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Here’s a little something that should brighten up your day and hopefully give some credence to the rumored Nokia Lumia PureView rumor that poped-up a little while ago. The unicorn device in question supposedly packs an Adreno 320 GPU which should only be available in two Sanpdragon S4 SoCs later this year: the Quad-Core APQ8064 (w/out the modem) and later the Dual-Core MSM8960 Pro. It now turns out that Qualcomm is right on track with its roadmap and is already sampling the APQ8064 for its OEMs which means that there’s a chances that we will see Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 devices powered by these SoCs in the coming months.
The LG-E970 Android 4.0 handset (known as the LG-LS970 on Sprint) is already in wild and has been cough running the GLBenchmark suite lately to test out it’s beastly Adreno 320 GPU. Unfortunately for us the results aren’t really that interesting given that they were ran with Vsync on (@ 1280×768). Check out the result in the screen shot after the break:
Continue reading First Adreno 320 Benchmark results →
Windows Phone 8 will be available as an update to current Windows Phone 7 handsets….or not. Nobody, I repeat, nobody really knows the answer for certain. So everything you have been reading in the past few days, hours should be filed under the rumor tag. At the day of the day the question is: Does it really matter? Well, in terms of PR, Marketing and overall user trust, not releasing a Windows Phone 8 update (or a subset of it) for, at the very least, the second generation of Windows Phone 7 handsets (especially Nokia’s) would be one of the dumbest move Microsoft will have ever done. Remember, we are talking about the same company that launched the horrendous Kin handsets. Sadly, anything is possible with the boys and girls in Redmond so don’t get your hopes up.
Continue reading Windows Phone 8 may or may not come to current handsets. Won’t stop them from working if it doesn’t →
As it’s usually the case with such things I’ll first advice you to take the following info with a pinch of salt and remain cautious. According to two supposedly leaked Nokia internal slides what you see here is the upcoming flagship Nokia Windows Phone 8 handset which will unsurprisingly sport the 41Mpx camera sensor introduced by the Nokia 808 alongside a Xenon flash, a 4.3″ curved HD Display (no AMOLED?), a dual-Core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro which includes the Adreno 320 GPU (surprising..was expecting it to be for tablets only at first…). The phone also has an enigmatic “Rich Recording” video recording technology. I personally wouldn’t be surprised if the device’s name was Nokia Lumia PureView
Continue reading Alleged upcoming Nokia Windows Phone 8 handset specs and renders leaked: PureView and Adreno 320 GPU on board →
Time to put things back into perspective. I’m assuming that you all have already glanced over most of the Nokia Lumia 900 reviews today and noticed that the general consensus is that the device is great but definitely not earth shattering. Well, this was to be expected when you see it for what it really is: an over-sized Lumia 800 (with a Gyro, LTE modem and FF Cam) or more accurately a Samsung Focus S with an LTE Modem (and obviously better materials). Any sane person who isn’t a rabid Microsoft fanboy or hater would agree with this. Unfortunately not much more can be done with the current Windows Phone 7 chassis hardware specifications so Nokia and other OEMS are stuck releasing essentially the same phones until Windows Phone 8 Apollo is finally unleashed. Case in point: the Nokia Lumia 800 / 900 camera is undoubtedly held back by the Qualcomm MSM8x55 ISP. Nokia is known to use it’s own imaging silicon for its handsets but was unfortunately not allowed to do so in the Lumia line of devices (reason why the N9 with the exact same Sensor shoots better photos..). This will have to change soon if the Finnish company plans to pack its future flagship Windows Phone handset with the PureView 41MP camera. Fortunately we have learned that the Camera stack will be fully customizable by the OEMs in Windows Phone 8.
Speaking of WP8, there’s now the update issue looming over the Lumia 900 launch and gigantic marketing blitz. We are now getting close to HTC HD2 levels of insanity in terms of unknown when it comes to the upgrade path to Windows Phone 8 for the 1st Gen and 2nd Gen Windows phone 7 devices. In the case of the HTC HD2 we all knew that it for the most part conformed to the Chassis 1 specs but Microsoft decided that sacrifice its historical Windows Mobile fanbase and start from scratch with the WP7 launch in fall 2010. No big deal I guess as this allowed HTC to milk the same hardware platform with the HTC HD7 and HTC HD7S…meh. Unfortunately not allowing current 2nd Gen WP7 handsets to upgrade to Windows Phone 8 would be pure suicide on Microsoft’s part especially after all the hoopla that AT&T, Nokia are going to do this month. Imagine buying what is supposedly the carrier’s flagship handset and be notified a few weeks/months later that your device won’t be update to the latest OS iteration. This would be worse than the Android situation. The mystery here is that nobody outside of Microsoft and its OEM partners knows if the current handsets are powerful enough to cope with the new software unlike the HTC HD2 situation.
