Category Archives: WP7
Plane finding AR app not banned in the USA after all
Rating: Our investigation reveals WP7 version the most expensive
There’s nothing like a little adverse publicity to aid your app sales, is there? Well, British software house Pinkfroot seems to have befitted from it in our case. The rumour going around was that its Plane Finder AR app had been banned in the USA. Chiefly because it could allegedly be used as a terrorist tool to shoot down aircraft. Actually, that suggestion was made back in 2010 and the app is very much available in the iTunes App Store now. To prove the point our investigator actually bought a copy of the app. What an effective sales tool that rumour was. Continue reading
Big surge in UK sales of Windows phones
Consolidating position as No.3 platform
Sales of Windows smartphones have grown by a staggering 240 per cent in a year and now account for 6.2 per cent of the UK market, latest figures from research firm Kantar reveal. In the past year some 700,000 new Windows users were added, while in the three months up to end of January 2013 the Microsoft-based devices – spearheaded by Nokia’s Lumia 800 and HTC’s 8X – surpassed those of BlackBerry in Britain. Continue reading
A possible problem with WP7.x apps running on the Lumia 820
Rating: Or it could just be a problem with the Register’s news app
Now they say that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones (and more on this later) but … a GoMobile News reader contacted us yesterday to complain that he had loaded an app onto his spanking new Nokia Lumia 820 smartphone and it wouldn’t work. Initially we suspected that it could well be a problem that apps designed for earlier Windows Phone handsets – running Windows Mango W7 or even version 7.8, could encounter problem when run under Windows Phone 8. Now we are not so sure. It could be that the app in question – UK news site, The Register, has problems with all of its apps not just Windows Phone. Continue reading
Nokia WP7.8 OTA upgrade notification fails
Rating: Stealth release of the upgrade from W7 Mango
Here at GoMobile News we have been awaiting the upgrade to Windows Phone 7.8 (which replaces W7 Mango) with bated breath. Virtually every day since early January [2013] we have been going to the ‘phone update’ page within the handset hoping to see that the upgrade had finally been released. The screen kept saying “No updates found” – even though we had ticked the box which says, “Use my mobile data connection to check for updates.” Then on Friday [February 1st 2013] we needed to use Zune on a PC to check for a particular music track. Imagine our surprise when the screen suddenly asked if we wanted to upgrade. Windows Phone 7.8 (WP7.8) was suddenly there! Continue reading
Feint ray of hope for Nokia from Q4 sales
Rating: Whatever happened to Nokia’s MeeGo sales figures
The focus and a very high percentage of the analysis over the last few days has focussed on the battle between Samsung and Apple for dominance in the smartphone sector. With a BlackBerry 10 OS handset or handsets set for release in a few days time [January 30th 2013], RIM has drawn some focus as well. But poor old Nokia frequently get left out in the cold. Even though it did quite well in Q4 2012. That said as the accompanying graph illustrates, 2012 saw a gradual decline in the smartphone market for Nokia. Continue reading
Voxofon’s VoIP service overcomes the SMS gap
Rating: You can still send and receive texts from your featurephone mates
Here at GoMobile Towers we thought that the market for VoIP mobile apps was already overcrowded. However, it seems that Voxofon has come up with a bit of a new angle. It claims to have overcome the ‘SMS Gap’. Plenty of other VoIP apps allow their users to swap text messages (usually for free). But what happens when you come across a mate who is stubbornly sticking to his or her featurephone (and so can’t run Voxofon)? Voxofon has developed the technology to enable smartphone users to chat with non-smartphone users seamlessly at (obviously reasonable) VoIP rates. Continue reading
Rumours point to Windows Phone 7.8 being imminent
Rating: Plus there’s something called Windows Phone 7.x
Well there has been a spurgle of stories about the impending release of Windows 7.8 for those with existing W7 Mango (7.5) smartphones. As we all know now such handsets will not be upgradeable to Windows Phone 8, so we will just have to be content with 7.8. Or will we? One site says there is something called Windows Phone 7.x. The drawback to these stories (for us here at GoMobile Towers at least) is that the main source of the leak is a Chinese site – WinP whilst the secondary source is a German site WParea. So we can’t be 100 per cent sure what exact details have been leaked. However, both sites have anonymously received Windows Presentation slides which appear to have emanated from Nokia itself. Continue reading
Big scoop for Nokia with Red Bull app
Rating: Forget iOS and Android, it runs on Series 40
Here’s a complete scoop for Nokia www.nokia.com. The struggling handset maker has done an exclusive deal with Red Bull Media House to launch a ‘World of Red Bull’ phone app for its Lumia (W7 Mango) and Asha handsets. The app provides users with access to all of Red Bull’s music, sporting and cultural based content. For Formula One fans this is something of a scoop because red Bull doesn’t just have one team it has two [Red Bull & Toro Rosso]. The application aggregates the latest news, interviews, interactive maps (based on the Nokia’s Maps platform), localised events – along with real time access to athletes, videos and still images. And it’s free. Continue reading
Nokia investors braced for more disappointment
Storm clouds are thought to be gathering over Finnish phone manufacturer Nokia as it braces itself for its Q3 results tomorrow [18th October 2012] when results are expected to be weak.
