That means better low-light photos, with Xenons usually far stronger than the LED flashes we’re used to seeing on smartphones. You don’t miss out on a video light, either, with the Lumia 928′s focus-assist LED capable of being repurposed for illuminating during video recording.

Functionally, the new smartphone is much the same as what the Lumia 920 was offering months ago. However, it’s packaged up in a neater design, with the squared-off polycarbonate casing fitting more neatly into the hand, and yet still accommodating the PureView suspended optical system, which helps the high-end Lumia take such solid low-light photos.

There’s also a new display, versus that of the 920, with Nokia slotting in an OLED ClearBlack panel, coincidentally the same screen as on the Lumia 925. That’s topped with a layer of Gorilla Glass 2 which forms the entire edge-to-edge fascia of the smartphone.

Interestingly, if you head over to RadioShack, the Lumia 928 is going for half of Verizon’s upfront price, though you’ll still need to commit to a two-year agreement.

There’s more on the Lumia 928 in our hands-on and unboxing. We’ve also got photo samples from the 8.7-megapixel PureView camera.

Nokia Lumia 928 hands-on:

That’s a 79.5-percent increase year-on-year for Android, while iOS managed a 6.6-percent climb from its share in Q1 2012. Microsoft saw the biggest increase, however, up 133.3-percent over the course of 12 months, to hold 3.2-percent globally.

BlackBerry OS, however, declined 35.1-percent year-on-year, down to 2.9-percent. There’s still a comfortable buffer over other platforms dwelling at the bottom of the barrel, but it suggests that BlackBerry 10 still has plenty of work to do if it’s to leverage the company back into the mainstream.

For Windows Phone, 7m units were supposedly shipped in the opening three months of this year. That’s predominantly down to Nokia devices; the Finnish company shipped 5.6m Lumia Windows Phones in the period, making it the most popular vendor for Microsoft’s mobile OS. Nokia’s expectations are high for Q2, too, with estimates of as many as 7m sales by some analysts.

In Android, Samsung dominates the segment, with 41.1-percent market share of smartphones overall. Earlier this week, Strategy Analytics estimated Samsung devices comprised 95-percent of Android smartphone sales.

“The intra-Android competition has not stifled companies from keeping Android as the cornerstone of their respective smartphone strategies,” IDC concludes, “but has upped the ante to innovate proprietary experiences.”

For Apple, it’s the company’s most impressive volume for iPhone sales, but IDC blames iOS stagnation for lower year-over-year growth than the market as a whole. That’s likely to change, it predicts, when iOS 7 debuts later in 2013.

According to Heiner’s statements earlier this year, Google purposely passed down commands to YouTube to keep Windows Phone from having the same full-blown app iOS and Android users enjoy. “But just last month we [at Microsoft] learned from YouTube that senior executives at Google told them not to enable a first-class YouTube experience on Windows Phones.”

Fast-forward nearly six months, and Google has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Microsoft, demanding that the YouTube application be pulled and disabled on handsets by next Wednesday, May 22. This is due to two reasons: the lack of advertisements, and the ability to download videos that have been marked as unavailable for those accessing on smartphones and tablets. According to the letter, the lack of ads and download feature are harming the YouTube “content ecosystem” and decreasing ad revenue.

The claims aren’t bothering Microsoft, it would seem, with the Windows Phone YouTube app remaining available. Shortly after news of the cease-and-desist surfaced, Microsoft responded with a candid, if not somewhat biting, statement: “We’d be more than happy to include advertising but need Google to provide us access to the necessary APIs. In light of Larry Page’s comments today calling for more interoperability and less negativity, we look forward to solving this matter together for our mutual customers.”

In light of the accusations Heiner made earlier this year, such a response from Microsoft isn’t surprising. The question now is how Google will respond, which we’ll have to wait for until next week (assuming the app remains). Microsoft may elect to keep the app available and to allow it to remain functional on users’ devices, which is suggested by its response.

SOURCE: ars technica

Nokia is no stranger to the tablet question: even back in April 2011, CEO Stephen Elop was telling slate-hungry press that the company would only wade into the segment when it could bring something “uniquely Nokia” to the form-factor. However, while all has been quiet on that front in the intervening period – not to mention Nokia’s phones topping out at 4.5-inches at most, rather than following the 5+ phablet trend – Weber argues that it doesn’t necessarily mean Nokia hasn’t had a foot in that ecosystem.

“What we said, on the tablet side, is it’s a space we’re eyeing” he explained to us. “I think the reason we bet on Microsoft and Windows is becuase they have a broad ecosystem, across phones, tablets, PCs, even TV, with the same look and feel, same infrastructure, and we believe we can play in that. Whether we have a tablet or not, we can still play in that ecosystem because Windows is the unifying piece of that. So, we’re really excited about what they’re doing on Windows 8, there are some fantastic touch devices coming out … so the ecosystem that Microsoft has allows us to participate, whether we have a tablet or not.”

Still, it looks more than likely that a tablet will be in Nokia’s near future, no matter how coy the company is on admitting that. If the first step to reinvention has been developing a complete, core smartphone range, then fleshing it out with other form-factors and accessories – such as the bluntly-teased ambitions in wearables Harlow and others hinted at back at Mobile World Congress – is the inevitable next step. The important factor, Harlow says, is how usability as it is on Lumia devices today extends to a broader line-up.

“I think the word is experiences. Because as we are investing in experiences in our smartphone range, it’s logical to think that those experiences we would look to take into other types of form-factors, and make them compatible with each other” the smart devices head says. “Obviously what we would want in any portfolio is that there would be some consistency in the experience that consumers have with a Nokia product.”

An outsider might contend that Nokia now has a broad range of phones, a solid portfolio of apps and services, and differentiating hardware features like PureView, and question why scenes like those at the recent Annual General Meeting – at which Elop was harangued for refusing to consider ditching Windows Phone in favor of Android – continue to take place. According to Harlow, that reluctance for people to accept that the Windows Phone strategy was – and is – the best one for Nokia comes down to a broad-strokes misunderstanding about exactly how “open” Android really is.

“[Android] is led by Samsung, and I think you can see the difficulty that others have in standing out from Samsung, even when they have really good devices,” Harlow suggests. “I think first of all it comes down to partnership, and the partnership that we’ve had with Microsoft in terms of bringing new experiences to the platform as well as differentiating experiences, we did not believe we could have that level of partnership with Android. And that’s the key difference.”

As the smart devices chief sees it, Android’s openness is only really beneficial if you’re one company: Samsung. “To a certain degree [Android is open]” she told us. “I think I would characterize the competition in Android as more of a spec race than anything else. And so, there is one partner who is the development partner for any new release of Android, and everyone else comes sometime later. So, it’s open, but that doesn’t make you first, and that doesn’t make you necessarily the most competitive.”

It’s that more granular attitude toward OS – not just the nature of the platform, but how individual roles and relationships within the ecosystem as a whole affect what benefits the platform offers – which Harlow says makes the Microsoft-Nokia deal the best fit. “Partnership and collaboration requires two partners who are motivated to make the partnership work” she concluded. “And that is what we have with Microsoft.”

If there’s a gap remaining, it’s in how Nokia (and its partner) explains those advantages in collaboration, not to mention the fruits for users they engender, against the onslaught of iPhone and Samsung marketing. Both execs acknowledged that Nokia needs to do better at demonstrating its achievements or, as Weber puts it, getting the message right. “We believe in our investment choice on Microsoft,” he points out, “for the simple reason is that they give us the chance to differentiate, to really be able to differentiate.”

Where Apple has elevated the marketing of its iTunes/App Store ecosystem to a fine art, and Google has strength of numbers across flourishing Android installations, Nokia hasn’t quite got the tone right yet. “A lot of these imaging things takes deep partnership with Microsoft,” Weber says. “The second thing is this broad ecosystem: there’s no-one who covers the phone, the tablet, the PC, Xbox, and then what I call these “digital lifestyle services” – search, gaming, mapping, that we bring, all the cloud services – they have the most assets to pull together.”

“So then we say, how do we do that? We have to, one, have a broad portfolo, so this is the first time we’ve really had a portfolio from the low end, to the high end, and everything in between,” Weber listed off. “And then we have to do a great job executing: that’s, how do we work with Microsoft to tell that marketing message above the line; how do we execute at retail, so people see, and touch, and feel the differences between devices?”

