We’ve been waiting for Mr. Blurrycam to strike and he finally has! WMPowerUser received an anonymous tip of what looks like a picture of a slideshow presentation from Nokia on their Nokia 703 phone — which bares a striking resemblance to the “leaked” Nokia Sea Ray device, which runs Windows Phone 7.5 Mango.
This could very well be the first Nokia Mango device.
Now the specs are a little hard to read but we think they say the following:
Display: 480 x 800 pixels and 3.7″ screen
Camera: 5 megapixel, with [illegible] and 720p at 30fps recording
Memory: 8GB and what looks like in the MB range for RAM, so perhaps 512?
That’s all I could somewhat read. Perhaps others would be better than me
Thanks Joshua!
Microsoft has released an update for Windows Phone Connector for Mac late Tuesday. The Windows Phone Connector for Mac software is a, as some might call it, bit watered down version of the Zune software — both of which are used to sync media between WP7 and Zune devices on Mac and Windows-based PCs, respectively.
Among the major differences and additions: Zune Applications Marketplace support has made its way to the Mac desktop, at least according to the Windows Phone Blog posting. The App Marketplace support is only available to devices running Windows Phone 7.5 Mango; the post did not go into detail about what exactly it supports, if it’s a full-fledged Marketplace or not in other words. (Hopefully someone who reads this can fill us all in.) The update also brings the ability to sync ringtones to and from your phone to your Mac (also for phones with Mango software). But that’s not all, version 2.0 also adds:
- Full sync and import support for Apple Aperture software
- Drag and drop import of files from Browse Device
- Improved video conversion
- Localization support for 13 additional languages
- Improvements to backup and restore operations
- Improved configuration for podcast sync and photo import
- Improved iTunes import support in certain languages
- Improved metadata support for videos
And there you have it! You can get the updated software in the Mac App Store.
Rapper and singer Chamillionaire. Image credit: Wikipedia
So if you’re keeping count: we’ve got a comic strip creator, a technology reporter and podcaster, a basketball player, and now the next person to take the Windows Phone Challege (WPC, from here on out) is rapper Chamillionaire.
Dilbert creator Scott Adams mainly started the WPC craze when he wrote a blog post about how he was frustrated with his past iPhone and Android devices. He was sent a Windows Phone Mango device, by Director of Windows Phone Apps Brandon Watson, and declared it the victor against the other Apple and Google products. CNET’s Molly Wood was next. Her verdict: “It’s not going to be my next phone.”
Then, Watson asked to send LA Clippers’ Blake Griffin a Windows Phone 7.5 Mango device, but we have yet to hear a verdict, or any other information for that matter, from him. Now, it appears that Chamillionaire has been sent a Mango device, as well.
“iPhone, Nexus S, and now Brandon Watson just sent me this new Windows Phone 7,” the rapper tweeted out late Tuesday. “I like all of them.” Well, I suppose that certifies his verdict.
It appears that Watson will stop at nothing. And we like that.
Thanks to Michael who sent this in!
We’ve all seen applications run on the new Windows 8 Metro UI look back when Microsoft unveiled the new operating system. But those Windows 8 apps were built by Microsoft specifically to show them off. Now, a couple of new app portfolios discovered by ZDNet, created by third party developers, have surfaces and one of them is a USA Today.
The first one, USA Today (pictured above) was located by going through the company’s art director, Robbie Dillion, portfolio who also made their HP Touchpad app. Dillion says (or did when the image was up on his portfolio):
In preparation for the Windows 8 release, this app is being built to take advantage of the touch-first, native environment of Windows 8, while retaining the look and feel of the Windows Metro UI and showcasing the content of USA Today.
You tell us whether or not it’s better than the USA Today iPad app, in terms of aesthetics, of course. The (not so weird) thing is that the portfolio shows the application incased around a tablet mockup, showing where the company believes Windows 8 will most likely strive — and the reason for creative a native app.
The second is an application by Jetsream Software, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner that claims it has seen and worked with beta versions of earlier operating systems and has a close relationship with Microsoft. Their app is featured below:
Microsoft’s BUILD conference for Windows 8 is slated to take place mid-September, where many more applications will most likely be unveiled.
