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Microsoft announces phone support life cycles. Ill founded conclusions are made.

A few days back, Microsoft posted the support lifecycle for their Windows Phone devices, both those running version 7.8, and newer devices running Windows Phone 8. If you’re familiar with lifecycle patterns at all, these numbers seem pretty reasonable. Windows Phone 7.8 will continue to be supported until September 9th, 2014. The newer WP8 actually ends earlier, in July of 2014. While no official announcement about an update to WP8 has been made, the chances are that there will be an update to those devices either later this year, or…

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Arts Computing Featured Mobile Photography 

Nokia impresses at MWC with 41 megapixel PureView 808

Nokia, which has long held the crown as ‘best camera on a phone’ with their 12 megapixel N8 today upped the ante with the announcement of their PureView 808 phone. The phone will ship with a custom 1/1.2″ sensor, much larger than most smartphone cameras. While this leads to a noticable hump on the back, the results make up for it, as it sports a 41 megapixel sensor, enabling it to capture images up to 38 megapixels in size.

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Computing Featured Mobile video 

Nokia 900 leaked in developer video?

Last February, Nokia made a drastic decision regarding the future of its operating systems by going all-in with Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS. While there was a lot of online fallout from both proud Finns and Symbian advocates, Nokia’s new Windows Phones, the Lumia 710 and Lumia 800, finally started hitting overseas. The Lumia 800, which shares the same body design as their N9, has been getting rave reviews for the industrial design, but there’s still no word on what’s happening in North America.

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Computing Featured Mobile 

Windows Phone Mango update available worldwide

When rumours started floating around that today would be ‘Mango Day’, in which Microsoft launched the 7.5 version of their mobile OS (Mango of course), I have to admit I was pretty skeptical, after how clumsily the folks at Redmond handled the NoDo update in the spring. It turns out that Microsoft got it right this time, as the latest update to Windows Phone 7 has been launched worldwide.

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Computing Featured Mobile 

Kik Messenger Windows Phone launch gives them Android and iOS bump

If you follow smartphone news at all, you know that any time a review is posted, or another patent lawsuit is announced, the fanboys and fangirls will come out in the comments and talk smack to each other. They’ll trumpet their OS while saying all others are inferior choices.

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Windows Phone 7 Day to Day

Just a week or two before the launch of Windows Phone 7, my old phone did a nosedive onto a tiled floor. Not just a drop mind you, but a slow motion flung through the air and land screen first about 10 feet away from me drop. Though I had to cover the screen with cellophane to avoid dislodging glass shards, it wasn’t a permanent solution. That’s when I decided to give Windows Phone 7 a try…

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Windows Phone 7 in Canada: What We Know So Far

Today marked the big reveal of Microsoft’s reboot of it’s mobile strategy with Windows Phone 7. At 9.30 AM EST Microsoft finally pulled the covers off for the world to see the initial phones that will be available at launch (November 8th in North America), though much of the OS has already been shown in great detail prior to today. My first reaction was that the handset selection is a little slim, and there is not much innovation beyond the base ‘chassis 1’ specifications. However this is a launch of…

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Microsoft makes bank on HTC Android devices: Weird, right?

The last 24 hours have been pretty interesting, and just a little odd, in the smart phone space. Beside HP purchasing Palm, Microsoft has announced a licensing deal with long time hardware partner HTC. The odd thing is that this applies to HTC’s Android devices, not their range of Windows Phone hardware.  This means that for every HTC Android device sold going forward, Microsoft gets a small piece.  It feels like the early 1990’s all over again! Microsoft claims that Android infringes on several user interfce and operating system patents….

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Kin: Microsoft aims at mobile sociability

After Microsoft unveiled its Project Pink as Kin there was a lot of speculation as to what it really meant, given the major noise Microsoft has been making about its other phone strategy, Windows Phone 7.  The Kin phones and service are clearly targeted at a teen demographic, in the same way that Gossip Girl targets the teen demographic by portraying a lifestyle 99.9% of their audience will never achieve…  you know… aspirational. The snide remarks aside, after taking a look at what Kin has to offer, and the pedigree…

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Copy and paste in Windows Phone 7 coming, just not now

A minor storm of controversy, at least in some quarters, has broken out as it was reported that Microsoft was excluding copy and paste from Windows Mobile 7.  Sure, only a small minority make use of it, but it’s still a feature that long time Windows Mobile users want.  It’s also somewhat ironic, since it took a couple of years for the Apple iPhone to get this basic feature.  So, when Engadget reported that it wasn’t coming, and that they had “super-double-ultra-plus-confirmed” this, it’s not surprising that hands started flailing…

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Windows Phone 7 MIX 2010 impressions

Microsoft officially announced Windows Phone 7 Series (WP7S) back at Mobile World Congress this past February, but a lot of details were left out.  Now that the MIX developers conference has wrapped up, there’s a lot more to pour through, from 3rd party development to multitasking and much more. In short, there’s a lot of good new ideas in the new OS, but there are also some drawbacks, especially if you consider yourself a power user.

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