Continue reading The Nokia Lumia 900 isn’t going to save Windows Phone or Nokia →
It’s finally here! The Windows 8 Consumer Preview is now available for download in English, French German Chinese and Japanese. The whole thing weights less that 4Gb for the ISO and around 1.9GB if you use the installer so hit the break and start downloading it and have some fun. Wanted to also let you know that I going to post more about it in the coming hours and days as I now own a Samsung Slate on which I’m installing the Consumer preview right now.
Continue reading Download the Windows 8 Consumer Preview now →
Let’s not act surprised here folks. It was no secret that Qualcomm would still be the preferred SoC provider for Windows Phone 8 so the latest rumors that Microsoft is currently testing Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 aka the MSM8960 SoC for a future Windows Phone 8 Apollo handset isn’t the least surprising. The MSM8960 is the Dual-Core Krait beast featuring the Adreno 225 GPU which will be shipping in the LTE version of the HTC One X Android handset and from the looks of it Microsoft my have rightfully decided to skip the S3 generation in favor of the S4 for WP8 in part because the later has built-in LTE radios and because this particular SoC will also be Qualcomm’s first Windows 8 certified platform (even though the Windows 8 version may be the Snapdragon S4 Pro with the Adreno 320 GPU).
Now this may sound worrying to current Windows Phone owners who have only Snapdragon S1 ans S2 powered devices but as far as we know those handset shouldn’t have any problem running Windows Phone 8 later this year.
Continue reading Microsoft certifying Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 SoC for Windows Phone 8 →
If you still had any doubt that Windows Phone 8 would be based on the Windows 8 kernel Microsoft just detailed the new desktop OS support for the ARM architecture in a lengthy posted today courtesy of the company’s Windows President Steven Sinofsky. Besides all the in-depth info provided in today post which I highly recommend you to read Steven also posted pictures of a rather old Asus Galaxy Windows Mobile 6.5 smartphone running a very early build of the ARM version of Windows 8 back when Microsoft didn’t have access to ARM based prototype tablets.
Other info included in today’s blog post is the claim that Windows 8 ARM tablets are still scheduled to start shipping during the same time frame as the first X86 tablets later this year. Windows 8 on ARM will also feature the desktop view contrary to what some rumors have claimed in the past few weeks and also offer regular Office software support. More importantly Windows on ARM aka WOA will not support any type of virtualization or emulation approach, and will not enable existing x86/64 applications to be ported or run. So if you want the best of both world and X86 based tablet will be your best option this fall. Anyway, head over past the break to see WOA in action and to the source link to read all about about it. If you are the proud owner of a Samsung Slate 7 BUILD Edition (the developer version) and want to sell it please contact me here as I’m really interested in getting one ASAP.
Continue reading Microsoft details Windows 8 on ARM: Shows Kernel running on years old Windows Phone →
The good folks at Pocketnow who apparently managed to get their eyes on an internal Microsoft/Nokia video hosted by Joe Belfiore (I say apparently because they haven’t posted the video and it isn’t clear if they actually saw it or if they are reporting what somebody saw in it) detailing most of the new features coming with Windows Phone 8.
First of all the OS will be, as we all have been expecting, based on the Windows 8 Kernel and share the same networking stack, multimedia and security support as its bigger brother. This means that most Metro applications developed for Windows 8 will be easily portable to Windows Phone 8. Once again nothing really surprising here. Native code development will also be part of the show this time around and finally enable developers to creating richer applications and games. Microsoft is also apparently going to ditch the Zune desktop software in favor of an ActiveSync like integration with Windows 8 while Xbox and Skydrive integration will finally be fully backed into both the desktop and mobile OS (Ie: Music on Skydrive will instantly be available on the phone etc..). Skype which has yet to be released on Windows Phone 7 will also be seamlessly integrated into Windows Phone 8 and the Dialer/Phone application. Third party app-to-app communication will also be supported now. On the business front Windows Phone 8 will support Microsoft’s BitLocker encryption (128bit) and finally enable businesses to easily deploy proprietary software on the fleet of Windows Phones.