Rumor has it that Microsoft is gearing up to release an official SkyDrive application for their Windows Phone platform. Now, a new job posting hints that the SkyDrive clients and applications will become multi-platform.
The filing, first spotted by LiveSide, is looking for a software engineer to join the Windows Live team.
The Windows Live DRX team produces the SkyDrive client applications that fuel our customers thirst for stable, secure and available online storage. DRX is building experiences to deliver all of your content from the cloud and your devices to any of your devices anywhere anytime. Our team develops clients for Windows, Windows Phone, iPhone, Mac and Android. We are looking for developers that are looking for their next challenge to build the highly distributed platform and multi-platform clients for the SkyDrive suite of products delivered through Windows Live and Windows.
LiveSide notes that the Windows Live DRX team is best known for creating Windows Live Mesh.
Read the job posting by clicking here.
HTC Mango device codename Omega will actually be HTC Radar. Image credit: PocketNow
HTC’s Windows Phone 7.5 Mango devices were reported to be codenamed Omega and Eternity, but as it turns out, they will have completely different names once they hit the market.
The final names of Omega and Eternity will be HTC Radar and HTC Titan, respectively, according to WMPowerUser. The HTC Radar is expected to boast a front-facing camera and the HTC Titan should make up for the lack of that feature with a 4.7″ screen, 1.5 GHz processor, and an 8 megapixel camera.
HTC will be making an announcement at a press event on September 1st where they are expected to announce their lineup of Windows Phone 7.5 Mango devices; both Radar and Titan are likely to be part of that event.
image credit: PocketNow
Something we here at Zunited have been a little wary of is that the different services on Windows Phone don’t exactly translate back to one single brand that can be identified easily. It seems Microsoft is looking for a solution to that problem as the Japanese version of the official Windows Phone website has “leaked” new features (to the site solely, mainly because the first Mango device is already on sale in Japan).
Japanese blog Nanapho has uncovered the new features, one of which is a list of your applications download history.
“You can reinstall apps and see your purchase history on the Account page of WindowsPhone.com,” the verbiage below the new feature headline reads. That description along with the availability of a Marketplace tab on the top of the webpage all but officially confirms that a browser-based Marketplace is going to become available with Mango.
The website will also try to aggregate other cloud services, including SkyDrive. “When you share pictures and video on SkyDrive, they’ll show up here,” it reads. The other new features include being able to see your documents from the Windows Phone website as well and tinkering with your Xbox LIVE avatar as well as looking at your gamer stats.
via WMPowerUser
500 features is right! You never know what else Windows Phone 7.5, also known as Mango, has up its sleeve. Another surprise feature: Hotspot, which is a way to share internet access from your phone with other mobile devices via WiFi.
The picture to the left shows a Samsung Focus using the Hotspot feature, with all credit to WPCentral. It apparently works flawlessly and, as expected, depletes battery life pretty quickly.
According to Rafael Rivera, cellphone providers would likely need to update individual phones to turn the feature on for customers.
It’s been a pretty busy week! And sometimes we can get caught up with all the news and, leaving some stuff un-posted. But here’s what we missed this week thus far.
HTC has announced it will have an event take place on September 1st where it reportedly plans to unveil not one, but two Windows Phone 7.5 Mango devices! The devices are named Eternity and Omega, respectively. Read about it on Boy Genius Report.
Director of Windows Phone Apps (and Zunited-proclaimed Windows Phone warrior as of now!) Brandon Watson is not backing down. Next on his list to shift focus to Windows Phone: offering webOS developers the tools they need to be successful on Microsoft’s mobile platform.
Brandon Watson offers webOS developers free tools on Twitter.
“To any published webOS devs,” Watson wrote on Twitter, “We’ll give you what you need to be successful on Windows Phone, [including] free phones, dev tools, and training, etc.”
HP made waves recently when it announced that it would discontinue webOS and products that ran the operating system. But it seems like Windows Phone is a viable option for them: Watson has been replying to developers via his Twitter profile since he decided to publish the aforementioned tweet.
Just a few tweets in which Watson replies to webOS devs.