Hasta La Gadget!

Remember the Windows Phone 7 ads, the ones that promised to “save us from our phones” by giving us more “glance and go” information? For the most part, these phones haven’t delivered on that promise due to the relative dearth of apps taking advantage of Microsoft’s live tile concept. That changes a bit today thanks to an update to the HTC Hub app that ships with every Windows Phone 7 device manufactured by HTC. Now, instead of a generic double-wide icon, the HTC Hub presents you with the current weather condition and temperature and the forecasted highs and lows. As such, you’ll never have to click through and be subjected to HTC’s overwrought animations that feel so out of place on Microsoft’s more demure user interface. More please.

HTC Hub update helps save us from our Windows Phone 7 phones originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Dec 2010 07:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Venue Pro delay situation certainly isn’t getting any clearer with Dell’s latest update on its support forums, but we know this much for sure: the new kid on the smartphone block still has a few things to learn about shipping handsets. A post from a Dell moderator says the company is working directly with Microsoft to draft a battle plan and that current Venue Pro owners (those that got their devices early on from Microsoft stores, that is) “might require another hardware swap” to get their issues solved. The rep says that she’s hearing that some orders could still potentially ship this week, but she doesn’t know which ones, and that affected customers are welcome to cancel their orders if they wish. So yeah, kind of a good news / bad news situation there. We’re still clinging to hope that we’ll see these things on the streets before the end of 2010, but it certainly seems like an iffy proposition at this point.

[Thanks, @steveymacjr]

Update: Dell’s posted a new blog entry on the matter, too, though it’s not much help — basically, you could get your phone before January 6th, but it’s anyone’s guess. They’re promising to keep people abreast of the situation as it develops.

Dell: ‘Venue Pros are being reworked in the factories,’ ship schedule unclear originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Dec 2010 19:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Coming this February, at a Mobile World Congress near you, from the company that popularized the Service Pack: a second major update to Windows Phone 7. The observant among you will already be leaping out of their seats to point out that the first WP7 update hasn’t even been delivered yet, but it seems like Microsoft’s calendar stretches beyond the next month and the company’s already churning away on enhancing and improving its rebooted mobile OS. Such is the scuttlebutt coming out of WinRumors, and it’s kind of hard to argue with the postulation that Steve Ballmer wouldn’t be keynoting MWC in 2011 without something significant to announce. Word is that users will be getting added customization options for their phones, while developers will gain an extra few API hooks and controls that will ideally lead to more sophisticated apps in WP7’s future. Sounds good to us, now how about some landscape love, Microsoft?

[Thanks, Jay]

Microsoft said to be planning second Windows Phone 7 update for MWC in February originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Dec 2010 07:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re seeing reports pop up that discounting — some of it heavy — off the full retail prices of Windows Phone 7 handsets by third-party retailers this early in the game could be a sign of trouble for Microsoft, but realistically, you can’t use that yardstick for guesstimating how well a phone (or a platform, in this case) is doing. Guys like Amazon, Wirefly, Simplexity (which runs a number of mobile stores, including Walmart), and Best Buy Mobile regularly undercut carriers’ first-party pricing on handsets immediately following release — or shortly thereafter — because it’s effectively a win-win: they’re given multi-hundred-dollar commissions for each new contract they bring to the network, giving them the wiggle room to apply some of that cash to the sticker price. The retailers win because they’re earning sales by offering phones for less than the carriers, and the carriers still win because they’re pushing on-contract units either way — and that means they’ve captured another long-term revenue stream, which is where the real money’s at. Popular Android devices like the Epic 4G and the Vibrant (among countless others) were handled the same way in the retail channel as these Windows Phone 7 devices are being handled.

Of course, that’s not to say we know Windows Phone 7 is selling well — Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore dodged questions about numbers this week at D: Dive into Mobile, which seems shady at best for a platform that’s now been on the market for a solid month. We are saying, though, that you can’t use third-party discounting to steer the conversation either way. Call us when AT&T or T-Mobile starts blowing out Quantums and HD7s for a penny directly when they’re not tied up in some sort of holiday BOGO promotion, because that’s when you have to worry.

Correction: Walmart’s mobile store is actually operated by LetsTalk, not Simplexity as we’d originally reported.

Windows Phone 7 devices are being discounted by third parties, but it’s business as usual originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Dec 2010 14:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Windows Phone 7 shown copying and pasting on video

Windows Phone 7 shown copying and pasting on video originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Dec 2010 17:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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