FIRST MANGO PHONE OUT: FUJITSU TOSHIBA IS12T

Jul 282011
 

Fujitsu has launched the world’s first Mango phone the ‘IS12T’ (Mango is the nick name of Microsoft’s latest mobile operating system). This is the first Japanese phone to run on Windows Phone 7 OS.

First glimpse of the phone was seen earlier this month when Microsoft unveiled four new Windows 7 powered phones. One among them was a pink gaudy phone made by Fujitsu. Well, this is the same one. Other than the lively pink colour the phone is available in yellow (yes, yellow!) and a jet black shade. Another notable feature was that the phone appeared to be waterproof and indeed we were right, the phone is waterproof.

Apart from the Windows 7 OS, the phone also has amazing specs. The screen on the Fujitsu IS121T is a 3.7 inch WVGA touch screen and to maintain the sleekness, thickness of the phone is kept to just 10.6mm. The storage capacity is 32 GB which makes this device capable enough for carrying along any kind of data with ease.

The image quality is just breathtaking with a 13.2 MP camera which comes along with Auto Focus. The phone contains a superior Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8655 processor (clock speed is yet undisclosed). Other regular features like Bluetooth (2.1 + EDR) and Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n are also on board.

Impressed? Want to buy the phone? Well you’ll have to wait till September for this phone to arrive (and that too if you reside in Japan). Along with that you will have to shell out around 30,000 to 40,000 yen ($380 to $500). No news about the international availability yet.

Nokia Windows Phone 7 spotted

Jun 252011
 

Nokia’s secret was revealed as images of a device codenamed “sea ray” were out.  Videos and photos were posted on a Hungarian blog named Technet. The video shows Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop kindly requesting his employees to not take any images or films but someone overlooked the warning and we got a sneak peek into the Nokia’s new Windows Phone 7.

What we are able to see is a device similar to the recently launched Nokia N9. The difference being that this one was not based on the MeeGo platform instead it was based on the Mango platform (Windows Phone 7 platform). While Nokia N9 was a transitional device, the “sea ray” represents the future of Nokia. Other differences were a special dedicated button for the camera and a LED flash along with the camera.

The other specs which were guessable from the images and Nokia N9 are 1 GHz processor, a 3.9-inch AMOLED display with 854-by-480 pixel resolution, scratch-resistant curved glass, a polycarbonate body and either 16 GB or 64 GB of storage. This point will make quite a difference as till now all the Windows Phone 7 based devices have come with 8 GB or 16 GB of storage. For all those who store a lot of media content or have heavy softwares on their phones, this is a point to celebrate.

Also doing the rounds are some images with the Android installed on Nokia’s hardware. The user interface appears to be smaller than usual which makes it appear like a genuine test device for Nokia. Earlier, Stephen Elop had openly admitted that Nokia spent a couple of wild seconds contemplating a switch to Android, perhaps those images represent the same.

Now for all those who looked at Nokia N9 and resisted to wait for the Windows Phone 7, your wait might just have been worth it. Also, Elop told employees that Nokia has other Windows Phone devices in working condition, so along with the “Sea Ray” we might just see a few more handsets, coming out from the company this year.

Sneak Peek into Nokia’s Windows Phone 7

Jun 202011
 

Since the time Nokia and Microsoft announced its collaboration around the Windows Phone 7, the news has been making waves in the market. At the Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona, they went a step further by giving a glimpse of what the new Nokia Windows Phone 7 will look like. Two versions were displayed during Nokia’s keynote. Both the versions were sleek and slim.

 The first one was slim with rounded corners, had a speaker grill at the bottom, a standard headphone jack at the top and a hardware camera shutter. The volume rocker was visible at the side of the device. Multiple colour schemes for the same device seem to be in Nokia’s plan book.

