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HTC Trophy spotted with Verizon colors

Matt P. — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 18:11:48 +0000

That’s it folks. Word is that there’s nothing really new on this one and the European version, besides this is said to be running the latest versions of Windows Phone 7, and also includes the newly implemented copy/paste function. Hopefully we’ll see this go official sometime soon.

Source: Engadget

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Forbes-Google Study On Untethered Executives

Marilyn Torres — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 16:46:10 +0000

As the results of a recent Forbes and Google study show, the widening scope of smartphone use has made an impact on the way people conduct business. “The Untethered Executive: Business Information in the Age of Mobility” has revealed a sharp rise in smartphone use among executives, including facts like 28% of the 300 executives surveyed carry both a Blackberry and an iOS or Android device.

The increase in usage in the executive demographic has likely affected the development of more versatile smartphones. Last year, LG introduced the LG Expo, a Windows Mobile 6.5 smartphone with a pico projector attachment. The small size of the projector and outdated OS may have kept the Expo from becoming the main tool in executives’ toolboxes, but the availability of a pocket-sized pico shows that business users want to do more with their phones than just check business email and read MS Office documents.

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HTC Mozart to Run Windows Phone 7

Zealot — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 08:48:54 +0000

It seems like the last couple weeks you can’t go anywhere online without running into yet another leaked WP7 handset. The one that was outed this weekend is yet another device from HTC, the Mozart. This will join the Mondrian and the HD7 in the rapidly expanding HTC Windows Phone 7 lineup, as well as probably more devices that have yet to be leaked or that I have forgotten about.

The info comes from a PowerPoint slide prepared by a phone dealer in the UK, Phones4U and while the device itself is interesting, I found the bit of internal marketing blurb on the slide to be even more fascinating.

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WP7 Release Spurning Enterprise, Then Remaking WinMo’s Mistakes?

Zealot — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 08:18:59 +0000

Oh please Mr. Ballmer, say it ain’t so. Remember the dark days when Microsoft split its Mobile client into three flavors; first called Pocket PC, PPC Phone and PPC Smartphone and then Windows Mobile Standard, Windows Mobile Professional and Windows Mobile Classic (for some reason at the time, MS marketers missed the obvious fourth flavor, Windows Mobile Increasingly Irrelevant)? It appears that MS may be going for a new version of that market-baffling strategy.

First of all, it appears that Microsoft is admitting that, out of the box, Windows Phone 7 will not be a good fit for the Enterprise, being slavishly consumer focused. Most of us had already guessed this so it is not a major surprise…just disappointing to hear it so blatantly confirmed. However, Redmond is saying they intend to pick up business customers further down the line, but they may be trying to go back to making a sharp distinction between consumer and business users in the upcoming Windows Phone 7 through the use of different hardware models.

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Windows Phone 7: OCTOBER 21st, The Ads: RIGHT NOW

Zealot — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 15:48:26 +0000

Well, according to Neowin it is official. Windows Phone 7 will be rolling out on October 21st in the UK, France, Italy, Spain and Germany with whole bunches of launch events and major partners such as Orange. In addition, there will be a special event hosted by Microsoft on October 11th in New York City in which I would expect ALL the devices to be formally announced and debuted along with the final version of the OS.

No confirmation yet if the 21st will be the launch in the US as well but at this moment I am assuming it will be. It makes sense to release in all initial markets at once, and 10 days after the New York event sounds about right, and will finally allow Steve Ballmer to do his Steve Jobs impression…”And ALL of these phones on ALL of these carriers will be available at the end of next week…but you can preorder them RIGHT NOW. Oh, and one more thing…Paul McCartney is here to play a few new songs for us while I do the monkey dance with the entire cast of HBO’s True Blood, live on stage. Boom!”

Ads have also started rolling out, and thanks to WMPowerUser they are on YouTube for us all to enjoy…right after the jump.

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iPhone vs WP7: The Comparisons Begin

Zealot — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 13:09:26 +0000

To many of us, especially those who are not as techno-obsessive as others, smartphones are all beginning to look the same. Same apps, same specs, similar screens…yadda yadda. As I am somewhat known for being a gadget fan (aka “The freak with all the tech junk in his office”), more and more people now ask me when they are debating between two cellphones, “what is the difference, really?”. Often all I can do is shrug.

