Items tagged with Windows Mobile
There may exist a parallel universe where Android is second fiddle to Windows Mobile. Or maybe Microsoft's ill-fated (in this universe) mobile operating is so dominant that Android falls by the wayside, relegated to a footnote in the history of tech. Things did not work out that way in the universe we reside, though according to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Windows Mobile could have won the war, had he not been distracted with an antitrust case brought forward by the US Justice Department. It is a relevant topic, particularly in today's political climate where presidential candidates debate on whether big companies like Facebook should be broken up. Microsoft faced a similar scenario back...
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A joint study between Microsoft Research and Purdue University has taken a look at how smartphone applications handle power consumption and come to some damning conclusions where energy efficiency is concerned. This is an issue that's become more important as smartphone specs have skyrocketed without a similar increase in battery life. The paper only considers devices running Android and Windows Mobile, but this isn't a problem that's unique to that platform; Apple's iPhone 4S suffered from battery life issues for months after release, while the new iPad is ~10% heavier than the old thanks to the need for a heavier battery to power the device's screen. The new iPad's battery holds 67% more power...
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Fujitsu Toshiba Mobile Communications has unveiled the first smartphone that will ship natively with Microsoft’s upcoming “Mango” build of Windows Phone which was just release to manufacturers a few days ago, also known officially as Windows Phone 7.5. At events in Tokyo at the KDDI Designing Studio and at the Aichi Prefecture in Nagoya, Japan, the cryptically-named IS12T smartphone was shown off to analysts and the public. The IS12T features a 3.7” multi-touch screen, 13.2 megapixel camera, integrated Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, and 32GB of storage. The phone will be available in three colors when it ships in Japan sometime around September—pink, yellow, and black....
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If you have a Symbian, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, iOS, or Android smartphone, your phone even now could be infected with spyware. However, it might be spyware that your significant other or spouse intentionally installed on your phone. The software is ePhoneTracker. Released last week, ePhoneTracker allows users to monitor everything one on an "infected" smartphone, including the following: Every text message sent and received, including the full text ... even if the phone's logs are deleted. All incoming and outgoing call numbers along with duration and time. GPS positions captured at an variable rate, including a link to a map. All contacts in the phone's Contacts list. All websites visited...
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One of the big announcements at CES this year will be from Microsoft; the company plans to announce (and possibly demonstrate) a consumer-centric version of Windows running on ARM processors. The company's decision is a powerful endorsement. Other Microsoft products like Windows Embedded and Windows Mobile support ARM products but the software giant has never released a non-x86 mainstream version of Windows.* It'll be quite awhile before we see an actual shipping OS. Microsoft has already sunk months of work into the endeavor, but vendor driver support is expected to take quite some time. There's also the question of software support—one reason the non-x86 versions of Windows NT ultimately...
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Even though smartphones still make up less than a quarter of the total U.S. mobile market, as of August, they officially used more applications and browsed more mobile content than their-not-so-bright competitors. Plus, smartphones are becoming popular with the girls. So says the latest quarterly report from comScore, which tracked 75.6 million mobile subscribers. Smartphones have always used a higher per capita share of mobile content. After all, applications and Web browsing are two of the main reasons people shell out big bucks for fancy phones. But this is the first quarter that smartphones gobbled up the largest percentage of mobile content out there, period. In the the three-month period...
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The first of what will undoubtedly be many Windows Phone 7 ads has been released to the Web, and it promises that "The revolution is coming." That statement is strange because many feel that iOS was the smartphone platform that first revolutionized things in that industry. The ad is very simple, and while it's been reported that the ad won't air on television, we know it will be the first of many. Microsoft is reportedly throwing tons of money at Windows Phone marketing and development. Still, it's hard to see how revolutionary Windows Phone can be; iPhone and then webOS and Android have set the bar rather high. Microsoft isn't exactly starting off on a good note by excluding copy-and-paste and...
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App store analytics firm Distimo has released its latest report. The June report covers the Apple App Store for iPad, the Apple App Store for iPhone, BlackBerry App World (Worldwide), Google Android Market, Nokia Ovi Store, Palm App Catalog and Windows Marketplace for Mobile, for May 2010. The following highlights were noted: More than 50% of applications are priced below or equal to $2.00 in all stores, with the exception of BlackBerry App World (which does not allow apps to be priced below $2.99) and Windows Marketplace for Mobile. The average price of all paid applications and the 100 most popular paid applications in the Apple App Store for iPad ($4.65) is higher than that in the Apple...
