Completed ahead of schedule, the definitive agreement is consistent with the joint announcement made on February 11.

In addition to agreeing to the terms of their partnership, including joint contributions to the development of the new ecosystem, Nokia and Microsoft also announced significant progress on the development of the first Nokia products incorporating Windows Phone. With hundreds of personnel already engaged on joint engineering efforts, the companies are collaborating on a portfolio of new Nokia devices. Nokia has also started porting key applications and services to operate on Windows Phone and joint outreach has begun to third party application developers.

“At the highest level, we have entered into a win-win partnership,” said Stephen Elop, President and CEO of Nokia Corporation. “It is the complementary nature of our assets, and the overall competitiveness of that combined offering, that is the foundation of our relationship.”

“Our agreement is good for the industry,” said Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. “Together, Nokia and Microsoft will innovate with greater speed, and provide enhanced opportunities for consumers and our partners to share in the success of our ecosystem.”

The relationship is structured around four broad areas:

1. A combination of complementary assets, which make the partnership truly unique, including:

- Nokia to deliver mapping, navigation, and certain location-based services to the Windows Phone ecosystem. Nokia will build innovation on top of the Windows Phone platform in areas such as imaging, while contributing expertise on hardware design and language support, and helping to drive the development of the Windows Phone platform. Microsoft will provide Bing search services across the Nokia device portfolio as well as contributing strength in productivity, advertising, gaming, social media and a variety of other services. The combination of navigation with advertising and search will enable better monetization of Nokia’s navigation assets and completely new forms of advertising revenue.
- Joint developer outreach and application sourcing, to support the creation of new local and global applications, including making Windows Phone developer registration free for all Nokia developers.
- Opening a new Nokia-branded global application store that leverages the Windows Marketplace infrastructure. Developers will be able to publish and distribute applications through a single developer portal to hundreds of millions of consumers that use Windows Phone, Symbian and Series 40 devices.
- Contribution of Nokia’s expertise in operator billing to ensure participants in the Windows Phone ecosystem can take advantage of Nokia’s billing agreements with 112 operators in 36 markets.

2. Microsoft will receive a running royalty from Nokia for the Windows Phone platform, starting when the first Nokia products incorporating Windows Phone ship. The royalty payments are competitive and reflect the large volumes that Nokia expects to ship, as well as a variety of other considerations related to engineering work to which both companies are committed. Microsoft delivering the Windows Phone platform to Nokia will enable Nokia to significantly reduce operating expenses.

3. In recognition of the unique nature of Nokia’s agreement with Microsoft and the contributions that Nokia is providing, Nokia will receive payments measured in the billions of dollars.

4. An agreement that recognizes the value of intellectual property and puts in place mechanisms for exchanging rights to intellectual property. Nokia will receive substantial payments under the agreement.

With the definitive agreement now signed, both companies will begin engaging with operators, developers and other partners to help the industry understand the benefits of joining the new ecosystem. At the same time, work will continue on developing Nokia products on the Windows Phone platform, with the aim of securing volume device shipments in 2012. The scale of both companies’ mutual commitment is significant and is in keeping with the intention to build a new ecosystem based on this long-term, strategic partnership.

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Copy and paste now on select Windows Phones

Posted on April 8, 2011 by Shaun

The latest Windows Phone update, which is now being pushed to phones, brings with it copy and paste, an improved Marketplace and some other smaller improvements. Kate Bevan does a decent job explaining the process here and it all seems to be working so far.

“The process is straightforward: plug your handset in, the Zune software fires up and alerts you to the update. It took about 15 minutes on my handset and involved a couple of restarts to the phone itself.

So what’s new? A lot of the changes are incremental and/or under the hood. Many have said it’s stuff that should have been on board when the WP7 handsets started appearing earlier this year. The many might well have a point, particularly with regard to copy and paste.