Internet Explorer 10 will also include server side compression support (via a proxy server) to reduce page loading times by 30%. This shouldn’t come as a surprise knowing that Microsoft was actually the first company to introduce such feature in the short R&D browser project on Windows Mobile 5 code named DeepFish a few years ago. Hopefully this feature will be optional though. The OS will also include a DataSmart Live Tile Functionality which ill serve as a hub where users can easily track their data usage (a similar feature is present in Windows 8 ) and LocalScout will detect nearby WiFi hotspots too.
On the hardware front Windows Phone 8 will now support four different screen resolutions (not specified) compared to only one right now (WVGA) and also multi-core CPU configurations. Nothing really uprising here given that we all expected it. Micrdo-SD expansion cards support will also be official now and allow users to finally have Windows Phone devices with more than 16Gb of internal storage. WP8 will also have native NFC support and a new Camera API that will allow hardware partners to more deeply integrate their camera.
Continue reading Windows Phone 8 features detailed →
Just in case you where still putting any faith in that crazy Russian guy named Eldar…here’s another major blow to his latest FUD against Microsoft and Nokia:
Crazy Russian guy: WP8 os isnt compatible with wp7 on app level (u need to rewrite all apps). Thats another os core with metro ui…
Microsoft: Rewatch Mix11 keynote. We were pretty clear on this. Any app built today will run on next major Windows Phone version.
Windows Phone 7 apps will run on Windows Phone 8. Case closed.
Continue reading Windows Phone 7 apps will run on Windows Phone 8 →
My man OIAQ sent me a tweet yesterday about a post on 4PDA.RU which seems to contain inside information about the upcoming Windows Phone 8 OS release (Apollo). The info falls in line with what most of us have been expecting. I just got the chance to check it out and decided to post it just as a heads up (and so that some folks will not say that I’m now completely out of the loop..) so here’s the low down:
- “WOA platforms will require that all desktop binary images be signed with a trusted Microsoft certificate. Any unsigned code will fail to load … This … does not cover Metro Style applications for which there is a separately documented signing requirement and developer licensing”
- “Windows Phone “Apollo” brings together platform parity with Windows 8, experience parity with Windows Phone “Mango”, and a set of new features and functionality developed for Windows Phone “Apollo”.”
- “Platform parity means that the phone OS is now based on the Windows NT kernel instead of the Windows CE kernel. Windows Phone “Apollo” uses the Core System from Windows 8, which is a minimal Windows system that boots, manages its hardware and resources, authenticates and communicates on a network, and can be managed at a basic level.”
-”The final significant changes of note are the adoption of ESENT, also known as Jet, for the database engine, and the managed-code runtime. Rather than using the .NET Compact Framework from Windows Phone 7, Windows Phone ”Apollo” uses the Core CLR produced by the Developer Division at Microsoft.”
-”Only SDHC cards formatted as FAT or exFAT are supported. If the card is unformatted or contains an unsupported format, such as NTFS, the SD card will be formatted according to the SD specification if the user accepts the format prompt. This means that SDHC cards (cards less than or equal to 32GB) will be formatted as FAT”
- “The internal user store will not have this limitation since it is formatted as NTFS”.
-”Texus Shell (TShell) is a tool that allows you to interact with Windows Phone “Apollo” phones via a Windows PowerShell command prompt. You can copy files to the phone, execute processes, attach a debugger, run commands using the phone’s command interpreter, and run test content stored on WTT test servers”
-”The Windows Phone “Apollo” release ports the ambient light, proximity, magnetometer, compass, and gyroscope sensors from Windows Phone “Mango”. It also incorporates the accelerometer, which was a standalone implementation in the previous OS version”,
- “You can use Hyper-V to test x86 builds of the phone OS”
So there you have it folks. Seems highly accurate but treat this a a rumor until the official announcement later this year.