That execution will include things like the Nokia low-light boxes, which allow direct comparisons between phone cameras in settings such as retail stores. The pyramidal boxes can adjust the amount of light inside, with a peep hole for your smartphone to snap an image, and be compared to the performance of the PureView alternative, without demanding that retailers physically dim the lights in-store. Nokia is also working on smaller versions, complete with carrier branding, Weber revealed, and says that early indications are that point-of-sale staff are far more likely to recommend Lumia handsets after a small amount of familiarization with the platform and the value-add.

“And so I feel wonderful on the portfolio, I feel really good about our partnerships with operators and customers” he summarized. “Now, it’s how do we go tell that story – how we evangelize the message; how we get people to see, touch, feel the device, the difference – and it’s all the nitty-gritty details. It’s called execution. And it’s really easy to say, and it’s hard to do, but those are the things that are going to matter.”

Amber has already been confirmed to include the Smart Camera app, which brings effects like Motion Focus, Action Shots, and other burst-image-related trickery to the Lumia 925. However, Alakarhu also told us that Amber will expand the supported ISO range of the Lumia 920, just as the 925 comes with support for out of the box.

Nokia Smart Camera hands-on:

Currently, the Lumia 920 tops out at ISO 800; with Amber installed, that will be quadrupled to ISO 3200. The result will be better low-light shots as well as improvements in sports photography and when snapping images of moving subjects.

It’s not only the old flagship which will get a photography polish after Amber. All of Nokia’s Windows Phone 8 line-up will get the newest version of the photo engineers’ algorithms, which will help increase sharpness – particularly in cropped shots, Alakarhu explained – and lower noise, in addition to improvements in exposure. There’ll also be support across the range for remapping the camera shortcut key to the Smart Camera app, instead of the Windows Phone default.

Not all of the Lumia models will see the same degree of improvement, of course. Nokia will adjust the level of tweaking depending on the core sensor; the Lumia 520, for instance, won’t attempt ISO 3200 shots, since the hardware really isn’t up to it. A final decision on what changes will be delivered to each device is yet to be reached, with Alakarhu’s team still working on that ahead of Amber’s expected release in July.

The speed at which Smart Camera clusters of shots open up – something we found to take around 15 seconds with Nokia’s current pre-production software on the 925 – will also be improved, though the photo team couldn’t tell us exactly how fast the process will become. Although it’s slower than how quickly, say, HTC’s One can open up a Zoe set, there’s a good reason for that.

One of our ongoing criticisms of the One is how much space Zoe photography takes up, both on the smartphone itself and in the cloud. Nokia has addressed that by packaging the ten stills together, rather than storing each as an individual frame; the end result doesn’t follow the “ten shots so 10x the size” explanation you might expect, Alakarhu explained. Opening and editing those takes some processing time – in fact, it’s currently the most processor-intensive thing the Lumia 925 is asked to do – but while there are other ways Nokia could deal with the files, the company is wary of diverging too greatly from imaging standards.

“I think what we want to do next is make the sharing super-easy, so that your friends can also enjoy making those changes on Facebook or their own phone” Alakarhu told us. “And so we need to find the right format, the right way to do it. There is currently no industry standard for doing that, and I don’t want to take the proprietary route for doing that, because this needs to be accessed by everyone.”

Exactly how that common format might look is unclear. HTC has opted for Zoe Share, a free – albeit temporary – web-gallery service that One owners can use to show off select stills, video clips, and highlight reels created on the smartphone. Nokia currently has no specific sharing system that preserves the Smart Camera post-processing potential, though you can of course push out the final results as regular photos through the usual Facebook, Twitter, email, and other routes.

“In the 920, we actually did a lot of the foundations” Alakarhu concluded, hinting that there was plenty more photo-centric news to be shared later in the year. “The algorithms we had have, for example. But now we have been able to do that optimization, and the pace of the development has been incredible now that we have that great foundation of algorithms.”

There’s something about metal which makes a phone feel great. Apple knew that with the iPhone 5; HTC realized it with the One; and now Nokia has succumbed with the Lumia 925 (previously known as the Nokia “Catwalk”). Specifically, the 127.5 x 70.5 x 8.5 mm, 139g chassis is constructed around a frame of anodized aluminum, which tapers to tactile, curved edges on all four sides. The metal also serves an important purpose beyond rigidity and feel, however; it’s the antenna for the Lumia 925′s pentaband 4G LTE radio (as well as the GSM/UMTS bands), saving space by making it a constituent part of the phone.

On the front there’s a slice of toughened Gorilla 2 Glass, while on the back there’s Nokia’s favorite polycarbonate. Plastic meets metal in a gentle curve at the edge of the phone, neatly dovetailing in a way that feels great nestled into your hand; that polycarbonate also swells – Nokia says “pillows” – to accommodate the camera lens, atop the dual-LED flash. A row of contact points for the optional wireless charging shell are below.

In terms of hand-feel, Nokia is onto a winner out of the gate. Gone is the heft of the Lumia 920, and its slightly toy-like glossy plastic, replaced with premium-feel materials and a more refined design. A 3.5mm headphone jack and a SIM slot punctuate the top edge, along with microUSB connectivity, while the usual volume rocker, power/lock key, and camera shortcut run along the right edge.

Nokia Lumia 925 hands-on:

Up front is another improvement, the 4.5-inch OLED ClearBlack display that debuted on Friday on the Lumia 928. Just as on the Verizon phone, it supports a high-brightness mode for outdoor readability, and super-sensitivity for use while wearing gloves. It’s also stunning to look at: colors are vivid, blacks inky, and the broad viewing angles mean you can glance almost entirely askance at the Lumia 925 and still make out graphics without aberrations. The 1280 x 768 resolution may not be the Full HD we’ve seen on some recent Android devices, but it’s certainly sufficient for text and the like on a 4.5-inch phone to be smooth.

Nokia’s emphasis with its recent Windows Phones has been on their photographic abilities, and the Lumia 925 is no different. Like the 920 and 928, it bears the coveted PureView branding, and in fact it packs the same 8.7-megapixel sensor as they do. The optical image stabilization system – which physically moves the entire camera assembly to match shake and judder – is also the same, as is the dual-LED flash system from the 920.

What’s different is the lens, and here Nokia and Carl Zeiss have cooked up a World’s First on a smartphone: the first 6-part lens. Where the Lumia 920/928 have 5-part lenses, combining five different plastic components, the new Lumia adds a sixth, glass lens, which Nokia claims will improve sharpness and low-light performance.

In fact, Nokia says the Lumia 925 is capable of the “best low light images without a flash” of any current smartphone, with its f/2.0 lens, OIS, and exclusive Zeiss optics. It also uses the 925 to debut Nokia Smart Camera, a suite of effects and post-processing that can replace the default camera app should the owner see fit.

Smart Camera approaches things much in the same way as HTC and Samsung have on the One and Galaxy S 4, respectively: with the assumption that having more photo data to choose from is A Good Thing. In the Lumia 925′s case, that means firing off a burst of 10 frames over the course of 2.5 seconds when you hit the shutter-release, elements from each of which can then be combined or generally modified in different ways.

In the gallery, Smart Camera clusters of shots show up with a single thumbnail, but when you open them (and tap the “Smart Camera” legend) the editing potential is unlocked. First up is Best Shot, which analyzes each of the ten frames and picks out whichever it decides is the best based on sharpness and other details. Swiping left and right allows for a manual override. Swipe down, meanwhile, and you go through the other options: Motion Focus, Object Removal, Action Shot, and Group Shot.

Motion Focus tries to inject some more vigor into your stills. Smart Camera automatically identifies the subject of the frame – you can swipe left and right, and see white outlines of each of the potential subjects that can be used – and then applies one of two degrees of blurring to the background. A similar editing system is implemented in the Object Removal system, with the Lumia 925 identifying potentially unwanted people or objects moving through the frame, and then combining elements from the ten different shots to get rid of them.

Nokia Lumia 925 Smart Camera demo:

Group Shot is the face-combining system we’ve already seen on previous Lumia devices, based on the same Scalado tech as BlackBerry 10 has used on the Z10 and Q10. Nokia tells us its version in Smart Camera is actually newer than what we’ve seen before, another exclusive for the Lumia line-up.