It’s as you’d expect: tap the screen roughly where you want to start copying the text and the text highlights. You can drag the cursor in either direction to highlight the text you want. Once that’s done, tap the little copy icon. To paste – in any application that accepts text input – you’ll see a paste icon. Tap that, and your golden words pop into the text field.”

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HTC 7 Pro review

Posted on April 6, 2011 by Shaun

It isn’t easy for hardware manufacturers to come up with innovative new designs for Windows Phone due to the constrained nature of the operating system, but HTC has given it a go with the HTC 7 Pro. It reminds me of the original HTC Touch Pro, a lot, and bears many similarities; hefty weight and size, quality materials and construction and a keyboard to die for. It is designed for business and communicating and the main question is if it pulls it off as well as the Touch Pro did with Windows Mobile.

Features

Windows Phone 7 OS
5-row slide-out QWERTY keyboard
3.6-inch touch screen
Office for document viewing and editing
Outlook for email organisation
Zune Services (music, film, tv)
Bing services (Maps, Search)
XBox Live integration

Available from Clove for £424.80

This is a high-end phone with a high-end price and the specifications appear to live up to the billing. 1GHz of processing power, 5 Megapixels of camera and a 480 x 800 WVGA screen look good. There is, however, one specification that sticks out like a sore thumb; 8GB of internal memory and no expansion slot (no avoiding that on Windows Phone at the moment). I am guessing that the theory is that users will keep their media and files within online services because 8GB is not a lot at all when you consider that a 45 minute TV episode can reach 1GB. In actual fact I don’t think that is enough at all on any smartphone today and 16GB should be the bare minimum. Let’s remember this phone costs more than £400.

As I played with the 7 Pro for a few days I found some genuine highlights within the build. The keyboard is wonderful to use and even on periods of long typing I found myself bashing out emails and even short articles without a problem. The only downside is the space bar which only accepts input if you press it dead centre. This didn’t cause me a problem, but others who tested the phone at work really struggled with it. Why HTC chooses one point of input in a space bar is beyond me. The keyboard mechanism is superb and opens out automatically at a slant, a slant which is as rigid as you can get in a slide-out keyboarded phone.

The overall build quality is excellent when the keyboard is shut or open; no rattle or movement at all and this offered a real sense of quality all the way through the materials. It is very thick though at 15.5mm and you will notice it in your pocket especially when combined with the 185g weight. As I said before it is very like the Touch Pro in terms of feel in the hand and weight in the pocket.

The camera is average at best and took some work to eek out a good photo, but it is capable of producing decent shots if you are prepared to work at it. Personally, I am prepared to work at taking decent shots with an SLR, but not with a smartphone. Video capture is poor despite the claimed 720p spec and the recorded sound is not up to much at all. Throw in the fact that the default settings are reset ‘every time’ you restart the camera and it’s not great at all.

Oh well, at least we have the large screen. Unfortunately that gets very washed out when in direct sunlight because the technology employed here is most definitely 2009 at best. It is highly responsive and usable indoors, but phones go everywhere and everywhere is where they should work.

The external speaker is, again, horribly tinny and very quiet. HTC has done this on phone after phone and doesn’t appear to be improving here. The sound quality from headphones is good though and so is voice quality to the ear, but of course the speakerphone, which is on the back despite the fake speaker grill on the front, suffers as well.

The battery is not too bad and will last a day of relatively heavy use. This would be expected for the target market which I presume to be suits who want to communicate and call people most days. Expect a nightly charge, but it holds up well on standby which not all phones manage so successfully.

You would think from what I have written above that this phone is a rushed out product, but none of the above comes close to the bizarre way Windows Phone works in landscape. Pull out the keyboard and the screen mode stays in portrait. It does switch to landscape within the apps which makes for a great experience, but seeing the home screen in portrait when you are using it in landscape would be enough to stop me releasing a phone in the first place. It is the pinnacle of designing a phone that cannot fit the operating system onboard. Strangely, you do get used to it quite quickly and it doesn’t feel like a problem in use, but even so this is too strange for words.

