The F-1 engines, as they’re called, came off of the famous Saturn V rocket that took Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon. It was the mission that allowed humans to step foot on the moon for the first time on July 20, 1969. The rockets have been lying on the bottom of the ocean for more than 40 years, and Bezos and his team have recovered two out of the five engines.

However, Bezos is not 100% sure that the engines are, in fact, from Apollo 11, since the corrosion of the serial numbers will make it difficult to verify, but there’s certainly confidence that the recovered engines are from Apollo 11. Bezos wants to display the engines at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, although NASA may be involved in the decision on where they will ultimately be displayed.

The Saturn V is still the largest and most powerful rocket that was ever built in the US, and each engine is almost 20 feet tall and 13 feet wide. Each engine also weighs over 17,500 pounds. The massive size of the engines produced quite the thrust — around 7.7 million pounds of thrust to be exact, and it had a top speed of over 6,000 mph.

First you’ll want to check out the details of the event itself – it’s taking place on September 5th at 9:30AM EST in New York and we’ll be covering it right from the real-world location for your benefit! Stay tuned to SlashGear during the event to get up close and personal with the next generation of Nokia devices working with Windows Phone 8, code-named Apollo. Nokia has provided one single detail on this device lineup outside the fact that they’ll be working with Windows Phone 8: the name. According to Nokia, Samsung should be “taking note”, because their “next generation Lumia” will be coming soon – September 5th soon, that is.

There’s been word that Verizon will be amongst the carriers that’ll be working with Windows Phone this season – with Nokia in mind. After the Apple vs Samsung case in the USA had its first verdict, Nokia stock went up, this looking bright for the next generation of Microsoft-embedded Lumia lineup. The details are surprisingly abundant on this line of devices even though they’ve not been revealed as such by the manufacturer.

Have a peek at the Nokia Lumia wireless charging pad that appeared this morning and make sure you don’t mistake it for a mouse. That same post shows some wireless earbuds and a wireless charger for the earbuds as well – or it could be a holder for some Nokia thin minds too – we don’t know yet! This tip also includes a note that Nokia’s wireless charging will be working with the Qi system so you wont need to use the Nokia puck if you don’t want to.

There’s been a tip on a Nokia Lumia 920 PureView, complete with PureView technology inside. This PureView isn’t the same 41 megapixel camera beast we saw earlier this year in the Nokia 808 Pureview, but an 8 megapixel cousin that we’ve yet to hear any details on.

Another device that’s been leaked is the Nokia Lumia 820 Arrow, this device being a mid-range device with much of the same lovely software enhancement suite that comes with Windows Phone 8 on the Lumia lineup. Here you’ll likely be seeing a much more affordable version of the hero devices also coming up this week. Like the rest of the line, this phone appears to have a flat front screen.

There’s also been a Nokia Lumia 820 appearing with Windows Phone 8 aboard. This device appeared right alongside the 920 PureView in a single underground news blast, both of them working with Windows Phone 8, but the 820 having slightly less powerful specifications. The 920 will likely be sold with its camera being the main point of interest while the 820 will be appearing as the hero line of standard Windows Phone 8 smartphone – it’ll also have slightly rounder edges and will be appearing in purple, blue, gray, black, white, yellow, and red.

The final release date for Windows Phone 8 is currently looking quite likely for October 29th, 2012. Because of this, each of the Windows Phone 8 smartphones that have been shown off so far – and will be shown off this week – will probably be showing up on carriers late in October as well.

As a bit of a bonus, it seems, Nokia has also shown off – and officially, this time, mind you – a couple of audio hardware lines of products. FIrst take a peek at the Nokia / JBL NFC speakers announced last week during IFA. Then have a look at the Nokia Purity Pro Wireless headphones that are made – just as the NFC cans are – to match the color pallet of the Lumia line perfectly. These headphones are manufactured by Monster and will also be connecting to your devices using NFC.

Remember to tune in on September 5th at 9:30AM EST right here on SlashGear to see what Nokia actually brings to the table with Microsoft at their side. It’s time for more color, that’s for sure!

Both devices are said to be heading to AT&T as their primary carrier, with the Arrow also heading to T-Mobile as well. The Arrow will be a mid-range device while the Phi will be a hero device, and a Atlas will popping up on Verizon as an equivalent to the Arrow. The Arrow and the Atlas are set to be near-identical devices to one another, not appearing at the moment to be all that far off from what we’ve seen in the Nokia Lumia 710 in size and stature.

The Phi smartphone will be coming with a curved display not unlike the Nokia Lumia 900 currently available at AT&T. This device will appear with a polycarbonate body in a variety of colors and will be quite similar in high-quality build to the Lumia range currently on the market. We’re expecting boosts in camera quality as well as display sharpness, but the overall hardware aesthetic will quite likely be pretty much the same.