Finally, and perhaps most impressive, is Action Shot. This works best when there’s a moving object passing through a still frame: then, just as with Motion Focus, the Lumia 925 identifies the moving subject and allows you to combine multiple versions of it on top of a single background. A row of straightforward buttons along the bottom allows you to toggle content from each frame on or off, while a fade button blurs out details from all but a single, user-selected frame.

They’re ambitious effects (and Nokia says more are on the way), but they’re also system-intensive. Smart Camera shoots and saves the cluster of ten images swiftly, which is good since we hate missing a great image because of a sluggish phone, but actually using the editing tools demands some patience.

We clocked the Lumia 925 in at 15 seconds just to analyze the frames initially, when we tapped into them from the gallery. That process needs to be completed each and every time you open the same set of ten stills: there’s no caching of the analysis, for instance. Tweaking things like the combinations of Action Shot frames happens instantly, but there’s another delay involved when you export the final result, with it taking around 14 seconds to spit the still into the gallery.

Now, it’s worth remembering that Nokia still has some time to finesse the software – the Lumia 925 isn’t expected to hit shelves until June, after all – but it does take away some of the immediacy of the tweaking process. There’s also no way to just look at all ten frames without jumping straight into the editing suite, which can make browsing through photos a stop-start affair.

It’s a shame, because generally the phone runs smooth and fast. With the same dualcore processor and RAM as the Lumia 920 and 928, the Lumia 925 had no problems running through the browser and other apps that we could find. There’s also Nokia’s own HERE Maps and HERE Drive+, with offline turn-by-turn navigation among other things, and the full array of Windows Store apps to choose from. Nokia Music for free streaming and offline playlists is also included.

If we had to compare the Lumia 925 to the rest of Nokia’s current range, it’s probably best described as the specifications of the 928 with the sleek design of the 720, only with build quality that’s a step above anything we’ve seen from Nokia in recent months. Photos simply don’t do the Lumia 925 justice: you have to pick it up and feel how its careful curves fit into your hand.

True, there have been some compromises along the way – Nokia’s decision not to integrate wireless charging is perhaps acceptable given the dimensions of the phone, and the company’s supposed goal of “meaningful thinness”, but it also should be ashamed that there isn’t a snap-on wireless charging shell included in the box – but overall it’s the most compelling Windows Phone Nokia has made so far.

The full judgment will have to wait until we can spend some more time with the Lumia 925 and see how it – and its camera abilities – fit into our daily lives. That should happen closer to the smartphone’s June 2013 release, with it landing in the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, and China initially, followed by the US and other countries.

The free update will bring Nokia’s new photography suite to the rest of the Lumia range. Among the improvements are Motion Focus, which can separate out a moving subject from the background, and automatically blur the latter so as to emphasize the feeling of movement, and Action Shot, which allows movement from up to ten burst-frames to be combined in a single image, complete with optional blurring.

The Amber Update won’t be limited to camera tech, however. Nokia says it will confirm the full list of changes – many of which have apparently been prompted by user-requests from existing Lumia owners – closer to the point of release, but it did tell us that the new firmware will also enable dormant FM radio hardware across nearly all of its Windows Phone 8 models.

As you might expect, given the differences in processing power (and other hardware), the Amber Update experience will differ somewhat across the range of devices. The Lumia 620, for instance, lacks the FM radio chip, and so will be the only model not to get that functionality. As for the Lumia 520, that will get a reduced subset of Smart Camera features, in deference to its less capable processor.

Nokia committed to rolling back retroactive updates to its older phones back at Mobile World Congress, with smart devices chief Jo Harlow telling us in February that the company saw the average lifespan of software upgrades to be at least the 24-months of the average phone contract. That notably stands in contrast to Microsoft’s own commitments to Windows Phone 8′s longevity, which the firm has said runs for less than 18-months.

There are a couple of things worth considering. Most important is that the Lumia 925 isn’t due to hit store shelves until next month, and as such Nokia is likely to continue tweaking its camera software in the intervening period. Things like processing may well change between these samples and the end-result. Also, Nokia told us that it purposefully stripped out the EXIF data from the shots, just in case they leaked prematurely and gave the 925 game away.

It’s hard not to be impressed by what the Lumia 925 achieves. Nokia is billing the phone as being capable of the best low-light performance, without a flash, of any current smartphone. While it fell short of comparing the Lumia 928 with the HTC One, our current king of low-light abilities, when it made similar boasts last week, the company tells us that it will show no such reserve when it comes to comparing the Lumia 925 with rivals.

In fact, Nokia says, both it and Microsoft plan to be more aggressive in their comparisons between Lumia Windows Phones and rivals, whether they run iOS, Android, or something else. A glance through the sample shots suggests photography isn’t a bad place to start, either. Close-ups are crisp, colors look great – without the cartoonish over-saturation some phones tend toward – and though there’s clearly noise and grain to be found in images taken in lower-light conditions, they’re nonetheless impressive.

As for Nokia’s Smart Camera, with the right subject we can see effects like Action Shot – which pieces together time-lapse images from multiple frames – and Motion Focus being popular. They’ll require some forward planning, maybe, though given Nokia will allow Smart Camera to be set as the default photography app, there’s perhaps no real downside – barring the impact taking ten frames each time will have on the non-expandable 16GB of storage – to always shooting in the new mode.

Nothing quite satisfies like running a camera through its paces yourself, so we’ll reserve our full opinion on the Lumia 925′s camera skills until we can spend more time one-on-one with it. That said, Nokia’s own samples have certainly left us hopeful that this could be another bar-raising option for mobile photography.

Up front there’s the 4.5-inch OLED PureMotion HD+ display we saw on the Lumia 928, running at 1280 x 768 resolution and using Nokia’s ClearBlack technology for improved contrast. It also packs the super-sensitive touch system which allows for gloved use, though is thinner and lighter than the 928, measuring in at 127.5 x 70.5 x 8.5 mm and 139g. Above is a 1.2-megapixel front camera for Skype calls, among other things.

Where the Lumia range has previously been all-plastic, the Lumia 928 uses an aluminum frame for lightness and structural strength. That runs around the edge of the phone, and also serves as the handset’s antenna. Inset on the rear is a non-removable polycarbonate plate, available in three color finishes.

On the back, there’s an 8.7-megapixel camera, using the same optical image stabilized CMOS as on the Lumia 928 and the dual-LED flash of the Lumia 920, but here paired with a brand new, 6-component f/2.0 lens. Unlike the 928 and 920, which each use 5-part plastic lens arrays, the Lumia 925 adds a sixth, glass lens which Nokia says provides greater sharpness and allows in extra light.

That should come in handy with Nokia’s new photography software, debuting on the Lumia 928. Nokia Smart Camera is the next generation of Nokia Smart Shoot, and can be used interchangeably with the regular camera app, or set as the default for everyday use. Somewhat similar to HTC’s Zoe system, Smart Camera automatically fires off ten 5-megapixel frames over the space of around 2.5s: they can then be edited in a number of ways.

Normally, Smart Camera automatically picks out what it believes to be the Best Shot – by sharpness and other factors – though that can be over-ridden. There’s also background object removal, and moving object removal, with the Lumia 928 automatically identifying what it can delete. Motion Focus, meanwhile, separates the subject from the background, and automatically applies blur to the background so as to emphasize the movement in the frame.

Then there’s a new version of the group shot tool, which allows different facial expressions from multiple images to be combined into a single frame. Previously, that was based on technology Nokia acquired from Scalado – and shared with BlackBerry 10, which licensed the system – but in Smart Camera it’s apparently an all-new version.

Most impressive, though, is Action Shot. That takes moving details from the ten frames and combines them into a single image, great for showing the movement of people through the picture for instance. A string of buttons along the bottom of the screen allows content from each of the ten burst-shots to be included or hidden, while a fade control picks out one of the parts to be solid while the rest are faded out. Nokia Camera Lens will continue to be available as a separate app, including Cinemagram for creating partially-animated GIFs, while Nokia has also confirmed that Hipstamatic is coming to Lumia.

Windows Phone 8 – and all the camera apps – runs on Qualcomm’s 1.5GHz dualcore Snapdragon S4 chip, paired with 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. Connectivity includes pentaband LTE, WiFi a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, and NFC, and there’s A-GPS and Glonass, and a gyroscope. The 2,000 mAh battery is fixed and non-user-accessible; Nokia will offer wireless charging as an option, enabled with clip-on shells that also protect the rear and corners of the Lumia 928, and which will be available in red, yellow, black, and white finishes.