Conclusion

The sad part about this phone is that it is very well built, beautifully styled and has a keyboard that the competition cannot match at this time. It would be the perfect workhorse for the user who wants to call, email and communicate with people throughout the day and who needs decent PIM. Let’s remember that Windows Phone is a decent operating system to use and offers a lot for people who need to get things done.

However, and it is a big however, there are some glaring omissions here that leave me with the feeling that HTC is more interested in getting new devices to market than satisfying their customers.

How else do you explain the inclusion of a speaker that sounds dreadful, a space bar that requires absolute precision to use and an operating system that cannot display its own home screen in the direction the phone needs when the keyboard is opened?

I actually like the 7 Pro a lot and found myself enjoying using it, but couldn’t shake the feeling that corners had been cut and development rushed to get the phone to market. There seems to be little thought put into these problems and that is a dreadful shame, because it has the potential to be the very best business smartphone on the market.


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Windows Phone 7 Number that matter apparently

Posted on April 1, 2011 by Shaun

A Year Later–The Windows Phone 7 Numbers That Matter has been posted at The Windows Phone Developer Blog and I can’t help but feel that the most important number is missing, and that the numbers themselves could be better.

No mention of the number of phones sold and the developer figures are quite strange. One response was as follows- “1.5million downloads of Wp7 Toolkit. 36k regd devs, 11,500 aps. So… 2% of the developer base sustain and 32% of that 2% ship..  Thats kind of not good if i do my math right?”

Maths, not math by the way.

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HTC 7 Pro review

Posted on March 4, 2011 by Shaun

T3 has published a review of the HTC 7 Pro and doesn’t exactly like what it is seeing. It seems that the keyboard is the main culprit.


“Overall, we’re not sure we can recommend the HTC 7 Pro over other QWERTY devices out there simply because the keyboard is so ill-thought out. even if you’re a noted touchscreen hater but are desperate for Windows Phone 7, we suggest you check out the HTC HD7 or wait for the forthcoming Dell Venue Pro.

The HTC 7 Pro isn’t an awful phone, but it doesn’t really maximise its USP and only offers the same Windows Phone 7 experience along with extra heft to lug around in your pocket.”

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Xoom LTE upgrade, Birds coming to Windows Phone, Daily going to Android

Posted on February 25, 2011 by Shaun

The Motorola Xoom can now be bought and brings with it the ability to upgrade to LTE. The only problem is that you have to wait 90 days and then send the device back to be upgraded. Seems like Motorola wanted to get this to market and didn’t worry too much about how silly this all looks.

The 6th April will be a special day for Windows Phone owners. Angry Birds will be arriving on the platform along with Doodle Jump, Plants vs Zombies and a selection of other well known titles. The platform may be moving slowly upwards, but it is indeed moving.

The Daily will be moving away from iOS exclusivity when it is released on Android this Spring. Besides the stability issues and the concerns over subscription payments, it is a surprise to see it cross-platform so quickly.

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10% of Windows Phone 7 updates went wrong

Posted on February 25, 2011 by Shaun

Microsoft has published some more details of the problems faced by some users who took up the latest Windows Phone 7 update. It seems as though anyone else is to blame, but Microsoft.


“90 percent of people who’ve received an update notification have installed the new software patch successfully. (So when your turn to download it arrives, chances are good this will be a non-event.)

Of the 10 percent who did experience a problem, nearly half failed for two basic reasons—a bad Internet connection or insufficient computer storage space. Luckily, both are easy to fix.”

The reasons above could be perfectly legitimate, but you don’t see this affecting other phones. MS also published some FAQs and the answer to when everyone would receive their update is vague to say the least- “It’s hard to predict because it depends on many factors. It could be days—or even weeks—before you’re able to update your phone.”

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PDair covers the Dell Venue Pro and HTC 7 Pro

Posted on February 25, 2011 by Shaun

PDair has released some new cases for the Dell Venue Pro and HTC 7 Pro. Expensive phones need protection.