This lineup will be the first large frontal assault by Microsoft via Nokia on the world with their Windows Phone 8 – nicknamed Apollo – software. This software will tie in with the release of Windows 8 for desktops and tablets as well as Windows RT for tablets, both of them coming quite soon to the market as well. Microsoft also released a brand update for the first time in 25 years this morning that you’ll certainly want to check out too.

We’ll be live in effect at the event where these devices will be unveiled, so join us on the day – that’s September 5th bright and early, right here on SlashGear!

It’s strange to think that Nokia or Microsoft would place the event so close to even the possibility of a new iPhone, especially when Apple just last month noted that anticipation of the new iPhone was so high that it was hurting current iPhone sales significantly. Nokia is ready to come correct, on the other hand, still staying tough with their assurance that Microsoft is their best hope for a revitalization of their brand through the next few years.

This tip comes from Bloomberg where they’ve also mentioned the relatively unimpressive statistics that surround Nokia’s efforts with Windows Phone so far. Nokia sold just 600,000 Lumia devices (their current Windows Phone-toting lineup) last quarter in the USA according to the company itself – but they will not be deterred.

If Nokia is to have a successful second-wave launch of devices here near the Fall of 2012, they’re going to need to jump on board the “everyone” ship like Samsung has with the Galaxy S III. Thus far Samsung has done undeniably well with Galaxy S III sales after just two months of the device being on the market. A large part of the success of the Galaxy S III in the USA has been its near-simultaneous launch on five major mobile networks across the nation.

Nokia – make with the original Google dream for a smartphone and team up with everybody all at once! And if that doesn’t work – you know who has some software you might want to see!

This change will bring in a whole heck of a lot more space on the Windows Phone 8 Start Screen as four tiles can fit where one was in the past, and the whole experience has been made just a bit quicker too, it seems. Multiple tiles at once on your Start Screen running images and information to you in real-time and a grid of them available to you at all times, all of that now with tiny tiles now as well! Sound like a great experience?

Stay tuned as we learn more about this adjustment to the world of Windows Phone, it being prepped for the next generation of mobile. Windows Phone 8 is growing up in the background here for developers – stay tuned as we find how that affects you the user soon as well!

The unlocked version of the Lumia 900 was released in Germany last week but was absent on T-Mobile. After customers queried the carrier, an employee responded by saying that the company won’t be offering the handset because it won’t receive an update to Apollo. T-Mobile believes that customers would be frustrated if a newly purchased handset would be left out on a future update.

The representative also confirmed that Apollo is due to be released in the fourth quarter of this year. A forum post wouldn’t normally be taken as concrete confirmation, but the::unwired believes that due to the strict nature of the German telecom industry, such information wouldn’t be posted unless it was thoroughly checked, confirmed, and authorized.

This latest piece of information comes after Microsoft developer Nuno Silva claimed that all current Windows Phone handsets would receive an update to Apollo later in the year. An anonymous Microsoft insider quickly denied the information, saying that phones would not be receiving the upgrade to “the next major version” of the OS.

UPDATE: the::unwired has been contacted by T-Mobile Germany with a response to the matter, saying that the forum post “isn’t an official statement from Deutsche Telekom” and that the company has “no information where the statement above came from.”

This announcement comes aside news of additional separations between classifications of the Snapdragon S4 processor which we’ve been using in devices such as the HTC One X and HTC One S for weeks, with the Samsung Galaxy S III coming to the USA with such an SoC as well. The Snapdragon S4 will now be cut up into Prime, Pro, Plus, and Play categories, where each processor fits in a different set of devices.

S4 Prime will bring you power for your home, mobile devices connected to your television or your television itself. The S4 Pro will be made for computers, especially ultra-thin and sleek computers made with “boundary breaking battery efficiency” in mind. The S4 Plus will be made for the most powerful smartphones and tablets on earth, and the S4 Play is made to be the lowest power of the bunch with devices made mostly for daily activities in mind – photos, video, and sharing.

Microsoft has a full agenda for the meeting, which will detail the next Windows Phone update, Apollo, as well as release plans for the software. One of the items on the list makes mention of “Customization & Differentiation opportunities”, which is intriguing to say the least. Microsoft has famously locked down UI customizations on the platform, only allowing OEMs to add their own flare within individual apps instead of across the whole OS.

We can see why it would be a contentious point for OEMs. How can you hope to shift Windows Phone units when you can’t differentiate in software? We would argue that the answer is simply to make killer hardware (see the Lumia 800 and 900), but OEMs prefer to be able to tinker everything at their disposal.

The main question is how much customization would Microsoft allow? They could end up on a slippery slope if they open up too much to OEMs, with the Windows Phone UI lost underneath a sea of graphical tweaks, much like most Android phones. At the same time, there needs to be enough incentive to coax companies to the platform. Hopefully Microsoft’s plans will lead to renewed interest in the OS from the likes of Samsung and HTC.

Responding to reporters, Samsung Taiwan said that they were going to skip introducing Windows Phone 7 Mango in Taiwan and instead introduce Windows Phone 8 Apollo handsets in October. The company explained that Mango wasn’t as suited to high-end breakthrough devices as would be Windows Phone 8. However, no details have been revealed on what we might expect from these new handsets.