Many times now, the difference really is just a matter of personal preference. No more, no less. A lot depends on which OS you are used to and what you intend to do with the phone. Will you need a great camera, top notch video, QWERTY keyboard, games, lots of apps, etc, etc. It becomes even harder to advise someone when the phones they are discussing haven’t even been released yet…like the Windows Phone 7 posse.

Fortunately, for those of us who are already perplexed PocketNow has posted an excellent video that specifically compares the look, feel and features of WP7 (running on an LG phone) and iOS. Check it out after the jump…and let the debate begin. Is there a Windows Phone 7 device in your future?

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Microsoft Buries iPhone, Blackberry

Zealot — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 08:34:09 +0000

This story has already been all over the interwebs over the last few days, but due to Rosh HaShana I didn’t actually get a crack at it till now. Mobile Microsofties actually staged a funeral procession for the iPhone and the Blackberry to celebrate the release to manufacturers of Windows Phone 7, replete with pallbearers, impressive clergymen and zombies. Even better, they recreated a bit of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video along the way.

Now of course the general reaction of the blogosphere is that it was in bad taste (though I am not completely clear why considering that nearly every show on TV now is about vampires or zombies…or vampire zombies), was dripping in hubris (in the age of Steve Jobs, is Hubris still a bad thing?) and that it was just done to draw attention to themselves (well, d’uh). Reading the reports and comments, they seem sure that the parade has caused widespread indignation, since after all Apple, RIM and Google have never done or said anything in bad taste or displayed over-confidence in a product and certainly would never do or say something simply to draw attention to themselves. Hypocrisy continues to be an undocumented feature in many tech gadgets we know and love.

Personally I think this was great. It is about time Microsoft started showing a little more attitude, and dare I say it, killer instinct in the mobile market. Also, it is nice to see Microsoft employees showing pride and excitement in what they are doing again and getting out and having fun with it. You Go, WP7 Team!

Check out the Thriller dance after the jump….the scariest part is that they aren’t bad at all.

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HTC Event in London, September 15th – HD3/7 Time?

Zealot — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 12:26:23 +0000

Taiwanese phone giants HTC have an invitation only event scheduled for London on September 15th. As is the current fashion for such things, it hasn’t said what it will be announcing and the invitation features just a lot of smoke (how fitting) and the vague hint of a phone, which seems to be the back of a Desire. Pundits and tech fans alike have been guessing about what they have in store.

Conventional wisdom holds that first new device on the agenda will be a new Desire, either the Desire HD running Froyo or the Desire Z (formerly codenamed the HTC Vision) with a slide out QWERTY keyboard…or heck maybe both. However, one phone does not an event make.

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Windows Phone 7 Called “Elegant”

Zealot — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:08:07 +0000

Before the entire blogosphere becomes an arm of Apple’s Marketing team for 48 hours or so after today’s event, let’s look at a somewhat singular event that occurred today. One of my favorite real tech columnists, Ina Fried, actually called Windows Phone 7 “elegant” yesterday after working with the OS for about a month now.

Now in the past I have called Microsoft products “useful”, “comprehensive”, “inexplicable” “powerful”, “infuriating”, “possessed by dybbuks”, even “intuitive” once or twice, but never elegant…and that she is doing so is a very good sign. Fried posted her “Beyond Binary” column on CNET yesterday with a very good summary of where Windows Phone 7 is at currently, just a few weeks before release.

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Windows Phone 7 Gaming Primed for Launch!

Diego Samuilov — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 03:51:38 +0000

It was announced that Windows Phone 7 will be launched with no less than 60 titles available for trial, purchase or free download in the Xbox Live hub. Some titles are from well known franchises such as Halo: Waypoint, Castlevania, Crackdown, Star Wars, Guitar Hero, The Harvest, Bejeweled, Crackdown 2: Project Sunburst, Rocket Riot, Uno, etc. There seems to be an impressive list of titles with very attractive gameplay, imagery and features. The Xbox Live Marketplace hub is scheduled to have new releases every week after launch and

Windows Phone 7 will also include a full avatar experience in most aspects being exactly the same as the experience found on the actual Xbox 360. The avatar you have already chosen in your Xbox 360 will be fully rendered and customizable on your Windows Phone 7. For example, there will be free items to unlock on your smartphone that will show up on your Xbox 360 and vise versa. Also you will be able to change the looks, add-ons, accessories, etc and be able to see the fully rendered version immediately. The features include contact lists with live status display, messaging, achievements, and leaderboards where you will be able to compare your gamerscore against your friends. Overall it will be a great mobile Xbox Live experience. Microsoft has not spared any details to their new product. They even include other simple, yet practical functions that your avatar now handles. For example; you can now use a bubble level, flashlight and coin toss feature where your avatar is participating in the holding of the flashlight, the tossing of the coin, etc.