Continue reading Windows Phone 8 specifications rumor: Windows 8 kernel and more →
Slow news day folks so here’s a little interesting thing (that may turn to be nothing…) that I just noticed in the latest version of the Nokia Lumia 800 Diagnostic Tools embedded in the 11501/11500 firmware. As you can see in the picture above there’s settings sub-menu that allows the user to enable/disable HSDPA, Auto Answer and USB Hub. None of the options work right now (HSDPA is obviously already enabled on all handsets) but there’s an interesting pop-up message when you attempt to enable the USB Hub functionality:
For use in multi-core devices only. When USB Hub is turned on USB charging will no longer function…
Multi-core devices? What’s that exactly? Could be bad wording (technically any modern smartphone has “multiple ARM cores” in the SoC: the CPU, the Radio etc) but it could also hint a future Dual/Quad core powered Windows Phone 8 handsets that are scheduled to be unveiled later this year. Remember that the same Diagnostics app also contains a Gyroscope test which is not functional on any Nokia devices yet (only the Lumia 900 has one) and also hidden LTE menus that hinted at the Lumia 900 prior to its unveiling. Anyway, grab some salt and run with it.
Here’s the first (and probably not the last) mention of Windows Phone 8 in a product press release coming straight out of CES which is debuting today in Las Vegas. Atmel, which is one of the many capacitive touchscreen digitizer manufacturer (Update: The Nokia Lumia 900 most probably has the same one too>the Lumia 800 has an ATMEL mXT224 controller) has just announced it’s new generation of controller named the maXTouch S which are said to be Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 certified. Check out the full press release after the break.
Continue reading Atmel maXTouch S touchscreen controller announced: Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 certified →
Time for me to share with you my 2012 Windows Phone predictions and wishes now that you are all probably enjoying your new Mango handsets (or 1st Gen phones running Mango..). Keep in mind that what I’m going to post bellow is nothing more than speculations on my part so don’t quote me on that (well unless it turns out to be true later down the road…). So let’s start with what I wish Microsoft fixes, adds in the coming months in Tango:
- Universal search (this one is most probably coming..)
- Fix the frame dropping video playback issue that I seem to be the only person on earth who has noticed it (was present on my HTC Titan sample and both my Lumia 800 which makes me believe that’s it’s a OS issue with the MSM8255)
- Release Skype and Photosynth for Windows Phone: The silence surrounding both apps is intriguing. I wouldn’t be surprised if both where directly integrated into the OS instead of released as third-party apps (wishful thinking..I know).
- Ability to delete more than one picture or video at a time in the pictures hub
- Basic photo editing (crop, rotate, re-size)
- Basic video editing functionality (this one will have to wait for Windows Phone 8 I guess)
- SMS / MMS Backup (looks like this one is in the works: “Come join the Windows Phone Backup, Migrate, and Restore team. Our goal is to ensure that no matter if someone loses their phone, drops their phone in a lake, buys a new windows phone, or just has their toddler wipe their phone by entering the wrong PIN over and over, a user can quickly and seamlessly get their phone back to a good state. The features we are producing will be new for the next version of Windows Phone and will help ensure Microsoft stays ahead of the competition when it comes to disaster recovery.” )
- MMS videos!
- Ability to assign different ring tones to groups or individual contacts Totally forgot that this was already made available in Mango. sorry for that.
Now let’s talk about Windows Phone 8. It will be announced in 2012 but I’m not really confident that MWC is going to be the venue used by Microsoft to unveil it. As you have probably already heard Microsoft is no longer going to keynote at CES after 2012 and will instead have it’s own events to unveiled announce new products similar to what Apple has been doing lately after it dropped from the MacWorld Expo. This is why I’m thinking that Microsoft may only announce Tango during MWC this February and simple tease WP8 for a further announcement closer to the middle of the year. Here’s what I’m hoping for Windows Phone 8 aka Apollo:
Continue reading Windows Phone in 2012: Predictions and wishes →
As you may have noticed interesting news stories have been non existent lately in the windows Phone world and given that I have less time to post I won’t bother posting about every single rumored sales statistics or other meaningless stuff. Unfortunately there’s isn’t much left to talk about now that we are nearing Christmas and the end of the year.
If you are a Nokia Lumia 800 owner I’m sure that you are eagerly waiting to the promised January Firmware update that should fix the battery issues (and hopefully this one included!) alongside other bugs and camera improvements. Speaking of the camera, Nokia’s Digital Imaging Guru Damian Dinning has once again tweeted that “improvements” are coming to the Lumia 800′s camera and noted that even though the hardware is the same as the Nokia N9 the “image processing is completely different”. Obvious given that the two handset have different OS’s and SoCs. It should also be noted the Lumia 800 (and 710) is Nokia’s first Qualcomm powered device so it’s normal that everything isn’t yet fully functional and bug free.