The Nokia Lumia 928 itself will be offered in three finishes: brushed silver metal with either white or grey polycarbonate, or black metal with matching black polycarbonate. It is expected to begin shipping initially in the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, and China come June, with the US and “other markets” following on later. Pricing will be around €469 ($608/£398) pre-taxes and subsidies.

Nokia stoked that camera speculation itself with its TV commercial yesterday; since then, the first shot of the Lumia 925 has leaked. You could be forgiven for seeing Nokia almost as a mobile photography company first these days, given imaging tends to be its top-line features for every new smartphone.

Nokia has been pushing camera tech for years now, but arguably made its name as an innovator with the 808 PureView of 2012. It may have been chunky, and used Symbian – which Nokia had already confirmed was in its death-throes – but it also tore up the playbook for mobile photography, approaching elements like lossless zooming and balancing picture size with levels of noise in previously-unseen ways.

The 808 is best remembered for its 41-megapixel sensor, a huge CMOS positively overspilling with pixels. At the time, Nokia likened it to putting out more buckets to catch more rainfall: the 808 was designed not to produce ridiculously high resolution stills, but more average shots (the default was 5-megapixels) that combined data from clusters of pixels to smooth out glitches and aberrations, and make for more accurate colors and brightness.

“The new Nokia Lumia is coming…” teaser video:

In the process, it also enabled lossless digital zooming: zoom without the moving lenses of an optical system. By cropping sections of the image – still at the 5-megapixel resolution – the 808 could effectively zoom into the frame but without the quality loss associated with every other digital zoom.

So far, though, we’re yet to see that original PureView approach replicated on a Windows Phone. The Lumia 920 and 928 both bear PureView branding, for instance, but their emphasis has been on the way more typical megapixel sensors can be supported with optical image stabilization to boost picture quality. Instead of the pixel-clusters of the 808, both of the high-end Windows Phones try to craft better images by holding their sensors steady.

That’s not to say they can’t be “true” PureView just because they lack a few dozen megapixels, however. The massive sensor was only half of the 808 story: equally important was Nokia’s custom Carl Zeiss optics, which were essential for piping the right light in the right way to the oversized CMOS. Nokia even took us to meet with the Zeiss team for a behind-the-scenes look at what optical magic was used, a complex, five-lens assembly with a range of aspheric surfaces that explained some of the 808′s thickness, just as the broad sensor explained its width.

Lenses may not be as immediately headline-grabbing as great lashings of megapixels, but they’re the unsung heroes that Nokia has been busily working away on. Zeiss and Nokia renewed their partnership back in early 2012, and came up with what’s described as “PureView Phase 2″: a groundbreaking optical image stabilization lens which can be paired with a more traditional-resolution sensor.

Discussed in this white paper [pdf link] around the time of the Lumia 920, the second-gen system actually has a more light-friendly lens than the 808 manages: f/2.0 versus the original PureView’s f/2.4, with the same 26mm wide optics. That works with an image stabilization system that rather than move just a single lens element, actually shifts the whole optical assembly up to 500 times per second.

Hardware is only half of any story, of course, and Nokia will undoubtedly have software news to share about the Lumia 925 as well. As we’ve seen from the company’s own work to-date on Camera Lenses, and on rivals’ photography systems like Zoe on the HTC One and the native GIF-maker on the Galaxy S 4, ways of not only shooting but of manipulating stills are big business in today’s handsets.

They all demand good quality to begin with, though, and interestingly all approach that in different ways: a small number of gigantic UltraPixels from HTC, 13-megapixels-worth of smaller pixels from Samsung, and whatever PureView combination Nokia decides to bless the Lumia 925 with.

Nokia isn’t a camera company, but it’s camera technology that it’s counting on to set it apart in the market. We’ll find out how the Lumia 925 fits into that strategy tomorrow, when Nokia unveils the phone officially at its London, UK event on May 14th.

Nokia’s teaser video yesterday – which debuted during a UK TV commercial – showed the back of the smartphone, complete with the tagline “More than your eyes can see.” That led to expectations that it would bear a large-resolution sensor, the camera itself protruding slightly from the back-panel of the phone.

Nokia new Lumia teaser:

This new image, however, shows the other side of the smartphone. It’s a more sober device than previous Lumia, more akin in color scheme to the Lumia 928 unveiled for Verizon’s network last Friday, than the bright hues of more widespread models like the Lumia 920.

According to previous rumors, the Lumia 925 will have a metal body rather than polycarbonate plastic, though it’s hard to tell whether that’s the case from this leaked shot. It certainly looks to be thinner than the Lumia 920, which was criticized by many for its chunky casing that accommodated the optical image stabilization system to go with the 8.7-megapixel camera.

Exactly how many megapixels the Lumia 925 will offer is unclear. Some have speculated that the phone is the device so-far known by the codename “EOS“, and expected to have an 808 PureView-like huge megapixel sensor. Other rumors have indicated the 925 is more likely to be the “Catwalk“, which is tipped to have a more mainstream camera but a slender, higher-quality body.

We’ll know more tomorrow, when Nokia takes the stage in London, UK, and reveals all. SlashGear will be there to bring back all the details.

The obvious interpretation of the tagline is a super-high-resolution sensor, something previously rumored for the EOS and to which Nokia itself is no stranger. Chatter of the EOS picked up at the top end of the year, described as offering “proper PureView” in a similar manner to the well-esteemed but niche 808 PureView. However, there’s also talk of a separate device, the Nokia Catwalk, which is also believed to have a large-megapixel-count sensor (though smaller than EOS) and a metal body.

Although recent Lumia handsets, such as the 920, have borne the PureView brand, Nokia has yet to repeat its complex pixel-clustering approach to high-resolution photography on the 808. That phone used a whopping 41-megapixel sensor, though defaulted to roughly 5-megapixel stills: the camera combined data from multiple adjacent pixels to iron out any glitches or mistakes, or alternatively could provide lossless-quality digital zooming.

As a system, the original PureView technology worked – you can see quite how well in our review of the Nokia 808 PureView – but the oversized sensor had unavoidable consequences on the heft of the handset. The larger-than-normal build, along with the fact that the roughly five year development time meant it was still running Symbian, rather than Windows Phone, meant it never amounted to much more than a curio in Nokia’s line-up.

Assuming the EOS – or whatever Lumia name the phone is officially dubbed – can avoid that bulk issue, it could well succeed where the 808 struggled, however. According to the rumor-mill, it will use a specially-waterproofed, aluminum casing courtesy of nano-coating experts P2i, though it’s impossible to tell from the commercial whether the handset is metal or metal-effect plastic.

Nokia is no stranger to teaser-campaigns, with the company having spent much of the last seven days flirting around the new Lumia 928. That handset, headed to Verizon in a few days time, was originally expected to make its official debut alongside the “EOS” on Tuesday, but Nokia pulled the trigger on the announcement on Friday last week.

SlashGear will be with Nokia this coming Tuesday to bring back all the details of the new Lumia.

SOURCE: TechCrunch; Pocket-lint

The HTC HD2 smartphone is one that remains newsworthy due to its favoritism in the developer community due to its surprisingly open ability to be hacked. For over three and a half years, this device has been a go-to smartphone for the most intrepid developers looking to prove their might in hacking, pushing everything from Windows Phone 7 to Android to this machine where it’d otherwise only be running a relatively ancient operating system.

Here in the spring of 2013, the HTC HD2 has received a port of the internet-based Firefox OS. This operating system is otherwise known as Boot2Gecko and has been on its way to the public for over a year. Earlier this year at Mobile World Congress, a global convention for mobile devices and services, we saw the first wave of Firefox OS smartphones – now it’s time for the operating system to spread.

Of course here on the HTC HD2 with a first port of the system, not every feature of the system works right out of the box. In its first reveal, the HTC HD2 Firefox OS port had camera issues, SIM card detection breaks, and issues with the resolution of the device’s display being detected. That said, the deed remains done: the HTC HD2 now has another notch in its sword hilt, growing in versatility as it remains the developer community’s most hackable device.

SlashGear readers hoping to run this port on their own treasured HTC HD2 should follow the XDA Forum Post which details the information shared above. There a download awaits for the brave. It’s important to remember that this, like all hacks of this nature, is not a situation you’ll be wanting to present to your local mobile carrier if you’re in need of repairs in the future. In other words: hack at your own risk.