One feature that comes with almost all games is the try-before-you-buy feature, which will allow you to see if you like a game before you spend any money in purchasing.

There seems to be a lot of space for creativity:

Controls for the games will be allowed to use both touch and hardware keyboard input. This will allow for some new input interfaces as well as the classic keyboard driven.
Crackdown 2: Project Sunburst, for example will use Bing maps as a source for creating levels where actual roads will be used by enemies to get to you.
Game play, frame rates and overall quality seems to be absolutely up to par with the iPod, iPhone and iPad.

Cant wait for release day…

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The OtterBox Defender Series Case for the T-Mobile HTC HD2

Rich Bilancia — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 17:48:28 +0000

Technorati Tags: OtterBox,HD2

For the last week I’ve been using an OtterBox Defender Series case with my T-Mobile HTC HD2. The case was provided by OtterBox for review. Readers may remember my earlier post about my visit to the OtterBox headquarters in Fort Collins, Colorado. Since that time I’ve used several OtterBox products, but the OtterBox Defender Series case for the T-Mobile HTC HD2 is my first experience with the top of the line OtterBox Defender Series. In a single phrase, I am extremely impressed with the experience.

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Am I Ready? – Checklist Before Getting A Windows Phone

Diego Samuilov — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 02:30:14 +0000

With less than 60 days till launch; a few friends and readers are approaching me with questions on how to be prepared for moving everything they have on their current smartphones into their new Windows Phones. This is an attempt to help out those who have already decided to make the jump into this innovative phone OS. If you have seen the demos and how Windows Phone 7 works; you probably have realized that most of the content residing in your phone is also stored somewhere in the clouds, either as a backup or it is the actual source of content in your phone.

You need to have a Windows Live account (a.k.a. Microsoft Passport account), this is probably one of the first and most important things you need to do. If you don’t have one, you can get one [here], if you do… you may want to make sure you pre-setup some of the features (some new, some have already been there for a while) so that they start feeding content coming in from the web from your own family, friends and colleagues. These feeds will come into the phone from the many social networks you belong to. The main source though, will be Windows Live, and even though not as many people use it right now as a social network, it actually works as a great social network center. This means that you can access the content from a large number of social networks in a single place; just like your Windows Phone will end up being your center for updating you on the content coming in from the web.

Once you have a new Windows Live ID, you can add, remove, change settings for many social network sites. You can do that [here]. For example, you will be able to connect your Windows Live ID to your Facebook account and whenever you receive content in your Facebook wall, you would see it in your Windows Live account. You can also setup so that you Facebook status changes and is posted on the wall when you change the status of your Windows Live account. The same thing goes for pictures and other features. Most social networks have similar features, so you can count on them feeding content into your Windows Live account and your Live account feeding them. The idea behind all this is that as other people change their information or update their status in their own social networks, your contacts will automatically feed you with their own updates whether that is a brand new picture or an update with their new phone number. There are other items you can setup into Windows Live, such as RSS feeds. Let’s just say you love to read our blog, the articles written by someone in your local news station or even major news and sports sites such as ABC News, CBS News, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, ESPN, etc… then all you need to do is enter the address of their RSS feed and your phone will have readily available news from their corresponding sites, just as you would if you were going into each of them independently. Customized news from the sources you like 24/7! When your Windows Live ID is set up in your Windows Phone, you can expect all this information to come streaming into your Windows Phone automatically. Preparing your Windows Live account and keeping it updated is probably what is going to save you from having to enter (or import) most contacts into your new phone, setting up news feeds, maybe even from going to your favorite news sites for your morning news.

If you enjoy of an Xbox game every now and then, or if you play all the time on your Xbox, then you should link your Xbox Live account into this setup. If you haven’t joined Xbox Live, you can do so [here]. Your game achievements, games score and other features will become available from your phone. Some games will be available to be played from both your phone and your Xbox, so that you can get entertainment whenever and wherever you want. The avatar you created in your Xbox will show up in your phone along with the information that your profile carries for the games you are playing.