Aluminum Metal Case for Dell Venue Pro – Open Screen Design (Silver)

Aluminum Metal Case for Dell Venue Pro – Open Screen Design (Black)

Leather Case for HTC 7 Pro T7576 – Flip Type (Black)

Leather Case for HTC 7 Pro T7576 – Book Type (Black)

Leather Case for HTC 7 Pro T7576 – Horizontal Pouch Type (Black)

Leather Case for HTC 7 Pro T7576 – Vertical Pouch Type Belt clip included (Black)

Leather Case for HTC 7 Pro T7576 – Vertical Pouch Type (Black)

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Is the next version of Windows Phone going to shed hardware restrictions?

Posted on February 18, 2011 by Shaun

The news that Nokia will not be adopting the current version of Windows Phone 7 is a bit of a surprise, but it probably makes sense in the technical world that these people work in. I suspect that this means that the restrictions on hardware will be much more flexible in the next version of Windows Phone which could well have been a demand from Nokia to adopt the platform. Why else would Nokia want to use the platform if it couldn’t differentiate itself from the competition?

So, what will Nokia do for the next 6 months? I presume it will be working on new hardware for the next version of Windows Phone. If that is the case, I wonder what HTC and the rest think about that…

UPDATE: This article sheds more light on what will happen. So, fell free to ignore the above…

“Nokia is not adopting Microsoft’s current Windows Phone 7 platform – which means that there is no chance of any handsets running Microsoft’s software before the end of October. It is likely to be a lot later.

Rather than using the current version of the Windows Phone platform, first released last October, the mobile phone company is going to wait until a major release of the operating system, codenamed “Mango”, is made available this coming October – and that is expected to have a slightly different name from the current Windows Phone 7 name.

Stephen Elop, the former Microsoft executive who since September has been chief executive of Nokia, and announced dramatically last week that Nokia will abandon its market-leading in-house Symbian smartphone platform, has been careful throughout the week to refer to the adoption as Windows Phone – and not Windows Phone 7.”

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More Nokia / Microsoft detail

Posted on February 11, 2011 by Shaun

A new press release further details the tie up between Nokia and Microsoft, it’s embedded in between the silly corporate speak…

Nokia and Microsoft intend to jointly create market-leading mobile products and services designed to offer consumers, operators and developers unrivalled choice and opportunity.

As each company would focus on its core competencies, the partnership would create the opportunity for rapid time to market execution.  Additionally, Nokia and Microsoft plan to work together to integrate key assets and create completely new service offerings, while extending established products and services to new markets. 

Under the proposed partnership:

- Nokia would adopt Windows Phone as its principal smartphone strategy, innovating on top of the platform in areas such as imaging, where Nokia is a market leader.

- Nokia would help drive the future of Windows Phone.  Nokia would contribute its expertise on hardware design, language support, and help bring Windows Phone to a larger range of price points, market segments and geographies.

- Nokia and Microsoft would closely collaborate on joint marketing initiatives and a shared development roadmap to align on the future evolution of mobile products.

- Bing would power Nokia’s search services across Nokia devices and services, giving customers access to Bing’s next generation search capabilities.  Microsoft adCenter would provide search advertising services on Nokia’s line of devices and services.

- Nokia Maps would be a core part of Microsoft’s mapping services.   For example, Maps would be integrated with Microsoft’s Bing search engine and adCenter advertising platform to form a unique local search and advertising experience

- Nokia’s extensive operator billing agreements would make it easier for consumers to purchase Nokia Windows Phone services in countries where credit-card use is low.

- Microsoft development tools would be used to create applications to run on Nokia Windows Phones, allowing developers to easily leverage the ecosystem’s global reach. 

- Nokia’s content and application store would be integrated with Microsoft Marketplace for a more compelling consumer experience.