The HTC HD2 has also run Windows RT, a full version of Windows 8, and Windows Phone 7 in the past several years. It’s also run MeeGo, Android 2.2 Froyo and a few more – the list continues to grow!

There’s wireless charging, as you’d expect from a device based on the Lumia 920, and NFC. That means the phone can be easily paired with wireless speakers and such, using Bluetooth 3.0 to squirt music across. Other connectivity includes WiFi a/b/g/n (2.4/5GHz) and microUSB.

Verizon Nokia Lumia 928 demo:

Nokia throws in HERE Maps, HERE Drive+, and HERE City Lens for easier navigation, along with the camera enhancements such as panoramic photos and animated GIFs. Optical image stabilization is included, just as Nokia demonstrated recently by strapping the phone to a remote-control helicopter, as well as a Xenon flash and Carl Zeiss optics. As for video recording, that’s supported at up to 1080p resolution.

The display, meanwhile, uses Nokia’s ClearBlack technology, and runs at 1280 x 768 resolution. It has a high-brightness outdoors mode, running at 500nits, and the super-sensitive touchscreen which can be used by gloves. The battery is a 2,000 mAh pack, and there’s 1GB of RAM paired with the 1.5GHz dualcore MSM8960 processor, and 32GB of user-storage.

Connectivity is impressive, with the Lumia 928 coming “Global Ready”: that means quadband GSM and UMTS HSPA for when you’re abroad, and EVDO/Rev.A and LTE for when you’re in the US on Verizon’s 4G network. It’s unclear whether Verizon will supply the phone SIM unlocked, however, for international use.

The Nokia Lumia 928 will hit Verizon on May 16, the company says, priced at $99.99 after a $50 mail-in-rebate, and assuming a new two-year agreement.

Interestingly, the Lumia 928 had been expected to debut at Nokia’s London event next Tuesday. Exactly what will be the star of that show remains to be seen, though SlashGear will be there to bring you all the details as they’re announced.

Unlike in Europe, where the full extent of Nokia’s line-up has been made available, those in the US have had to deal with the company’s carrier-exclusive promotion. That has meant certain models are only available on certain networks, such as the Lumia 920 being exclusive to AT&T.

The Lumia 620 remains one of our favorite Windows Phones from Nokia’s lineup. The budget nature of the handset suits the first-time-smartphone-owner audience that Windows Phone caters to particularly well, while the interchangeable covers stand out in among a sea of black, white, and silver devices. There’s more detail in our full review.

Unfortunately, it seems Aio isn’t quite set up to handle all of the Lumia 620′s flexibility. The carrier currently doesn’t offer any of the “dual-shot” covers separately, only the blue finish that comes with the phone by default.

Of course, the main downside is that Aio Wireless is only available in a very limited number of locations at present: just Houston, Orlando, and Tampa, in fact. AT&T promises more coverage “over the coming weeks” though is yet to ink a specific roadmap.

[via Nokia Conversations]

Nokia took the Lumia 928 to Squamish valley in British Columbia, and set to work zooming the phone around the scenery. “We attached the Lumia to a remote control helicopter and filmed as many remote, scenic and inaccessible locations as we could in one amazing day of good weather” Nokia explains of the project.

Whereas many smartphones use digital image stabilization techniques to try to smooth out judder and shake in video recording, there’s no replacement for physically controlling movement of the lens. In the Lumia 920, Nokia used a special “suspended lens” system which basically mounted the camera components on a shiftable platform inside the phone, and then adjusts its position according to movement data from a gyroscope.

That OIS system can handle up to 500 movements per second, and it’s that which helps smooth out the jerkiness of hand-held filming. Or, in this case and the Lumia 928, the sort of filming you might get when you’re fixed to a flying vehicle.

“We drove up old logging roads and flew off the sides of cliffs, we filmed sunken barges that can only be seen when the tide is completely out, and we flew the helicopter into waterfalls and river gorges to capture footage that you wouldn’t be able to see in any other way” Nokia

Previous Lumia 928 demonstrations have also focused on the phone’s recording abilities. First, Nokia showed how the 8.7-megapixel PureView camera fared against the iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S III, with stronger low-light performance among other advantages; then, the high dynamic range for audio recording was illustrated.

This latest test doesn’t make any direct comparisons – Nokia didn’t strap any rival phones to the helicopter – but, while it’s not quite what you might get from a BBC nature documentary, the footage is impressive nonetheless. We’re expecting the Lumia 928 to be made official, for Verizon and other international carriers, at an event Nokia is hosting next week.

That then spreads the remainder of the cost of the smartphone out, over the length of the 24-month agreement. You’ll be looking at $5 extra on your bill each month for the privilege, though at least you’re paying no more than you would if you spent the money upfront. T-Mobile will offer the payment plan option from May 22.

As for the Lumia 521 itself, unsurprisingly it’s a variant on the Lumia 520 we reviewed last month, complete with a 5-megapixel camera, 4-inch touchscreen, and support for 720p HD video recording. However, it will gain WiFi Calling in T-Mobile’s version, though that won’t be enabled until a firmware update is ready from May 20.

Those who pick up the phone early, at a Microsoft Retail Store or Walmart, will have to wait for that update to be pushed out to their phone before they can make WiFi calls. That’ll be installed OTA, however, rather than demanding the Lumia 521 be plugged into a computer.

The W1 was first unveiled at CES 2013 back in January, alongside the Ascend D2 and the humungous Ascend Mate. The W1 sports a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-core processor, and has a 5MP rear camera that shoots 720p video. There’s only 1.7GB of storage on the thing, but an expandable microSD card slot is their for your perusal.

The phone is covered with a 4-inch IPS display with a resolution 800×480, which isn’t fantastic, but we don’t see why most everyday consumers wouldn’t be happy with it, especially if its “competitively” priced as the company claims it will be once it hits Walmart shelves.

While Windows Phone 8 is still fairly new, the Huawei W1 will be entering in quite a saturated market of WP8 devices from several manufacturers, with a few already gaining popularity. The Nokia Lumia series has caught on quick, so if Huawei wants to make a splash with its W1, they’ll have to make a powerful case for it.

If that’s the case, it could be Nokia is using the LED for a focus light, or potentially including it so that the Lumia 928 can use it as a video lamp when recording footage. The Xenon flash is a hotly-anticipated inclusion, a rare addition to a smartphone though one expected to pair well with the 8.7-megapixel camera and Carl Zeiss optics that Nokia has already confirmed.

Meanwhile, Nokia is also pitting the Lumia 928 against the Galaxy S III in terms of audio performance, testing out the two smartphones for their ability to record natural-sounding soundtracks. The test subject in this case is a subway band, with the new Windows Phone showing a far broader frequency range than its Android rival.

That’s something Nokia has emphasized before, on the 808 PureView, though the Lumia 928 is a whole lot more pocket-friendly than its Symbian predecessor. As per the low-light recording test earlier this week, though, we can’t help but wish that Nokia had pitted its new phone against the HTC One, which itself uses clever microphone technology to improve its audio pick-up.

If all goes to plan, we should expect to see the Lumia 928 officially detailed at a London event Nokia is holding next week, though it appears the Finns are keen to spill some of the headline features in the run-up to that.

“See how the 8.7MP PureView camera with Carl Zeiss optics and Optical Image Stabilization outperforms leading smartphones in all kinds of lighting conditions” Nokia’s tagline crows, alongside press shots of the somewhat slab-sided phone. Just as the previous advert leaks have indicated, the Lumia 928 is a more squared off handset than previous Lumia, with a narrow colored bar running around the edge in a way that reminds us a little of the Sony Xperia Z.

Still, the hardware is expected to be broadly in line with the Lumia 920, with a 4.5-inch display. The Lumia 928 could use an AMOLED panel rather than the LCD of the 920, however, along with including radio support for Verizon; the carrier was namechecked in print versions of the PureView commercial earlier this week.

As for the camera testing, Nokia apparently took the Lumia 928 along with a couple of its competitors to Adventureland in Farmingdale, New York, where they were strapped to the front of “The Hurricane” rollercoaster. That gives the Finnish company the chance to show off the improved low-light performance and the reduction in shake; if Nokia can also deliver that without the bulk and weight that the Lumia 920 was criticized for, then the Lumia 928 could stand a much better chance in the market.