If you are a music fan. Take a look at [Zune.net], this service is going to be available for Windows Phone users. The same principle applies and you most likely will take advantage of it. If you are willing to pay a monthly fee for unlimited downloads you will particularly enjoy this service where for less than the price of one CD, you can download as many songs as you want. If you are not willing to pay a monthly fee, then simply register and you can use the service for purchasing songs whenever you want. In the mean time, your registration is free and you are not required to make any purchases.

All in all, if you have these 4 items setup, updated and prepared, you can consider yourself ready for moving into Windows Phone effortlessly.

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Windows Phone 7 and XBox Live–Together at LAST!

Zealot — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:11:48 +0000

One of the most highly touted and anticipated aspects of Windows Phone 7, as well as the one that has been most carefully shrouded in mystery by Microsoft, the way that WP7 will interface with XBox Live, has finally been outed by Engadget.

Here is what they had to say about it…

All in all, it’s a promising picture for Microsoft. The company has the clout, the community, and most importantly the cash to pull this off, but as with all modern smartphone platforms, success can’t be judged on one aspect alone. To make Windows Phone 7 really work, the folks in Redmond will have to hit the right note on not just gaming, but the basic user experience, hardware, applications, and carrier partnerships. Based on what we’ve seen of Xbox Live on these devices, we think the company can check at least one of those boxes off.

Sounds shockingly hopefully to me…Check out their entire report HERE and take a look at a video preview after the jump.

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Windows Phone 7 Includes Voice Recognition

Diego Samuilov — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 22:35:05 +0000

Some people with developer Windows Phone 7 devices have not quite discovered this feature yet, but voice recognition is embedded into most Windows Phone 7 functions. WP7 comes with the service powered by TellMe, one of the largest cloud-based voice recognition platforms currently active. This provides immediate voice pattern recognition with a level of accuracy that is unparalleled. On top of that, you can’t really tell whether it’s calling an online web service or not, although because it is a “cloud-based” service, it really is going out to the cloud to recognize my voice.

You can easily access this service by pressing and holding the start key. This shows a screen that indicates the phone is “listening”. You then say something like “Call Joe Mobile”, “Open OneNote”, etc and the phone executes exactly what you indicated.

The most useful actions to ask of the phone are:

“Call ” where contact name can be a first name, last name or both and phone type can be mobile, home, work, etc.
“ in ” where search item is what you want to search for (i.e. coffee shops, etc), followed by “in” and then the name of the city and the state where you are searching that item. i.e. “Coffee Shops in Boca Raton Florida”. This pops up Bing search with the search items and location you indicated.
“Open ” where the application name is the text identifying the application icon in your app list. As long as you have that application installed, it will launch the right one, no matter how obscure the name of that application is.

There are many other actions and possible combinations to use with the Microsoft TellMe service. In all cases it took no more than 1 or 2 seconds to successfully recognize what was being said. While the request is being executed and the voice is being recognized, the screen shows a “thinking” animation that has some garbled text moving around until the text interpreted is displayed… all in all the process is very quick and surprisingly accurate.

This service seems to work very well and it makes so much more sense to use with a phone while driving a car. You won’t need to take you eyes from the road simply because you are now having a conversation with your Windows Phone.

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Windows Phone 7: Sixty Days of Night

Zealot — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 15:11:35 +0000

Well, it is almost upon us…the release of Windows Phone 7. My colleague Diego reported the other day that Redmond execs are now openly stating that there will be an October rollout in Europe, a November rollout in the US. Rumors are coming in that Microsoft Australia is planning their release events for late August and there are hints that other Asian markets may be doing the same. So we are down to it then…in sixty days or less we will know how the boldest and most desperate gambit in Microsoft’s history plays out. Sixty days of night until the dawn.

To get a perspective on how monumental this is for Microsoft look back at the all that has happened since the release of Windows Mobile 6.5 which was so universally reviled. In the face of the iPhone challenge, early Android rumblings and demands by WinMo users for something innovative, Redmond delivered more of what was already looking mighty dusty in WinMo 6.1…and their market faded away into the night.

At that point, after a few fits and starts, Microsoft did what no one thought they would do…they began to kill their Mobile division to start again. They literally went back to square one…but was there any point?

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