 The second phone showed a slightly different concept model of a Windows Phone 7 that looks like the higher-end of the line of devices planned. The phones feature the three standard Windows Phone 7 buttons at the front, with an overall minimalist look. Also visible are a camera with flash on the back, as well as a standard headphone jack and a power button at the top of the phone.

 However, these were experimental pieces and no confirmation was given whether the same versions will reach the market, but they do give an insight on the future plans of the phone giant especially at a time when Symbian is losing its sheen.  At an event held by Nokia a couple of days ago, a company representative disclosed the company’s plans to snatch the business Smartphone market, which is almost dominantly held by RIM‘s BlackBerry. Let’s see whether the WP7 can save the sinking ship.

According to some reports, the Vice President of Nokia has disclosed that the first WP7 based Nokia devices will be released in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK later this year. However, a Nokia spokeswoman, Anna Martin, refused to confirm his comments about the release of the first Nokia WP7 phones.

US can be in for a disappointment as it was omitted out of the list. This might have been a part of the sales strategy, as Nokia’s market in the US isn’t as strong as UK. A point to be noted is that Finland was also missing from the list which is strange as it is the home of the mobile giant.

The company is holding a Nokia Connection event on June 21st, where the company will supposedly show off some new Symbian Anna handsets, and probably announce the WP7 phone that has been talked about for quite a long time now. Do check out our blog for the latest developments regarding Nokia’s WP7.

Play Angry Birds For Free On Your Computer

May 202011
 

Recently, Rovio released a free Google Chrome-based version of its game, Angry Birds. However, it appears that you can actually run it in any web browser. Just visit http://chrome.angrybirds.com/ and enjoy :)

Rovio also announced that Angry Birds has been downloaded over 200 million times across all the platforms that its available on. The game is $0.99 for the iPhone/iPod Touch, $4.99 for the iPad and free but ad-supported on Android.

And for the Windows Phone 7 users out there, Angry Birds will be available on June the 29th according to this tweet by Rovio.

Windows Phone 7 powered HTC Trophy up for grabs from May 26th on Verizon Wireless

May 192011
 

Verizon Wireless has issued a press release stating that the Windows Phone 7 powered smartphone –  the HTC Trophy will be available online at Verizon Wireless on May 26th at a price of $149.99 with a new two-year customer agreement.

This is the first Windows Phone 7 device to be made available on Verizon. Although many of you might prefer to buy this powerful device online, but those who stay away from online shopping will have to wait till 2nd June to get their hands on this beauty as that is when Verizon plans to make this phone available at its communication stores. In order to lure buyers, Verizon is also offering a $50 mail-in rebate in the form of a debit card.

To get going users will need to shell out a minimum of $39.9/month to subscribe to a Verizon Wireless Nationwide talk plan and an additional $29.9/month for an unlimited data package.

For those of you who are unaware of the HTC Trophy here is a brief about the technical specifications of this smartphone. The phone has a 3.8-inch 480*800 pixels touchscreen display powered by a 1GHz Snapdragon processor wih Adreno 200 GPU and packs 16GB of storage. It has a 5MP camera with autofocus and LED flash with 720p video capture capabilities. The device delivers surround sound through SRS WOW HD.

This smart phone has it all from gaming to business to entertainment. The HTC Trophy will let you play games with XBOX LIVE by making it possible for users to access their avatar, profile, gamer score, etc. Users can play alone or can engage themselves in fun-filled multi player turn-based games. What’s more, customers who buy an HTC Trophy before July 15 get a free Xbox 360 console game. Users can stream or download songs with a Zune Pass subscription and access some quality applications and games in Windows Phone Marketplace through the Marketplace Hub.

Using Windows Phone 7 with a Mac, It Just Doesn’t Work.

May 072011
 

Having been an iPhone user since the launch of the 3G model back in 2008, I’ve recently got a bit bored of it (Previously used the 3G model and currently using the iPhone 4). I decided to try out a Windows Phone 7 device after hearing some promising reviews. I quite liked design of the operating system, especially the ’tiles’ homescreen. In my case, I purchased a HTC Trophy. It’s a low end phone in the HTC line up but I’ll leave the hardware aspect of it aside for this article.