Samsung is still expected to release one more Windows Phone 7.5 handset with the Tango update prior to the Windows Phone 8 devices. The Tango handset is expected to be the LTE-capable Mandel SGH-i667, which will likely sport a 4.3-inch WVGA display and launch on AT&T. Little else is known about the device or when it might arrive.

[via Unwired View]

The two maps (two separate images available above and below) show products with a key which is also included below this paragraph. This map shows off first of all the Windows 8 map of events – here we see very little, including no mention of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview we experienced earlier this year at Mobile World Congress. The roadmap instead notes that “Windows 8 information will be communicated via other channels.” For Internet Explorer 10, we see here that general availability for the program will likely be available by mid-year as it has been with previous releases – in this case probably right alongside Windows 8. See larger versions of these images in the gallery below.

Office 15 appears here to be coming out sometime around early 2013 – and we’ll likely see an announcement date hitting in November of this year. Lync Server 15 should be included in this, but does not appear to be for one reason or another. Likely this program will be out after the general release of the rest of the Office 15 suite.

Windows Phone shows some rather vague details including “future investments” at the tail end of 2012. This may well be the launch time for Windows Phone 8, aka Apollo, as Microsoft has tipped previously that this build will be out by the end of this year as well. All of this should be taken with a grain of salt – it all does come from Microsoft, but it’s certainly not information that’s set in stone. Microsoft has also updated publications with the following information:

“We often provide forward-looking information to our partners and customers under our confidentially agreements with them. This information contains our best estimates and is, in no way, final or definitive.” – Microsoft

So watch the news feed, folks, as we’ll likely be seeing more maps like this in the future. Will Microsoft continue to show off maps such as this to the public, or was this a one time deal? We shall see!

[via ZDNet]

What we’re seeing here, or what we very well might be seeing here in the very near future, is the ability for Windows Phone users working with next-generation hardware to use both voice commands and non-touch gestures to control their phone’s many abilities. Over at WMPoweruser we’re reminded that Windows Mobile 7 (a now-dead platform) was being set up for motion gestures before the plan was scrapped in early development. Perhaps we’re seeing that dream come to fruition now?

“Windows Mobile 7 will use motion gestures, something the iPhone does not. It will not use an intricate and complicated series of gyroscopes and accelerometers. Instead, it will use the camera on the phone to detect motions and create appropriate actions. You will be able to shake, twist and otherwise manipulate the phone and get things done. The phone will be able to perform actions when placed face down on a surface, and it will know when it is in your pocket or bag.” – Microsoft Internal, pre-2009

Of course you’ll also remember, perhaps, that Microsoft also previewed technology connecting Windows Phone to Kinect on the Xbox 360 all the way back in February of 2011. We’ve not seen really anything else from them regarding this connection since – but even this early preview has promise:

What would you do with a Kinect’ed Windows Phone? Make it take photos from afar? Perhaps play some strange teeny-tiny gesture controlled games? The possibilities are endless!

This AC/DC device is set to be coming in black as well as what we must assume are the same range of colors available now for the current hero Windows Phone devices released by the manufacturer. This device will join the ranks of the Lumia 800 and will have a bit more high-class specs than the Lumia 710 and Lumia 610 we’ve seen earlier this year. The version of Windows Phone we expect this device to run also has a nick-name you may have heard of: Windows Phone Apollo.

The Prodigy device will be sitting on the high end of the device spectrum, also running Windows Phone Apollo or Windows Phone 8, whatever you’d like to call it, and will be sitting next to the Nokia Lumia 900 when the time comes for it to drop. This device has lent rumors to the idea that Nokia will also be creating a tablet in the near future running Windows 8 rather than Windows Phone 8, several tablets made by other big-name processor companies having been revealed just last week.

Will Nokia continue to dip its hand into the Microsoft pot of goodness with tablets as well as Windows Phone smartphones? We sure wouldn’t mind a bright blue pillowy tablet running the newest version of Windows – why not?

[via CNET]

The impressive device was an incredible feat when it was first unveiled – with Carl Zeiss optics and a 41-megapixel sensor, it was for all intents and purposes the most sophisticated camera phone technology ever created. Unfortunately, it was built for the Symbian Belle operating system, which as we all know is now a dead platform. But there’s good news – PureView 808 is making its way to the Windows Phone operating system.

In an interview with a newspaper in Nokia’s home country of Finland, SVP of mobile phones Jo Harlow was quoted as saying that the amazing mobile feat will be available for an entire new audience. It’s been reported that the gadget will be making its way to US shores as part of the company’s Lumia brand. It’s likely to use the impending update to Windows Phone, known by the code-name Apollo. “I can’t say precisely when [the Windows Phone variant will launch], but it will not take very long,” Harlow said, according to a translation.

[via DailyTech]