We’ve been speculating about the next versions of Windows Phone since 7.5 (Mango) came out in late 2011, and it looks like it might be worth the wait. PocketNow claims to have intercepted an official Microsoft video intended for Windows Phone partners like Nokia. In it, Windows Phone Manager Joe Belfiore goes over a lot of new features of the upcoming “Apollo” update, which appears to somewhat merge the Windows Phone OS with the core of Windows 8. Details below.

New FeaturesMulticore processors: Dual-core and, presumably, quad-core processors will be supported.microSD: Finally, Windows Phone will add support for SD storage devices.

Higher screen resolutions: 4 new resolutions will be offered outside of 480×800 (current standard). We don’t know what they are yet, unfortunately.NFC: Near-field communication will be supported, allowing users to make mobile payments or connect to other devices by simply tapping their phone. He made special mention of the mobile “Wallet experience,” which will replace credit cards with a phone app.

Skype integration: Finally, Windows Phone will get deep Skype integration that lets it act more like an extension of the phone than an actual app. This makes sense since No more Zune PC software: The Zune software is going away and will be replaced by a new application. What that is, we don’t know. Hopefully users don’t lose all of their song data or playlists they’ve made on Zune.

Xbox Companion App for Windows 8: The Xbox Companion app for Windows Phone will get its own companion that will work for Windows 8 PCs. What exactly it will do, we don’t know, but Belfiore mentioned the ability to instantly have access to your music collection on your PC without the need for syncing.

BitLocker encryption: That 128-bit full-disk encryption in Windows 8 will now be in the phone OS as well.

The new platform will also be designed to better handle data traffic, opting to go to Wi-Fi and using proxy servers to feed pages to Internet Explorer 10, similar to how Opera Mini can achieve faster browsing times.

Optus, Telstra and Vodafone are gearing up to sell the Lumia 800, which will be available in black, cyan, magenta and white, Nokia announced today.

“Interest locally for Nokia Lumia, our first range with Windows Phone devices, has been extremely positive,” Nokia Australia’s managing director, Chris Carr, said.

“There is a significant appetite from operators and retailers looking to offer consumers a real smartphone alternative.”

Mr Carr said he hoped the Lumia 800 would be a turning point for the company in Australia.

Once the market leader in smartphones, Nokia’s fortunes have plummeted worldwide on its failure to produce state-of-the-art smartphones in the wake of Apple’s iPhone and new Android smartphones.

“Nokia Lumia will change the way people think about Nokia,” Mr Carr said. “It signifies a new beginning for the company, bringing together the very best of Nokia’s handset design and services with the latest Windows Phone software.

“With uptake from all Australian operators and major retailers, the launch of the Nokia Lumia 800 signals our intent to regain leadership in smartphone design and usability.”

As well as the social network offered by the Windows 7 operating system, Nokia is plugging free, turn-by-turn navigation, new Nokia music services such as Mix Radio, a free music streaming service, and Gigfinder for finding nearby music entertainment, as benefits.

The phone has 16GB of internal memory plus 5GB of additional cloud-based SkyDrive storage, an 8 MP camera with a 28mm Carl Zeiss wide-angle lens and HD video, with Nokia’s own version of touch-to-focus.

Nokia last week posted a fourth-quarter, 2011 net loss of $US1.38 billion as sales slumped 21 per cent.

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said the Finnish company had already sold “well over” 1 million Lumia devices.

Including other models, Nokia sold 19.6 million smartphones in the last quarter of 2011, down from 28 million a year earlier. By comparison, Apple sold 37 million iPhones.

The Lumia 800 and Lumia 710 hit stores in Europe and Asia last November, while the Lumia 710 went on sale in the US this month.

Mr Elop said Nokia would be shipping Lumia phones to Canada next month, and China and South America during the first half of this year.

Since windows phone 7 are on the shelf for quite some time, one of the major remaining questions now is everybody’s been asking about Windows Phone 7 is, when will it get Skype? After all, Microsoft did buy out the VoIP company for $8.5 billion in cash last October. Microsoft says it’s “coming soon.”Skype’s Vice President of Products Rick Osterloh was quoted at a CES interview saying that Microsoft and Skype are “working on a Windows Phone product that will be coming out soon.”

Currently available on most leading platforms including Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android offerings the Skype app allows users to make and receive VoIP calls, video calls or send instant messages to contacts over Wi-Fi and 3G networks.