Windows Phone 7 is a solid and nice looking mobile operating system. It’s a huge improvement from the old Windows Mobile stuff (which to me was barely usable). From the first glance, the user interface looks pleasing and user friendly. Most of the in-built apps are decent; some very good (such as Mobile Office!). Also, the virtual keyboard is quite nice to type on. I won’t be going into the details of each feature but if you want, you can read Engadget’s detailed review here.

Problems

One of the in-built functionality of the People/Contacts app of the Windows Phone 7 is the ability to add your Facebook account. Being an active Facebook user, I quickly did without hesitation. This turned out to be a big mistake. Without giving me any kind of warning or the option to choose which contacts to sync, my Windows Phone 7 automatically added all my Facebook friends and even the Facebook Pages that I joined to the People/Contacts app. Absolutely disastrous. It totaled to about 500+ contacts. What was even worse was that my Windows Live account was also connected to my Windows Phone 7. Guess what? The 500+ contacts got automatically imported to my Windows Live contacts too (my Windows Live Messenger contact list). This is clearly not the way to go. Microsoft should have realize that users don’t want every single Facebook contact, let alone Facebook pages, on their phone. It’s just like how Gmail used to add everyone you email to your Google Contacts. Thank goodness Google realized their mistake.

The above was just one of my woes with the People/Contacts app. The 2nd problem I ran into was the inability to sync Contacts from my computer. It seems that Microsoft has taken a wireless approach to this. Being a Mac user, I have my contacts stored in Address Book (computer) and MobileMe (cloud). Unsurprisingly, MobileMe didn’t work (I didn’t have any hope for this in the first place anyway). I become quite frustrated when I couldn’t even manually sync my Address Book to my Windows Phone 7 via a cable. And it turns out that you can’t. Ouch! Although I am not entirely sure, it seems that you can’t even manually sync your Outlook Contacts on a Windows machine via a cable. Everything is done wirelessly through the cloud. According to the Microsoft support website, only Outlook users with Exchange can sync their contacts directly to their Windows Phone 7. Others will need to first sync their Outlook contacts to Windows Live which will then sync those contacts to your phone. Too confusing and too much work required for what should be a very a simple task. Users who have their phone contacts stored with Google or Yahoo or Windows Live will probably have better luck with this but still, what happened to cable syncing?

Adding and syncing contacts was one of my major problems with my Windows Phone 7. The same can be said for adding and syncing my calendar. I did however, manage to get my MobileMe email working. Adding iTunes media (music & videos) to my Windows Phone 7 was relatively easy through the Windows Phone 7 Connector App but as expected, not as good as using iTunes itself to sync an iPhone or an iPod. Another thing worth mentioning is that as an iPhone owner, the Windows Phone’s Marketplace is nothing like the iTunes Apps Store. The Marketplace’s range of apps are very limited and many are poorly developed.

Summary

The Windows Phone 7 is actually very good when used as a standalone phone. The user interface looks great and is user friendly. However, some problems arise when pairing it with a computer. Users who have their email, (phone) contacts and calendar with Windows Live, Google, (and maybe Yahoo I’m not sure) should be fine. The Windows Phone 7 does a good job at syncing with those services. For Mac users, it’s a nightmare and I certainly recommend opting for something else such as Apple’s own iPhone or even maybe Android. On the other hand, I just wanna add that the iPhone works brilliantly when used with both a PC and a Mac ;)

Seesmic Desktop 2 and WP7 Has Been Updated

Jan 132011
 

Loic a respected entrepreneur, investor and founder of Seesmic just released new features for Seesmic Desktop 2 and WP7 clients for Twitter.