Still, the one phone we’d have liked to have seen compared – the HTC One – wasn’t invited on the daytrip, and so it remains to be seen whether Nokia’s PureView fettling will squash HTC’s UltraPixel technology. Given the speed at which Nokia is gushing Lumia 928 details, however, we can’t be far off the official release and some concrete answers.

And you heard that correctly, Foursquare teamed up with Nokia, which means that the updated app will come pre-loaded on select Lumia models, with the app optimized for Lumia devices as an added bonus, where it will work seamlessly with the line’s augmented reality technology, giving Foursquare users the ability to check in with style.

The YouTube app also received an update on Windows Phone 8, being “completely redesigned” with a handful of new features, most notably pinning support, which lets you pin videos, channels, playlists and search results right to your phone’s Start Screen. The pinning also extends to YouTube’s Kids Corners, allowing parents to easily control what their kids can and cannot view.

These updates come just after Hulu released the Hulu Plus app on Windows Phone 8 yesterday. Netflix had been in the game for over a month, so the streaming service has a lot of catching up to do on Microsoft’s platform. Then again, a lot of companies have catching up to do, as many popular apps still aren’t on Windows Phone 8 yet.

“You’re a nice guy … and the leadership team is doing its best, but clearly, it’s not enough,” shareholder Hannu Virtanen said during the event. “Are you aware that results are what matter? The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Please switch to another road.”

Nokia has been clear that it is not preparing a “Plan B” in the wings should Windows Phone fail, instead focusing solely on pushing Microsoft’s platform. That singular purpose isn’t enough to convince investors and market watchers, however, leaving some suggesting that Nokia should abdicate from the high-end smartphone segment and instead focus on the mid-tier, picking up those buyers in emerging markets or upgrading from feature-phones.

“Maybe they could go back to Google and say we also want to go with Android” one Greenwich Consulting analyst suggested. “Even if it hurts. Microsoft, they’ve had their chances, and are not managing to take off.”

Exactly what the split of support for and against Windows Phone ended up is unclear, but Nokia’s share price shows the brunt of the ill feeling. Some investors admitted they still held the stock for “sentimental” reasons rather than good business sense; the share price is currently dawdling in the mid-$3 range.

Whether that will change any time soon depends largely on how well Nokia can convince the market it wants to open up for Windows Phone. The company announced losses of $196m in its most recent financial period, despite selling the most Lumia handsets it has in any previous quarter. That’s still not enough to either buoy Windows Phone’s niche in the market or satisfy analysts. “He’s managed to decrease costs but not to increase market share” one pointed out.

Next up for Nokia is an event in India on Thursday, expected to see new, low-cost devices revealed for the developing markets, and then a Lumia event later in the month. That’s expected to see the Lumia 928 officially revealed along with a high-megapixel PureView cameraphone, believed to be codenamed EOS. Photography has been one of Nokia’s key areas of development, both in its own R&D labs and in terms of external investment into firms like Pelican, which specialize in multi-lens cluster arrays.

The URL mentioned in the advert – nokia.com/lumia928 – is, surprisingly, already active, though there’s less detail to be found than in the print version. The image is the same, aside from the Verizon logo being absent, and there are no specifications; however, the filename of the image itself does confirm that this is the Lumia 928.

Chatter of the Lumia 928 has been circulating for some time now, with early talk of an aluminum chassis and a more squared off design than the Lumia 920 that the phone is presumed to be based upon. Like the 920, the 928 is expected to use a 4.5-inch display, though there has been talk of Nokia using AMOLED panel technology rather than the ClearBlack LCD of the older device.

Nokia will hold a Lumia event on May 14, though given that will be in London it would imply that either the Lumia 928 is intended for regions beyond Verizon’s coverage, or that the phone will be the support act for another, more broadly available phone. That could well be the device believed to be codenamed EOS, a more photography-centric handset that, so the speculation suggests, could have a waterproof aluminum coating.

Waterproofing may well be something Nokia is looking to push in its new 2013 line-up. The beach photography shown in this Lumia 928 commercial could be a hint that the phone will have a weather-resistant casing.

This is just one of the many apps that has been released for Windows Phone 8 over the past few months, with some of the bigger mobile apps still waiting for their turn for Windows Phone 8 support. Either way, Hulu subscribers who pay for the $8/month plan will be able to enjoy streaming on their WP8 devices now.

As for the layout of the app, Hulu went with the traditional Windows Phone 8 layout rather than their own concoction, and firing up the app will lead to the home screen where you can scroll through TV shows — very similar to other Windows Phone 8 apps, and the look should be reminiscent of the Hulu app on Windows 8.

Some of the more popular apps and games that have landed on Windows Phone 8 include Pandora, Spotify, Microsoft’s own Photosynth, Modern Combat 4, and Netflix, which arrived on Microsoft’s new platform last month. We can only assume this is Hulu’s answer to Netflix as a way to earn more subscribers by offering Windows Phone 8 support.

Microsoft says this new beta program is targeted to those who like to mess around with experimental software, so folks that hate when apps crash or don’t perform smoothly most likely don’t need to apply. However, anyone can join in, as it’s not just limited to developers, and Microsoft is encouraging anyone to try it out.

The beta app for Facebook underwent major redesign, and it comes a lot of new features, including support for high-resolution photos, improved post sharing, and Facebook’s Timeline. If you spot a bug or just want to give your overall feedback about the app, you can head to Settings > About in the app to report information.

If you didn’t know Microsoft actually develops the Facebook app for Windows Phone, and it’s the same way with BlackBerry, so essentially, Facebook only actively develops mobile apps for iOS and Android. However, with the social network’s permission, Microsoft can develop their own Facebook app for Windows Phone users.

The ad takes place at a wedding, where everyone in the audience naturally pops out their smartphones (and tablets, in one instance) to take a picture of the moment. However, this leads to name-calling and sarcastic taunts to other guests. Obviously, an all-out fight ensues as people argue over what the better mobile platform is, while Windows Phone users casually stand there using their Nokia Lumia 920 devices.

Microsoft feeds off of the oft-forgotten mobile platform in the mobile wars, and uses that to their advantage, touting that if you have a Windows Phone device, there’s no need to argue over which mobile platform is the best, because Microsoft argues that you have the best in your hand in the first place.

It seems that more and more companies are aiming their sights at competitors and downplaying the features on these devices rather than market their own products and demo some of the features on their own smartphones and tablets. We get that Microsoft thinks they’re not included in the mobile wars because they’re already the best, but they fail to really list why they’re the best.

The three choices that you have to pick from are “The Power Trip,” Navy Seal autobiography “American Sniper,” and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” which is narrated by actor Jake Gyllenhaal and will also be hitting theaters here shortly. All three of these books seem to be really popular, especially “The Great Gatsby,” so be sure to take advantage of the offer while you have it.

Howevever, there is some fine print to be aware of. Only new Audible registrants will be able to get a free audiobook, and you’ll have to register for a new account through the Windows 8 or Windows Phone app on your computer or smartphone. It’s also only available in the US and you have until May 13 to snatch up your free copy.

While this may be an enticing offer for some users, especially the book lovers out there, we’re not so sure that this promotion alone will be enough to get people to try out Windows 8 or Windows Phone 8. It’s certainly a good deal for those who already are on one of these platforms, but we can’t see others really going for it. Either way, if you’re yearning for a free audiobook, now’s your chance.

The new app includes the ability to follow users and post in all formats that Tumblr allows, including GIFs. Users will also be able to share photos, videos, links, text, etc. The user interface looks like any other Windows Phone 8 app, and it also supports Windows Phone 8′s lock screen and live tiles, meaning that you can have the app display the latest images from your dashboard on your lock screen or Tumblr live tiles.

Tumblr has been taking its time rolling out mobile apps to various mobile operating system. Case in point: Android tablet support as well as iPad support arrived back in December, which is a bit late compared to most other popular services. However, it’s out in full force now on iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone 8.

Tumblr is also just starting to roll out ads to its mobile apps, giving the company another way to bring in the bacon. Tumblr announced just yesterday that they would start doing this. It’s not yet known how this will affect users, or whether or not users will make a big fuss over it, but it’s usually a common convention that people don’t like ads, so many users may not take this lightly.