Continue reading Windows Phone in 2012: What are you expecting ? →
Steve Ballmer took the time today to announce to its troops that current Windows Phone Division president Andy Less will now have a new role at Microsoft and will be replaced by Terry Myerson who was already heading the divisions engineering team. I personally think that this is the right thing to do as I have always felt that Lees wasn’t really the guy for this division and more a Ballmer buddy who was put there back when Windows Mobile was on the brink of death. Now that Windows Phone 7 is out and well (sales will come later..well, unless Nokia continues to ship buggy devices worldwide) it was time to put somebody who knows what he’s talking about in charge what is seen as one of the company’s most critical asset. As a matter of fact Andy has now a new undisclosed role at Microsoft (reporting directly to Ballmer as usual) which will be a “time-critical opportunity focused on driving maximum impact in 2012 with Windows Phone and Windows 8″ Whatever that means it sure looks like what I’ve been speculating all along and here (Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 sharing the same kernel) may be close to the reality.
Check out Steve Ballmer’s full email after the break:
Continue reading Microsoft shakes up Windows Phone division →
Here’s a new report somewhat validating what I have written a few days ago when ST-Ericsson announced its partnership with Nokia for future Windows Phones; Qualcomm’s European President has recently stated that his company was closely working on Nokia’s roadmap and that the Nokia Lumia handsets that where recently unveiled are just the beginning of the collaboration between both companies.
“We are working on a roadmap [with Nokia] and not a single device, a single launch. It’s an important collaboration for Qualcomm, so we are very excited about working together. It’s been very effective in terms of time to market because we developed the phone together. It’s been a very successful development.”[...]“The Nokia collaboration is also very much about the Windows Phone ecosystem and, of course, we at Qualcomm, as you know, are supporting on our platform the Windows Phone software and actually at the moment we are the only supplier supporting the integrated solution.”
Continue reading Qualcomm to power future Nokia Windows Phones →
Looks like ST-Ercisson’s dream has finally been realized. According to a rather short and cryptic press release Nokia has selected unnamed ST-Ericsson’s NovaThor SoCs for future low end devices and / or devices aimed at certain countries like China which don’t use the same base-bands (TD-SCDMA) as the rest of the world (remember HTC uses Qualcomm SoCs in 95% of its devices and Texas Instrument SoCs only for its Chinese TD-SCDMA products). Still looks like Qualcomm’s Snapdragon will be found in the vast majority high-mid-end devices though (I sure hopes so given that the GPU in some NovaThor SoCs doesn’t have the same featureset as the Adreno GPUs..fragmentation be damned..I guess..meh).
Continue reading Nokia selects ST-Ericsson NovaThor SoC for future low end Windows Phones ? →
Grab some tissues and a pinch of salt! According to a Nokia VP Michael Halbherr, Executive VP present at Nokia World in London Windows Phone 8 aka Apollo will launch in mid- 2012. That’s nearly 6 months earlier than what everybody else was expecting. Nokia is rightfully pushing Microsoft to include NFC support in it and full integration of Nokia’s Navteq mapping assets. Once again, treat this as a rumor but things may be getting a little more interesting than expected in the coming months unless this VP is confusing Tango with Apollo.
UPDATE: As I expcted that Nokia VP was on something nasty…the original story was updated with a note saying that the “timing was inaccurate”..no sh@t Sherlock? Back to our regular news/rumors/nonsense schedule… Apollo = Late 2012 Tango = mid 2012. Mark my words…
Continue reading Windows Phone 8 Apollo coming mid 2012 ? →
Desperate much ? Well this is understandable when you start losing your number one client (Nokia in this case). Back in February ST-Ericsson quickly claimed that its SoCs were going to support Windows Phone 7 and the Qualcomm’s exclusivity won’t last long and I pointed out at the time that this was simply PR damage control and wishful thinking on the company’s part. ST-Ericsson later changed its tune in May and claimed that it will finally only supply SoC for Nokia’s Windows Phone 8. Unfortunately, the report and quotes where so misleading Nokia had to issue a press release on the same day to set the record straight: Qualcomm was still the only SoC Manufacturer for Windows Phone and that STE was simply in talks with Nokia for it’s future handsets.
Today’s the third time that the company has decided to talk about this subjects and fortunately they seem to be more grounded in reality:
In software, ST-Ericsson is playing catch up with the shift by Nokia. It does not expect to support Nokia’s first Windows Phone 7 handsets, but it has put a team in place to support Windows Phone 8 on its chips.
Continue reading ST-Ericsson still hoping to be invited to the Windows Phone party →
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