Hasta La Gadget!

Terry Myerson, who took over as corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Windows Phone division following Andy Lees’ departure in 2011, is helping to kick off the second day of D: Dive Into Mobile here in New York City. Right out of the gate, host Ina Fried asked where Windows Phone is seeing the most success. The response?

“When you think about the world, there are markets where operators are subsidizing phones, and then there are markets where they aren’t. We’re seeing the most success in markets where operators are not subsidizing the phone. What happens in the subsidized market — the market that Apple and Samsung have chosen to focus on — is that the best innovation happens in the $650 product that’s sold for $200. For us, the momentum we’re building is with building a phone we can offer for less than $650 [unsubsidized]. Getting to 20 percent share in Mexico or Poland, that’s the opportunity.”

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Microsoft

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So you own a Windows Phone 8 smartphone, and are having a ball of a time with it so far. Apart from using your device to enjoy music and videos on it, how about flirting with the idea of on-demand video service? This is where the likes of Hulu come in, where Hulu is said to have been working on a Windows Phone application for some time already. Rumor has it that the Hulu Plus app will eventually roll out on the Windows Phone 8 platform sometime down the road.

Just for some context, right now, Hulu offers a basic ad-supported service as well as a $7.99 semi-ad-free subscription service, and will deliver apps on both the Android and iOS platforms. While Windows Phone 8 has not carried an Hulu app to date, desktop computers will obviously be able to stream video on Windows 8. Hulu Plus has been touted to come with its share of advertising, where many have claimed to be “a necessary evil” considering the license fees required for select TV programs. It is the content that made the service hugely popular among the masses, so we will sit tight and hope that this rumor will eventually turn out to be true.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Dish Reportedly Interested In Sprint As Well, Makes Counter-Offer Of Their Own, Chinese Scammers Return Fake Apple Components, Receives Genuine Parts And Made Their Own iPhones,

T-Mobile has announced that it will be partnering up with Nokia to bring the Nokia Lumia 521 to the United States around May. It’s aimed at the entry-level market, meaning it will most likely be extremely affordable for those who want to take advantage of T-Mobile’s brand new, contract-free value plans and its monthly phone payment options. While T-Mobile hasn’t released the pricing for the Nokia Lumia 521, we imagine the monthly payments to be very cheap.

So what kind of specs can you expect with the Nokia Lumia 521? Well it has a 4-inch 800 x 480 resolution super sensitive display, meaning it can still read your touch inputs even if you’re wearing gloves. It has a 1GHz dual-core procesor, 8GB of internal storage with a microSD card slot for expandable storage, 512MB RAM, 5MP rear-facing camera capable of shooting 720p video, and of course it’ll run on the Windows Phone 8 OS.

We’re still unsure what colors the Nokia Lumia 521 will come in, but hopefully we get the yellow, blue, white, and red color options we saw at Mobile World Congress this year. A few downsides to this device include its lack of 4G-LTE capabilities, as well as its lack of flash on its rear-facing camera. Nonetheless, for a low-priced device, it still performs really well on the Windows Phone 8 platform.

T-Mobile states that it will release pricing for the device at a later date, however, at Mobile World Congress, we learned that the device will be available in the United States for under $200 off contract, meaning you could be seeing a $0 required down payment for the device, and monthly payments of $8-$9 for the device for 24 months. T-Mobile will offer the device at Walmart, Microsoft, and T-Mobile retail stores. Be sure to check out our hands-on review of the Nokia Lumia 520 here.

T-Mobile-exclusive Nokia Lumia 521 arrives in May is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Windows Phone 8 is a pretty slick operating system, but it only supports up to 720p resolutions, as well as lower-quality WVGA and WXGA resolutions. However, it’s said that Microsoft will be adding 1080p support to Windows Phone 8 by the end of this year, as well as planning larger devices with 5-inch-and-higher displays.

According to The Verge, sources familiar with the development of Windows Phone 8 have revealed that Microsoft will issue and update later this year that will add support for 1080p devices, so that they’ll be able to run Windows Phone 8, allowing customers the opportunity to own a phablet-style smartphone running Microsoft’s latest platform.

The update is said to arrive in time for the holiday season, meaning that phones running Windows Phone 8 with larger displays and 1080p resolutions could be available to purchase by November, roughly. The update would also bring support for new Qualcomm quad-core processors, which would allow phone manufacturers to use higher-power quad-core chips in new Windows Phone 8 devices.

While the update is set to bring a lot of improvements to Windows Phone 8, it’s been noted that it’s actually separate from Microsoft’s long-term plan to bring improvements to the platform — codenamed “Blue,” as we’ve mentioned in the past. Instead this update will address different improvements and enhancements to the Windows Phone platform.

[via The Verge]

Windows Phone 8 to support 1080p and quad-core chips by 2014 is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

We’ve been hearing quite a lot about Windows Blue lately. Microsoft has only confirmed the Blue moniker, they’ve not said anything else about it. Previous Blue related rumors claim that this update will be akin to a service pack which will be released for Windows 8. It has also been rumored that Microsoft will be releasing Windows Blue as part of the Windows 8 wave, and that it is certainly not Windows 9. According to a new rumor that came out today, Microsoft will actually merge Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, the result will be called Windows Blue. How both of these platforms will be merged, raises some important questions.

Even right now both Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 share a lot of code, they have the same underlying kernel, same Metro UI, networking code as well as cross platform app compatibility. If integration is only limited to the codebases then the changes that Windows Blue will bring are going very nominal. If it is not limited to the codebases, then Windows Blue may be a very big project. It will bring integrate features from both platforms in to one single core OS that will work on all kinds of devices. It is rumored that Windows Blue is being developed by a separate team which is different from the Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 teams.

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