Analysts will be looking to see just how poor Nokia’s performance has been in the period, especially for sales of smartphones which are expected to be sluggish despite the introduction of new Lumia handsets based on the Windows Phone operating system. Continue reading
Guest Post: What does the Firefox OS mean to me
by Rob James, occasional blogger for Boxmodeldigital
The Mozilla Firefox OS has been receiving a lot of attention, and for good reason. As an alternative to Android, iOS, and Windows Phone – an open source, HTML 5 based OS could be the solution to problems with the former, and an excellent way of getting hold of lower cost, but still effective, smart phones. For me, the prospect of an OS that can replicate the speed and performance of a web browser without the problems of a proprietary system would be an excellent way to customise and simplify how I use my phone. Continue reading
Nokia’s W7 Mango phone now cheaper than Motorola RAZR
Rating: Asda supermarket sparks handset price battle in UK market
What a significant development. UK supermarket Asda – which is effectively the UK incarnation of the USA’s Walmart, has sparked off something of a price battle over leading smartphone models. It has decided to drop the price of Nokia’s premier W7 Mango (WP7) handset down to £199. Asda is now offering the Nokia Lumia 800 for £40 less than even Amazon and a whopping £200 less than leading High Street electrical goods retailer, Currys. What cheered GoMobile News up is the price Asda is asking for the Motorola RAZR. It wants £50 more than the Lumia 800. Just goes to show what a great handset the RAZR is, ahead of the official launch of the latest RAZR models in the UK tomorrow [September 18th 2012]. Continue reading
BBC confirms you can’t watch F1 on a WP7 phone
Rating: No iPlayer support but Android tab bugfix
Those hoping to follow the Formula One motor race today [September 2nd 2012] at Spa Francorchamps on a Windows Phone 7.5 (W7 Mango) smartphone are going to be very disappointed. The Beeb (BBC) has told WP Central here in no uncertain terms that it has no plans to develop a version of its iPlayer app for the Microsoft mobile OS for the foreseeable future. What’s more the broadcaster is adamant than there’s a bug in the mobile Internet Explorer app which Microsoft hasn’t fixed despite knowing about it for at least 12 months. Fortunately, GoMobile News has stumbled across a bug fix for those with Android tablets who aren’t be served the iPlayer download correctly. Continue reading
Major hole in Windows Phone 7 still exists
Rating: No Adobe Flash support means no webcams
An enormous gap in the Windows Phone 7 (W7 Mango) OS which we thought had been fixed a long time ago has just caught us out. Unlike our rival publications, GoMobile News actually eats its own cooking. So we were trying to view a live webcam feed on our Nokia Lumia 800 W7 Mango smartphone. After hours of messing around, we discovered that Adobe still hasn’t created a version of Flash for WP7 – even though it was rumoured to be working on such an offering as long ago as 2010. The net effect was that we couldn’t view a webcam feed on our Mangophone despite our best efforts. If WP7 wants to oust Android, then it has got to do a lot better than this. Continue reading
Nokia the winner in Apple vs Samsung spat
Rating: WP7 ecosystem could get an unexpected boost
Last week [25th August 2012] Samsung was ordered to pay Apple over $1 billion in damages for infringing patents and copying the iPhone’s design. The Californian jury dismissed Samsung’s counter claim that Apple had infringed its own patents. The nine-person jury found that Samsung’s phones infringed patents covering a number of Apple technologies such as double tapping on the screen to zoom in. The result came just hours after a judge banned the sale of both Apple and Samsung products in South Korea. The Seoul court enforced a sales ban on Apple’s iPhone 3GS; iPhone 4; iPad 1; and iPad 2. Plus there was a ban on Samsung’s Galaxy S II phone. Ironically one of the biggest winners here could be Nokia with its Windows Phone 7 (W7 Mango) based Lumia range. Continue reading
Whatever you do, don’t lose a WP7 handset
Rating: No means of restoring all your data to a replacement handset
Having upgrading our existing Nokia Lumia 800 to the very latest release of Windows Phone 7 (Update 7.10.8773.98) see ‘GoMo bricks its own Nokia Lumia 800 W7 Mango phone’ here, the handset just would not reboot. Luckily we’d possessed the handset less than six months so Orange sent a replacement by the next day. We’d backed up the original handset using the Zune software suite on a PC, so we thought we were safe. Wrong. Bizarrely, Zune correctly identifies the replacement handset as a new device. So it starts all over again. Efforts to force Zune to recognise the replacement as your previous phone fail miserably. GoMobile News couldn’t believe this was the case until we found this thread on the official Windows Phone/Microsoft Answers forum. It confirms that you still can’t get all you data back. Continue reading