The new features and improvements entail:

  • Customizable settings: adjustable font type and sizes, options added to manage automatic shortening of URLs
  • Selecting the width of the columns
  • Search for Twitter users by account or by real name
  • Marketplace: Marketplace on the sidebar for easy access to browse all plugins and download straight from within the application.

For more information head over to Seesmic blog as it explains these features and improvements in detail.

Seesmic is MWD’s staff No.1 Client for Twitter. We use it on almost all portable devices.

Windows phone 7 gaining more possession of market than Androids

Dec 212010
 

The windows phone 7 is gaining more control of the market than Android, and when it is compared to iPhone application store; it seems pretty good indeed. A recent estimate by IDC shows that after September windows phone7 market place is ramping up sharply. But we still notice some rather odd blogs that are suggesting, windows phone 7 is not performing well. If we analyze the users response, that does not go with those particular writings. Some people keep saying that windows phone 7 performing poorly as they don’t have 300,000 applications. But there are not many phone operating systems in the market that can compete with windows. Anyway, IDC analysts are quite convinced to the fact that windows phone application store is adding new applications more frequently than others.

The windows phone 7 marketplaces have added around four thousand applications just after two months of launching, and we have to say that this is quite an achievement. It took Android an awful lot time to reach the same level. They reached this level at March 2009, 5 months after launching. Al Hilwa, an IDC analyst predicts that by the middle of next year Windows phone 7 will have 3rd largest application portfolio, if they continue to progress at this rate. On his research note Hilwa said that windows has really sturdy app development tools and excellent developer ecosystem which will help them to reach the top of this sector and they are using resources from their Pc universe to do so. Yes, people had expectations from WP7 but nobody really thought that it would eat up the whole market in one gallop. According to Microsoft the roll of this first edition was to give them a strong hold of the market but it is a long term battle for Microsoft with other prominent phones of the market.

How did Windows 7 Phone Sale Go? Not So Good

Nov 102010
 

Michael Cote from Cote Collaborative said “Mondays aren’t great launch days…” which commented as to why Windows 7 Phone sale by T-Mobile did not pass 50.000 units. Let me guess: Friday’s are better?

Latest reports by Apple and Google stated that they sold or activated over 250.000 devices per day, whether that would be Samsung Galaxy Tab, iPad or iPod Touch. Microsoft apparently sold only 40.000 units this past Monday via T-Mobile and I think that is pretty good sale if you ask me. T-Mobile spokesperson concluded that Windows 7 is “already receiving strong interest from our customers right out of the gate.” and let’s face it, Windows 7 Phone is just 1 unit compared to 4 from Apple and 20-30 from Android. So I think that selling 40K Windows 7 Phones in one day is pretty good for a start. The Street added that Microsoft will probably going to reduce the prices for Black Friday Sale and Christmas.

Windows 7 Phone might not outrank Android OS, iOS or RIM but I am confident that it will rank up close.

By the way, can you imagine that I actually said something positive for Microsoft, being Linux user at home and 100% Android owner? :)

Windows Phone 7 Handsets Launching In US Market

Nov 062010
 

T-Mobile and AT&T makes available first Windows Phone 7-based handsets in the U.S. market from Monday. HTC Surround and Samsung Focus will be available with AT&T network and HTC HD7 will make its way with the T-Mobile carrier.

Windows Phone 7 was officially announced last month.

The launch of these three handsets on two carriers marks new beginning in the smartphone market for Microsoft. The Windows Phone 7 platform is different and much advanced than the older Mobile Operating Systems of Windows.

AT&T will make available the HTC Surround and Samsung Focus on November 8th for purchase through its stores and also the official website of the network. The customers of AT&T will not be able to pre-order the handsets, as officially announced by the carrier few days before. The two carriers, however, have put up dedicated web pages on their websites for the handsets after the announcement of October 11th by Microsoft of launching WP7 handsets to the U.S. market.

The handsets are available at $199 by the carriers upon a two-year contract agreement.