Confirming the imminent Skype for Windows Phone arrival at CES 2012 Skype’s VP of products, Rick Osterloh, revealed that Microsoft’s Skype division is “working on a Windows Phone product that will be coming out soon.”

In the meantime, if you’re desperate to get at least part of the Skype experience on your Windows Phone, then the IM+ app offers access to Skype chat. Alternatively, there’s the cross-platform messenger service WhatsApp, or the Tango Video Call app too.

Now, Shai Leib, a developer focusing on the Windows Phone platform, has created “Ask Ziggy“ an app for the OS employing a simple user interface similar to Siri. Owners of Windows Phone 7 devices can use their voice to search for information and ask questions, rather than having to type queries.

With this app, users can look for stock info, addresses and directions, weather reports or a wealth of other data available on the world wide web.  Ziggy’s power can also be tapped to do complex calculations and the smartphone will provide instant answers.

With a rather bland appearance, Ask Ziggy uses Nuance voice recognition technology. In an interview for WPCentral, the developer explains how Ask Ziggy works: “The transcribed text is analyzed for patterns to detect commands or general queries. Commands are interpreted and routed to routine phone tasks such as emailing, texting, calling, social network updates, and getting directions.”

TheNextWeb comments that, while the app “is not great” since it’s no where near as powerful as Siri, it does, however “showcase the power of the third-party developer, and how far behind Microsoft is in this field. As it has every resource available to it, Redmond was just shown up by an individual.”

A fresh hot update will be released soon, but for the time being an earlier version of Ask Ziggy is available on the Windows Phone Marketplace.

]]> http://www.godswmobile.com/blog/windows-phone-answer-to-iphone-4s-siri-ask-ziggy/983.html/feed 0 http://www.godswmobile.com/blog/windows-phone-7-will-get-three-lte-phones-in-2012/973.html http://www.godswmobile.com/blog/windows-phone-7-will-get-three-lte-phones-in-2012/973.html#comments Fri, 30 Dec 2011 06:16:56 +0000 admin http://www.godswmobile.com/blog/?p=973

A piece of big news, which will apparently be officially announced at CES, is that there will be several LTE Windows Phone devices in 2012 — and they will all be on AT&T. The three phones — the Nokia ACE, HTC Radiant, and Samsung Mendel — will ship by the middle of the year. The ACE, specifically, is set to launch on March 18.

The LTE phones will probably all run Windows Phone 7.5 Mango, as the previous roadmap leak points to the Tango update, which is aimed towards low-end phones, coming earlier in the year. The Apollo update, which will support high-end handsets, won’t show until the fourth quarter of 2012.

A final detail of the new leak has Nokia’s Lumia 710 launching on T-Mobile on January 11, and on Verizon in April. The Lumia 710 will launch in the US before the Lumia 800, making Americans’ first impressions of the Nokia/Microsoft alliance that of a mid-range phone that doesn’t dazzle like the Lumia 800.

While the Microsoft/Nokia bottom-up strategy seems illogical, it could have something to do with the release of Windows 8. Though Windows 8 and Windows Phone 7 are two different operating systems, the Metro UI will bring them together on a cosmetic level. In the eyes of most customers, that may be enough to create a positive association and let Windows Phone ride Windows 8′s(expected) buzz.

The strategy could fizzle, but it also may be a smart gamble.

Comparatively, LG has been quiet on the Windows Phone front this year. The only entry we’ve seen from the Korean giant was the LG Jil Sander Mobile. The latter is hardly a new product as it is entirely based on the Optimus 7 from a year ago.Whatever happened to LG? Have they given up on the Windows Phone platform? Not just yet. XDA Developers have just leaked the LG Fantasy, which is a Windows Phone Mango-powered handset.

One of the forum members posted the pictures on the site. He claims that a Romanian tester sold him the handset.

When it comes to specs, other than running Windows Phone Mango, it sports a 4 inch IPS display. Sadly, this is all that was revealed about the new LG smartphone.

On the XDA Developers thread, the forum member who purchased the phone said that the LG Fantasy is set to be unveiled in Q1 2012. We’re hoping the phone makes an appearance at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in January or MWC (Mobile World Congress) in February.

It’s also possible that this is a prototype, which means we may never see it in the market. However, since it was among the phones in a leaked lineup, it might just make an appearance in the first few months of 2012.