This report comes from sources speaking with Bloomberg and have asked to remain anonymous as final negotiations will remain secret until next month. The Nokia Lumia 928 is said to be a re-tuning of the Nokia Lumia 920, a device Nokia has claimed as its hero smartphone through the beginning of 2013. This new device would work with a similar 4.5-inch touchscreen, 8 megapixel camera, and the ability to charge wirelessly.

The device that Nokia and Verizon are said to be using to solidify a deal between them will likely follow the metal body rumors reported several times since the international mobile device convention IFA held earlier this year in Barcelona. It was during that convention that Nokia revealed several new smartphones with low price points including the Lumia 520 and 720, both of which use Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 mobile operating system.

Have a peek at the timeline below for more appearances in the recent past of the device at the center of the deal being tipped here today. Will it be Nokia’s time to glow brightly amongst the otherwise midrange Windows Phone 8 devices working with the big red carrier? Or will this deal fizzle before the next wave of Windows Phone 8 devices arrive later this year?

Hardware

Cheap doesn’t always mean cheerful, though Nokia has some impressive form in the segment: its track record in squeezing the best margins out of its production lines has resulted in surprising gems like the Lumia 620. For the Lumia 520, you get a Snapdragon S4 dualcore running at 1GHz and 512MB of RAM, just like the 720, as well as 8GB of onboard storage and a microSD card slot to add to it.

Connectivity omits LTE – something we can forgive given the price – and tops out at dualband HSDPA (up to 21.1Mbps down, 5.76Mbps up, network depending); there’s also WiFi b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0. No NFC, though, which means no tap-to-pair with wireless speakers, and there’s unsurprisingly no wireless charging option either. Nokia tells us it expects people to step up to the Lumia 720 if that’s something they’re keen on.

Nokia’s design lineage takes another mild deviation for the Lumia 520, with the interchangeable casing being a simple snap-on affair without the bevels of the 720 or the dual-colors of the 620. It feels plasticky and somewhat hollow to the tap, too, while the broader screen bezels mean that, despite having a mere 4-inch display (running at WVGA), the phone is only very slightly narrower than the 4.3-inch 720.

That’s not the only screen-related compromise. Nokia’s Clear Black technology hasn’t filtered down to this level yet, and so the Lumia 520 makes do with a regular LCD panel instead. The result is weaker viewing angles and less impressive outdoor visibility, though Windows Phone’s bold colors do their best to keep the UI clean. Best, though, is the extra-sensitive touchscreen, which means you can use the 520 while wearing gloves.

Software

Windows Phone 8 on the Lumia 520 differs little from what we saw on the Lumia 720, with identical performance courtesy of the same internal components. It remains a great OS for the first-time smartphone user, cleanly laid out, but with the Live Tiles – which can show upcoming calendar appointments, gallery previews, and those contacts with new updates on social media – allowing for enough flexibility for power-users missing traditional widgets.

The Nokia software suite is broadly the same, too, with a couple of changes to accommodate the 520′s hardware. Since there’s no digital compass – only A-GPS and Glonass – you don’t get the LiveSight augmented reality City Lens functionality baked into HERE Maps, though there’s still turn-by-turn navigation (with offline mapping support) for the UK and Ireland. Nokia Transit is also included.

At this price point, though, the biggest sell may well be Nokia Music. The free streaming playlists – complete with offline support for a limited number of playlists, unless you sign up to the subscription Music+ service – have real appeal for buyers on a budget. It makes even more sense when you consider that, in the UK, the Lumia 520 is being offered free on a £7.99 a month agreement, less than a Spotify premium subscription.

Camera

At 5-megapixels, the Lumia 520′s camera is unsurprisingly humble. There’s an f/2.4 lens but none of the Carl Zeiss optics that we know from more expensive Nokia phones, and cost cutting has meant the LED flash is omitted too. The 520 is also the only model in the company’s new line-up not to get a front-facing camera, which means no Skype video calls.

Just as we found with the Lumia 620′s 5-megapixel shooter, quality is mixed. Given sufficient natural light, the Lumia 520 does a reasonable job, though there’s plenty of noise and blur to be found when you view shots at their full 2592 x 1936 resolution. Low-light performance suffers, though, with noise and colors underwhelming.

As for video, that tops out at 720p HD, but the results aren’t too hot. Moving objects aren’t jerky but they do encounter some blur, while the audio quality is somewhat tinny.

A minor frustration was how the camera shortcut button works. As on all Windows Phones, holding down the dedicated key on the side of the Lumia 520 loads up the camera app – bypassing the lockscreen – but the budget Nokia proved a little slower to be ready for a shot than its Lumia 720 sibling. We also had some issues with the physical alignment of the button when clipping the battery cover back on.

Phone and Battery

Nokia rates the Lumia 520′s removable 1,430 mAh battery as good for up to 9.6hrs of 3G talk time or 360hrs of standby; your calls will be clear and strong, too, with no issues in audio quality that we encountered.

In typical use, with a mixture of push-email, some Nokia Music playback, internet browsing, Nokia Maps, and photography, the Lumia 520 comfortably made it through a full day and into a second before we needed to reach for the charger.

Wrap-Up

Things are getting tight in Nokia’s Windows Phone line-up, with increasingly small differentiators between different models for different price points. Although that makes for potential confusion in the consumer marketplace, Nokia tells us it pays dividends for Lumia’s enterprise adoption: one of the goals of the 520, for instance, was to make a device for those on the factory floor that runs the same OS as management staff use on their Lumia 820 and 920 phones, but cheap and resilient enough to survive the inevitable drops and scrapes of working life.

Does that mean the Lumia 520 isn’t intended for the rest of us? Some of the compromises – the absence of a front-facing camera, notably, and the mediocre hand-feel – do leave us leaning toward the Lumia 620. It may be slightly more expensive, but it looks and feels better, is more flexible, and while the screen is slightly smaller, it offers the same resolution along with the quality improvements of Clear Black.

If low-cost is your guiding star, though, the Lumia 520 is impressive for the price, and the value-add of Nokia’s software and services isn’t to be sniffed at either.

Hardware

Nokia’s familial design language is clear in the Lumia 720, and it’s one of the more pleasing handsets to look at and hold in the company’s range. Narrower sides but wider top and bottom bezels make for a phone that’s slimmer but longer than the Lumia 820 it most closely resembles, though the 720 shaves 0.9 mm off the depth (taking it down to 9 mm).

There’s a compromise involved in that, though, which is that while wireless charging is an option, it’s not baked into the Lumia 720 natively. Instead, you have to slot the phone into a secondary skin, which makes contact with a row of pin-connectors running along the lower section of the rear. Then, it’s compatible with any Qi-compliant wireless charger, including Nokia’s own accessories; unfortunately, Nokia didn’t have the adapter shell available for us to test.

Bare, it’s a sturdy unibody with a smooth, matte finish; the red of our review unit is particularly fetching, but Nokia will also offer the 720 in white, cyan, yellow, and black. A Micro SIM-tray on the upper edge means Nokia can keep the back cover fixed – which also means no removable battery – while on the right side there’s the usual volume rocker, power/lock key, and camera shortcut. A microUSB port is on the bottom edge, and finally another pop-out tray on the left for a microSD card slot (to add to the 8GB of internal storage).

Nokia has been pushing two screen technologies of late, Clear Black for better contrast and outdoor usability, and increased sensitivity for the touchscreen meaning it will work even when you’re wearing gloves. Both are present on the Lumia 720′s 4.3-inch panel, a bright and colorful screen let down only by its mediocre resolution. At WVGA, rather than 720p, you miss out on the smoothness we’ve seen on other, more expensive phones. Admittedly, the effect is diluted somewhat by the smaller size overall, but we’d still loved to have seen an HD screen.

Inside, Qualcomm’s 1GHz Snapdragon S4 chip holds court, paired with 512MB of memory. Nokia may have omitted wireless charging, but you still get quadband 21.1Mbps HSDPA, quadband GSM/EDGE, Bluetooth 3.0, WiFi b/g/n, and NFC. Above the display there’s a 1.3-megapixel camera with a wide-angle f/2.4 lens, while a 6.7-megapixel camera with f/1.9 Carl Zeiss optics is on the back, next to an LED flash. The latter will record 720p HD video, though not Full HD.