The big question for the success of Windows Phone 7 handsets in the U.S. market goes unanswered as there are other popular smartphones and operating systems such as BlackBerry, Android and iPhone.

WP7 has already proved to be popular in several other markets across the world. It had also went out of stock in some of the markets. It is expected to see similar result in the U.S. market too provided the handsets attracts users.

MOBILE OS: Windows Phone 7 Vs Android Vs iOS

Oct 222010
 

The current competition among the popular mobile operating systems is reminding us the gone world war. Today every smartphone is gaining attention through its operating system than the brand. Just look into any mobile phone and strip the hardware and you can see the significant OS along with its standard features. Down the line all the smartphones will take a shape and name as “feature phone”. Currently, we are all more used to the some of the standard features and tools. A single thing is minus from a smartphone can make it quite useless.

Definitely the current popular operating systems such as iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7 are definitely making a mark over the customers. Here, individual operating system’s back ground is resulting as a great asset. Keeping this back ground in mind, it is tough to mention a single OS as a winner. Keeping all these woes in mind, recently PC World come up with an article mentioning all the features through detailed comparison. The comparison chart prepared by the PC World can differentiate all the positives and negatives in the popular three operating systems.

There are many things mentioned in the said article and we are here with presenting the tabulated comparison among the three popular operating systems for you.

Via PCWorld

HTC HD 7 Release Date Announced by T-Mobile

Oct 202010
 

T-Mobile just announced via twitter that HTC HD 7 release date is going to be November 8th. I guess the market rollout of new smartphones, tablets and tiered plans is going to explode in November.

Oh, HTC HD 7?

Well it’s going to come with 16gb internal memory 720p HD video recording, Netflix Streaming, Xbox Live and bunch of other goodies. I think this is the first Windows phone that I really like.

image

 

For more info I would advise you to visit http://htc.t-mobile.com/hd7/

Windows Phone 7 Booting on HTC Leo (video)

Oct 142010
 

The well-known developer Cotulla took a forward step and made video showing HTC Leo running the upcoming Windows Phone 7 OS. This is definitely quite interesting for few. This is the reason we brought this video for you. Despite it being in the very early stages, this brings back life to one of the best mobile devices made to date, and now even more being capable of running three operating systems those are Windows Mobile, Android and WP7. The video is also making more interesting for all.

Cotulla tweeted on this context as follows::

@CotullaCode
okay… wanna news? yes, they shocked even myself. Look video This is just demo

The below is the original video of Leo running WP7.

Windows Phone 7 Video Ad – Really?

Oct 122010
 

Was just browsing YouTube tech videos and stumbled upon Windows Phone 7 Ad which is quite funny I must say! It reminds me back on those old Mac vs Pc ads that are not to be seen on TV anymore :(

My best part in this Windows Phone 7 video ad was where sexy girl is standing right next to the guy and says really? Let me know what was your best part of this Windows Phone 7 Ad.

By the way if you are interested on how I check my tech stuff on daily basis fast, see my blog post from yesterday. Really?

Windows Phone 7 Launch Live Blogging and Live Streaming Event Links

Oct 112010
 

Windows Phone 7  will be presented today in less than one hour so I thought to share some live blogging and live streaming links that other sources will provide. Unfortunately we did not have that opportunity to do so this time, due to our busy schedule.

Tune in at:

03:30AM – Hawaii
06:30AM – Pacific
07:30AM – Mountain
08:30AM – Central
09:30AM – Eastern
02:30PM – London
03:30PM – Paris
05:30PM – Moscow
10:30PM – Tokyo

Live Blogging Windows Phone 7 Event

:

Technologizer by Harry McCracken

Engadget by Joshua Topolsky

NeoWin by Tom Warrner

Seattlepi by Nick Eaton

WindowsObserver

Live Streaming Windows Phone 7 Event:

Microsoft – Live Webcast

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