“Today, developers, operators and consumers want  compelling mobile products, which include not only the device, but the software, services, applications and customer support that make a great  experience,” Stephen Elop, Nokia President and CEO, said at a joint news conference in London. “Nokia and Microsoft will combine our strengths to deliver an ecosystem with unrivalled global reach and scale. It’s now a three-horse race.”

“I am excited about this partnership with Nokia,” said Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft CEO. “Ecosystems thrive when fueled by speed, innovation and scale. The partnership announced today provides incredible scale, vast expertise in hardware and software innovation and a proven ability to execute.”

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Bring on Friday. Bring on Mobile World Congress. Come on Nokia!

Posted on February 9, 2011 by Shaun

Come on Nokia, set the market alight! is a great analysis of the imminent move to Windows Phone by Nokia from Ewan at MIR, but the replies suggest that many are not ready to give up Symbian just yet. I say let Symbian and MeeGo die quietly and move to a new OS, just not Windows Phone please…

“As far as many are concerned, Nokia is well past the ‘written off’ stage and wading through the swamp of irrelevance as far as many are concerned. The N97 didn’t help. The N8 (despite selling pretty well) solidified the market’s perspective: Change, please.

The fact the company is still shipping hundreds of millions of devices means next to nothing in the eyes of the Western tech/media/marketplace. It would have been fine if Nokia announced it was only focusing on the developing markets by only producing feature phones. The market would have left Nokia alone.

Nokia’s inability to at least half-delight the tech media/market with smart, exciting and fun devices and services, especially in the high end, has made life very, very difficult for them.”

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eWallet GO! for Windows and Windows Phone

Posted on February 9, 2011 by Shaun

ilium software has launched eWallet GO!, a cut down secure solution for Windows and Windows Phone 7 users-


eWallet GO! is a great new way for people to safely carry their most important information and have it available all the time. Where eWallet is a full featured, customizable data storage solution, eWallet GO! is a simple, clean solution for people who don’t need the power eWallet provides but still want the quality and security found in every single one of our products.

Some of the great features eWallet GO! provides include:

* Amazingly easy to use interface
* 29 Flexible Card Templates
* 256-bit AES Encryption
* Built-in Google Docs and Dropbox backup
* Share information between Windows and Windows Phone 7 devices

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HTC 7 Pro–Hands On Video

Posted on February 7, 2011 by Shaun

The selection of Windows Phone 7 smartphones released to date have been very similar to each other, but the HTC 7 Pro has finally arrived. Check out the hands-on video from Jon at Clove below.

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Nokia really should have bought Palm

Posted on February 7, 2011 by Shaun

The news (rumour) that Nokia will be making phones running Windows Phone 7 is not a surprise to many people. With profits and market share declining at a rate of knots a move away from Symbian is inevitable. Symbian is not a bad mobile OS, but there is not enough to build on to make it comparable to the user experience found elsewhere, no matter how hard Nokia try.

Android seemed like a good bet a few months ago, but the competition is so stiff that this would stop Nokia from standing above a very sophisticated crowd already developing for the platform. The Galaxy S, Nexus S, HTC Desires and so on. The choice is already wide and I see little potential for Nokia to make big bucks in the Android space. It would of course propel Android to an even greater lead in the smartphone market, but I don’t see it happening anytime soon.

The same could be said of Windows Phone, however, because most of the big players are in that space as well. A space that is not big either. The strict standards on hardware could seriously play against Nokia’s drive to individuality on an OS where the restrictions are almost suffocating. If true, I do not see what Nokia can do with Windows Phone apart from drive it forward a little bit and make the competition look almost as good as them.

All of this leads me to believe, even more, that webOS is the best fit for Nokia and that it really should have bought Palm when it had the chance. A Nokia webOS phone would be seriously impressive.

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Make your iPhone look like it’s running Windows Phone 7

Posted on January 31, 2011 by Shaun

I am not convinced that many of you will want to try this, but the attempt to make iOS look like Windows Phone in the video below is very clever. More details are here for those of you who are bilingual.

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