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How's this for a little friendly competition? Apple's iPhone has stood strong against the smartphone rivals over the past few years, but HTC and other Android-utilizing brands have begun to seriously catch up. And really, there's nothing like a little incentive to get an iPhone user to ditch what they're used to and come to another carrier for another brand (and another operating system, for that matter). According to internal communications dug up, T-Mobile will be allowing users to actually trade in their existing iPhone as a trade-up to the company's HTC HD2, an exclusive here in the U.S. The real news is the discount. iPhone users who give up their smartphone (and hand it over to T-Mobile)...
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T-Mobile has officially announced the release details for the upcoming HTC HD2 smartphone. You can expect the HD2 to be available Wednesday, March 24 for $199.99 with a two-year contract. It will also be available without the two-year contract on an Even More Plus service plan for $449.99. The HD2 boasts of a 4.3-inch capacitive, high-resolution touchscreen display. It is powered by a Qualcomm 1GHz Snapdragon mobile processor and runs HTC’s Sense user interface on top of Windows Mobile 6.5. The phone also has a 5 megapixel camera, Bluetooth 2.1, Wi-Fi, and easy access to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Other new features include a Blockbuster application that allows users...
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Opera Software released an Android version of its popular Opera Mini 5 beta web browser. According to Opera, the mobile browser compresses data by up to 90%, making pages load more quickly. In order to achieve this boost in speed, the browser is actually a proxy-based browser that connects to Opera's servers. These servers compress the data remotely and then push the compressed results to the phone. Opera Mini 5 beta delivers a desktop-like Web browsing experience. Some of the browser's features include Speed Dialing, tabbed browsing, bookmarks, and a password manager. The Speed Dial feature makes it easy to navigate to your favorite Web pages in a single click using visual bookmarks when you...
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The latest quarterly smartphone results are in from market research firm comScore, and surprise-surprise, Google's Android platform continues to rock the marketplace while everyone else looks on.According to comScore, smartphone usage is up 18 percent in the latest quarter, sitting just shy of 43 million users. And while Google's Android OS sits in fourth place behind RIM, Apple, and Microsoft, it's the only one with a significant trend upwards."42.7 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones in an average month during the November to January period, up 18 percent from the August through October period. RIM was the leading mobile smartphone platform in the U.S. with 43.0 percent share of U.S....
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Microsoft is tightening its control over upcoming Windows Phone 7 devices. As a result, Windows Mobile 6.x devices won't be upgradable to the newer OS. Even devices such as the recently announced HTC HD2 won't qualify for an upgrade. At first glance, the HD2 meets Microsoft's criteria for a Windows Phone 7 device. It has a 1GHz Qualcomm processor, high-resolution capacitive touch display, 5-megapixel camera, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The problem is the phone has two too many buttons. You see, Microsoft has mandated that all Windows Phone 7 devices have just three hardware buttons. The HD2 has five. These two extra buttons will prohibit the HD2 from being considered for Windows Phone 7. As Natasha...
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It's really stunning how fast Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6.5 rushed to the back of everyone's memory. It already feels like a pipe dream, and yet, it's still the latest mobile operating system available from the company. The fact is, many couldn't (and still can't) wait for Windows Mobile to be nothing more than history; over the past few years, the OS has fell far behind the likes of iPhone OS, webOS and Android. It simply can't keep up in terms of quickness and intuitiveness, and Microsoft unveiled Windows Phone 7 Series earlier this month at Mobile World Congress in order to turn over a new leaf. The new OS won't ship on phones until this holiday season, leaving consumers the choice of buying...
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For many consumers and even handset manufacturers, Windows Mobile has become an afterthought. Has it become the same for developers, as well? Skype, at least, seems to think so.Of course, Skype didn't really put it that way, but the implication in there. As of now, users can no longer download Skype Lite or Skype clients for Windows Mobile phones. Skype has put up an FAQ addressing the issue. They say:We’ve chosen to withdraw Skype Lite and Skype for Windows phones because we want to offer our new customers an improved mobile experience – much like the version that has proved so popular on the iPhone, and which is now available on Symbian phones. Our focus is on providing a rich user experience...
