Hasta La Gadget!

Usually we’d advise you not to read too much into this — we’d point out that this was a themed ad served up before the showing of Lawrence of Arabia at London’s Secret Cinema event — but what the hell: Microsoft says the revolution‘s coming. It’s on now!

Continue reading Windows Phone 7 ad promises ‘the revolution is coming’ (video)

Windows Phone 7 ad promises ‘the revolution is coming’ (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Sep 2010 10:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’ve been holding yourself back during these early rounds of the smartphone wars in anticipation of Windows Phone 7, your wait just got a tiny bit shorter. Today Microsoft is announcing that its fancy new mobile operating system has been released to manufacturing, making the idea of you holding an actual WP7 device in your hands that much closer to reality. The finished product is now rolling out to partners around the world where it will be getting carrier and manufacturer tweaks and additions, and going through the kind of pre-launch testing you would expect for a release of this scale. If you had any doubt that the Windows Phone 7 onslaught was close at hand, feel free to abandon them now.

Furthermore, the folks on the 7 team have managed to cram a few last minute goodies into the OS, one of which we’re particularly excited about. As you probably know from our in-depth preview of an early version of the software, we had a lot of issues with overflowing Facebook contacts in our phone. Microsoft has now solved that problem by enabling a contact filter system which looks for pre-existing matches to your Facebook contacts. If it doesn’t find a match, it doesn’t pull that contact into your address book (kind of like how Android filters Facebook friends). It’s a welcome addition and should make the Facebook / Windows Phone 7 combo a lot more palatable to a lot of people. Furthermore, Microsoft has added functionality into the People Hub which will allow you to “like” someone’s posts, and you’ll be able to comment directly onto someone’s Wall right in the hub. The company has also made tweaks and fixes focusing on feature discoverability (another issue we pointed out in the early look), along with the expected set of polishing and finish you’d expect from a product that’s gone gold master.

Windows Phone 7 goes gold master, begins rolling out to partners for final launch preparations originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We imagine that LG’s security forces are combing Poland as we speak, because Android.com.pl has just provided us with yet another high-end handset leak. This LG C900 (last seen combing AT&T trenches) reportedly joins LG’s E900 in housing a 1GHz QSD8650 Snapdragon chipset under its sliding-QWERTY hood. Though our first look at the device suggested a plasticky matte frame, our erudite Polish informants tell us the phone’s mostly metal inside — despite a comparatively teensy 3.2-inch capacitive screen, they say it weighs about as much as an original Motorola Droid. A 3.5mm jack and a miniUSB port will play nice with headsets and charging cables respectively, and the site says it’ll run 1,100 zloty (about $350) if or when LG’s marketers recover from the shock of these leaked details and decide to ship. Find a video after the break and a host of similarly excellent pictures at our source link.

Update: Did we say 1.3GHz? We meant 1.0. As it turns out, Google Translate enjoys adding the letter “A” to acronyms immediately preceding a Polish comma, which made a 1GHz QSD8650 SoC look like a 1.3GHz QSD8650A to our tired eyes. Apologies! [Thanks, Anudeep]

Continue reading LG’s C900 Windows Phone 7 handset resurfaces with 1GHz Snapdragon, metal frame? (update: not 1.3GHz)

LG’s C900 Windows Phone 7 handset resurfaces with 1GHz Snapdragon, metal frame? (update: not 1.3GHz) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Now we don’t have much more to go on here than some analyst chatter and a lengthy article from TechCrunch, but if you believe what you read, a major player has just dropped Windows Phone 7 devices from its roadmap. And that player is Dell. According to Jonathan Goldberg, an telecom analyst at Deutsche Bank, the only remaining partners currently working on Windows Phone 7 handsets are HTC, Samsung, and LG. If this is true (and that’s a big if), that means that the seriously awesome looking Dell Lightning that we spied in leaks recently will never see the light of day — as a WP7 device, at least.

We already knew that HP was out of the game (instead focusing on webOS phones), but the casual suggestion that Dell has made for the door here is somewhat suspect. The company itself hasn’t made any statements (we’ve reached out but have yet to hear back), and while Dell has certainly concentrated a lot of effort on Android devices recently, its partnership with Microsoft is long-standing (despite dabbling in the world of open source). If the story turns out to be true, it could spell mixed (if not outright bad) tidings for the Windows Phone 7 launch, which Goldberg alleges may cost Microsoft upwards of half a billion dollars — no small fee. Losing two of the biggest computer-makers in the world can’t feel very good when you’re trying to fight your way back to relevancy, but at least on the bright side, neither HP nor Dell have a track record of making anything other than heroically mediocre handsets. Take this all with a grain of salt right now, however, as the author of the TechCrunch article provides no source for the statements from Goldberg, and… well, he’s an analyst, and they’re prone to making up all kinds of crazy things. We’re investigating, and will let you know as soon as we have more info.

Update: We’ve been pinged back by Dell’s Matt Parretta, and he was 100 percent clear that Dell was most certainly still part of the Windows Phone 7 game. In the company’s words:

Any reports, or speculation, that report Dell will not support Windows Phone 7 are false… Microsoft announced Dell as a supporting partner at this year’s Mobile World Congress and nothing’s changed. We are excited to collaborate with Microsoft on Windows Phone 7, and are looking forward to bringing customers amazing mobile experiences.

Furthermore, the analyst in question here (Jonathan Goldberg) has also reached out to us to clarify his statements, saying that he believes Dell is still a partner on Windows Phone 7, just not a launch partner. Dell was mum on release schedules, but one thing is clear — they intend to follow through on this collaboration.

Dell dropping Windows Phone 7 devices from its roadmap? (update: Dell responds, is definitely still in the game) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 10:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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At this point you’d think we covered almost every nook and cranny of Windows Phone 7, from games and UI to a launch device or six, but of course there’s a few dust balls of info our swiffer of newsgathering has yet to grab up. Microsoft Canada’s Greg Milligan has revealed at a recent Xbox 360 event. The big takeaway is future plans for phone-to-console gaming. While suggesting an initial use would be companion games that bring enhancements to full 360 titles (our first thought is how both a web game and Arcade casino title directly tied into Fable 2), he says it’s something they are “absolutely” working on for the “near future” — likely initially through WiFi only due to network speed sensitivities. “Near future,” on that note, is a lot sooner that the impression we got at the recent hands-on, but in either case, we won’t believe it until we see it with our own eyes.

In news that won’t directly affect your gamer score, Twitter, which has been noticeably (and annoyingly) absent from our time with the device, Milligan had this to say: “Twitter is not part of the base platform, but we’re working closely with a number of software developers to make sure we have a twitter experience… on or very shortly after launch.” Some on the staff are divided whether or not this implies full integration or just some third-party apps, but let’s be hopeful for the former, aye? Video interview after the break.

Continue reading Windows Phone 7’s short-term future includes phone-to-console gaming, Twitter?

Windows Phone 7’s short-term future includes phone-to-console gaming, Twitter? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Aug 2010 22:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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