Want to know more about the LG Fantasy, or would you rather get your hands on something else? Share your thoughts.

The Finish mobile giant could also present a demonstration of its highly anticipated future products Lumia 719 and Lumia 900 during the same event, more precisely on January 13 if we are to believe all the recent speculation. Also, there are also rumours that both devices will feature the new Tango update.

Windows Phone 7 hasn’t quite caught up to iOS or Android, but the Mango update with its 500+ upgrades sure made a significant dent. Now, we’re ready for the next major update to Microsoft’s smartphone platform and it looks like next month’s CES is where they’re going to reveal the Tango update to WP7.

Windows Phone Tango doesn’t sound like it’s going to be nearly as substantial as its tropical fruit-named predecessor, but it will reportedly still bring some new moves to the dance floor. For instance, we’re hearing that it’ll get support for smaller screens, smaller chassis sizes, and even LTE. Considering all the LTE-equipped Droids out there, that’s a good thing for Redmond.

But it takes two to tango! There’s a good chance that Nokia will be showing off its new Nokia 719 and Nokia 900 at CES, both of which could very well ship with Tango right out of the box. The newest WP7 update is rumored to be released “soon” after CES.

Looking a little further down the roadmap to what could be Windows Phone 8, we’re hearing that the “Apollo” update is currently being slated to launch in mid-June 2012. Does this mean you should wait? Or is it likely that existing WP7 and WP7.5 devices will be eligible for the WP8 upgrade? Let’s just look forward to seeing that.

Good news!!! The latest version of PonyPhoto Editor, Version1.3, has been released!

On the latest verson, you are gonna have much fantastic photo editting experience on your Windows Phone7. Believe it or not, you could even make your pictures “MOVE” by PonyPhoto Editor.

Sounds interesting, right? Let’s get it started right now.

Details of PonyPhoto Editor V1.3 highlights:

(1)    Composite photos to a .gif image. (*.jpg/*.png/*.bmp to .gif); Here, by this “Composite”effect, you could convert several static photos to a dynamic photos and output as *.gif image format, and this is what we mean”To make you photos move” mentioned above.

(2)    Save images and share them to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr easily; You can save the edited images to the default directory, or send them to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr easily, so as to share your happines or any emotions with your friends as soon as possible.

(3)    Various Collage for compositing different images to generate a new one;

What else are you waiting for?

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Or you could visit http://www.ponyphotoeditor.com/ for further informaion.

Hope you guys like it.

The mobile phone maker first announced its much-anticipated range of Windows Phone 7 devices during Nokia World, which was held towards the end of October 2011 in London, dubbing them “Lumia.”

Nokia also announced a new batch of “Asha” feature phones based on the Series 40 platform at the event.

The Lumia 800 looked exactly like the recently launched Nokia N9, and its estimated retail price was pegged at about 420 Euro excluding taxes and subsidies.

The Lumia 710 was set to boast the same 1.4GHz processor, hardware acceleration, and graphics processor as the Lumia 800, but come with a significantly reduced price tag of 270 Euro.

Both devices were scheduled to be available first in Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan toward the end of the year alongside the Nokia Lumia 800, before becoming available in other markets in early 2012.

Picture above is The Nokia Lumia 800 running Windows Phone 7.

However, when we asked Nokia about its plans to launch Windows Phone 7 devices in South Africa, a spokesperson said: “We don’t have any details to share at the moment, on either timing, availability or ranging. Details are still being confirmed.”

Nokia was able to confirm that select Asha devices would be available locally in the first quarter of 2012.

Have you all checked out the PonyPhoto Editor we introduced about in last blog? We believe you do because PonyPhoto Editor is so amazing that it could bring us lots of fun and fresh experience.

And now, there goes another piece of good news: PonyPhoto has been updated to Version1.1, where there’re more fun features and new Windows Phone 7 experience.

Here are the details of PonyPhoto new edition updates:

1.Fix some bugs

2.Optimize the speed

3.Update the background and logo
4.An addition features of Facebook and Twitter in “Share” feature.
5.Add a function of “edit” to the collage

Visit Homepage: http://www.ponyphotoeditor.com/ for more information.

That’s a can’t-miss tool. Please  Dowload it here right now and have fun!

Download Page:
http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/4c17dffa-eaac-4e88-8ca9-8718d5ec3432