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Microsoft showed off its new mobile platform called Windows Phone 7 Series earlier this week. While the new mobile OS promises big changes in comparison to previous generations of Windows Mobile, one thing remains the same: Microsoft still intends to charge manufacturers to license the software. Whether or not this is a wise decision will remain to be seen, but there are compelling arguments for both sides. When Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Microsoft would continue with its current Windows Mobile business model, he defended the stance saying, "I think there's something clean and simple and easy to understand about our model….We build something, we sell that thing." He added, "I think it's...
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Microsoft has been taking a beating over the past couple of years in the mobile market, with operating systems such as webOS, iPhone OS and Android really stealing the thunder that was once owned by Windows Mobile. Even Windows Mobile 6.5.3 was way behind those other next generation systems in many ways, and Microsoft knew it. The software company certainly took their precious time before jumping head first into the new world order surrounding the new breed of do-it-all smartphones, but Windows Phone 7 Series promises to make up for lost time in a big way.The new mobile operating system was unveiled this afternoon in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress 2010, with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on...
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Mobile World Congress is a major cellphone trade show, and given the pervasiveness in smartphones these days, it's ramping up to be quite the extravaganza. The show begins next week, but many companies are already pushing out details on a number of their standout products. Garmin-Asus is a newcomer to the smartphone realm; to date, it only has one major phone on the market, and the nuvifone G60 didn't exactly have a great amount of success due to the long delays that forced it to ship well after the iPhone 3GS and a number of other excellent Android phones were already on the market. The joint venture is hoping to strike gold with round, as the new M10 could actually be a winner thanks to Garmin-Asus'...
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It's hard to guess how much traction Sony Ericsson's GreenHeart lineup will gather, but we have to admit that the newest member is a real looker. Atypical for Sony Ericcson, the Aspen is a business phone. Not a fashion phone. Not a clamshell phone. Not an Android phone.It's apparently aimed for the corporate folks who have avoided the BlackBerry bug thus far, but we have to wonder just how big that segment still is. Anyway, SE talks up this phone's ability to "multitask," which is something the iPhone has been slammed for not supporting. This is also the first smartphone out to come pre-loaded with Windows Mobile 6.5.3, which is likely a stopgap version until Windows Mobile 7 arrives later this...
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Recently, Jay Sullivan at Mozilla told the BBC that Mozilla's upcoming mobile web browser codenamed Fennec is just "days away" from being launched. The browser will initially be available for Nokia's N900 phone followed by other handsets. Sullivan further explained that the browser is currently going through final testing and could be released before the end of the year. The mobile browser has been in the works for the past year and a half. It is said to offer the ability to synchronize with the desktop version of Firefox, allowing users to take web pages that are open in their desktop browser with them on their mobile device. "At the end of the working day you can walk away from your computer...
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According to research firm comScore, Apple's iPhone now has the second largest user base in the U.S. smartphone market, having surpassed Windows Mobile based phones. Research In Motion's (RIM) BlackBerry still holds the No. 1 spot and enjoyed pretty significant growth throughout the year. Mark Donovan, senior analyst with Virginia-based comScore, said in the three months ending in October, nearly 9 million Americans used Apple's iPhone as their primary phone. In the study, nearly 15 million people identified RIM as the maker of their primary smartphone. Microsoft's Windows Mobile phones were used by an estimated 7.1 million people during the same survey period. Based on comScore's research, approximately...
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HP hasn't really been a major force in the smartphone arena for quite a few years, but they're still rather important in the business sector. Granted, even in that arena it's fighting the likes of RIM and Apple now, but if you're a Windows Mobile loyalist, you'll be right at home here. The iPAQ Glisten is AT&T's newest 3G world phone, and honestly, it looks pretty darn slick. It's also the first phone to ever come to AT&T with an AMOLED display, despite the fact that the screen is just 2.5" due to the QWERTY keyboard beneath it. The phone runs on a standard edition of Windows Mobile 6.5, and it comes with a stylus and the all-important Flash support. There's also a GPS chip, Office, voice...
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