Software and Performance

Windows Phone 8 hasn’t deviated from what we last saw on a new Nokia, and so it’s all becoming familiar territory for both the firm and its users. The OS is undeniably approachable for first-time smartphone buyers, and while it doesn’t have widgets in the traditional sense, the Live Tiles system – where each of the resizable blocks can cycle through recent updates, media previews, upcoming events, new messages, and other information – can, with a little investment in setup time, be surprisingly rewarding. If you want to fill the homescreen with a grid of contact shortcuts, you can, or alternatively you can replicate an iOS-style layout with simple app buttons.

On top of that, Nokia throws in its own value-add, the growing suite of exclusive apps and services which the Finnish firm hopes will coax you away not only from Android or iPhone, but from other Windows Phone OEMs like HTC. Most notable are HERE Maps, HERE Drive, and Nokia Music, though there are a few tweaks along the way.

HERE Maps, for instance, now gets LiveSight and HERE Transit baked in, integrating the previously standalone City Lens and Nokia Transit technology within the one core app. LiveSight allows you to hold the Lumia 720 up and look “through” it at points of interest overlaid on top of a real-world view from the camera. It’s useful, particularly being able to zoom past buildings and see what’s behind them, if you’re in a new area, and the Nokia’s processor has no issues keeping up as you physically spin around to pan the camera.

HERE Transit, meanwhile, shifts the incredibly useful public transportation guidance into the core HERE Maps app, where it belonged all along. Nokia says it now has timetable data for more than 670 cities in 50 countries worldwide, with the ability to pin specific routes to the Windows Phone homescreen (and see, on a Live Tile, the next upcoming journey time).

What you don’t get is HERE Drive+, with global offline navigation. Instead, those in the UK will get UK and Ireland maps with offline support, but have to pay extra if they want navigation data for elsewhere in the world.

Nokia Music, meanwhile, continues to offer a compelling alternative for those shy of Spotify’s monthly subscription fee. Sign-up free, it offers 100 Mix Radio playlists that Nokia updates weekly, picking from a catalog of 22m tracks, the ability to create your own custom playlists triggered from an original “seed” track, and support for a limited number of offline playlists. The Nokia Music+ subscription service – an in-app upgrade – unlocks unlimited offline playback, as well as higher-quality audio on WiFi connections, and unlimited track-skips.

Last year we criticized Nokia’s Lumia 610 for coming to market with 256MB of RAM when the latest apps were calling for double that. The Lumia 720 makes a similar mistake – less serious initially, but likely to be no less frustrating over the course of a two-year agreement – with its 512MB looking short-sighted when apps demanding at least 1GB are starting to arrive in the Windows Phone Store.

Camera

Nokia’s 6.7-megapixel camera for the Lumia 720 uses a custom sensor and the company’s favorite Carl Zeiss optics, though falls short of PureView branding. Nonetheless, it’s a capable shooter, particularly in the sort of low-light settings we’ve praised PureView devices for previously.

So, you don’t get optical image stabilization, but you do get a camera that doesn’t lose its nerve when it comes to scenes with mixed bright and dark areas. There, the Lumia 720 leans toward maintaining detail in the low-light patches – though that can leave brighter scenes over-exposed – with results that belie the mid-range positioning of the phone. The LED flash is satisfactory, but we found we could often leave it switched off and rely on the camera’s inherent light-grabbing skills.

On the flip side, both photos and video (recorded at 720p maximum on both front and back cameras) have a tendency to introduce glare and lens-flare when you’re in brighter environments. Otherwise, video from the Lumia 720 looks solid, and the continuous auto-focus does a reasonable job at keeping your subject clear.

Our interest in front-facing cameras usually begins and ends with the odd Skype video call, but Nokia has made a specific play for those particularly keen to take self-portraits. As well as being equipped with a wide-angle lens, to fit more people in-shot, the Lumia 720 supports the new, wretchedly-named Glam Me app, which automatically enhances your selfies. Brightness, skin smoothness, blemishes and more are all ironed out, tweaked, and generally finessed; alternatively, you can apply one of several filters, with Instagram-like textures and color tones.

Phone and Battery Life

Nokia’s legacy for decent call quality continues with the Lumia 720, though the relevance of voice calls alone is perhaps questionable these days. Instead, we can’t help but feel that omitting LTE support was a missed opportunity.

The Lumia 720′s battery may be non-removable, but at 2,000 mAh it’s oversized for a 4.3-inch phone. That pays obvious dividends for runtimes: Nokia quotes up to 13.4hrs of talk time or up to 520hrs of standby (both on 3G), or alternatively 79hrs of music playback (locally-stored, not streaming).

In practice, with regular use – push email turned on, social networking use including Facebook and Twitter, some photography, music streaming, and HERE Maps – we easily made it through two days without having to reach for the microUSB charger. That’s almost enough for us to forgive the fact that wireless charging (or the kit needed to use it) isn’t bundled.

Wrap-Up

In some ways, the Lumia 720 is everything we’ve asked for from Nokia. It’s slickly designed and has superlative battery life, the camera out-performs rivals in the same price bracket, and the screen – though lower resolution than we like – is a nice compromise of size, outdoor usability, and general clarity.

Letting the show down are the absence of LTE and the potentially limiting 512MB of RAM. You could well say that the Lumia 720′s target audience won’t miss 4G, but there’s a growing cadre of people wanting higher-end features without a massive display, and they already know they want LTE. As 4G spreads, more and more people are going to expect it to on their phone. As for the RAM, that’s a more obvious drawback: games like Temple Run are quietly omitted from the Store, since they demand twice the memory the Nokia has.

It’s a frustrating flaw in what could’ve been a fantastic device, though the strengths in camera and battery life still make it a solid choice in the midrange.

The game will take up around 1GB, so be sure to free up some storage space if need be. It’s worthy to note that the game won’t play on all Windows Phone 8 devices. Gameloft doesn’t provide a list of approved devices, but Microsoft says on their Windows blog that it can only play on “high-memory Windows Phone 8 models.”

As for gameplay elements, it looks like Modern Combat 4 is merely just a port from the iOS and Android versions, so don’t expect anything exclusive to come your way if you plan on playing the game on your Windows Phone 8 device. The game will cost you $6.99, which is the same price as the iOS and Android version.

Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour comes with pretty much everything you would ever want in a first-person shooter, including multiplayer, complete with leaderboards, and over 20,000 weapon arrangements. It’s certainly nothing special when you consider a console game, but this is a mobile game we’re talking about, which is insanely impressive. Give the game a try today and let us know what you think.

According to The Verge, sources familiar with the development of Windows Phone 8 have revealed that Microsoft will issue and update later this year that will add support for 1080p devices, so that they’ll be able to run Windows Phone 8, allowing customers the opportunity to own a phablet-style smartphone running Microsoft’s latest platform.

The update is said to arrive in time for the holiday season, meaning that phones running Windows Phone 8 with larger displays and 1080p resolutions could be available to purchase by November, roughly. The update would also bring support for new Qualcomm quad-core processors, which would allow phone manufacturers to use higher-power quad-core chips in new Windows Phone 8 devices.

While the update is set to bring a lot of improvements to Windows Phone 8, it’s been noted that it’s actually separate from Microsoft’s long-term plan to bring improvements to the platform — codenamed “Blue,” as we’ve mentioned in the past. Instead this update will address different improvements and enhancements to the Windows Phone platform.

[via The Verge]

As the Netflix app is updated for larger resolution displays, it’s apparent that updates are still needed before this iteration of the video environment is up to snuff with the rest of the smart device universe. You’ll still not be able to get HD video on your Windows Phone 8 device, and though it’s not Netflix’ fault, we’re still not at a place where essentially every new Windows Phone 8 device is able to have its picture output to a larger screen via HDMI.

This update will ring in at 2MB as a download to your device this week. Remember that you’re going to need a Netflix account to take full advantage of the app, but you can still make with a trial period if you like. You’ll get addicted real quick.

Have a peek at the Netflix timeline below to see what else this streaming video giant has been bringing to the universe over the past few weeks. The Netflix app has quickly become one of the must-have apps on every mobile platform over the past few years, right along with Hulu and your everyday collection of YouTube-like apps. Stay up to date!

In a company blog post by Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of Corporate Communications, Frank Shaw jokes that he tuned into the Facebook Home event yesterday “not to see if it was still April Fools Day, but to see if it was somehow still 2011.” Shaw says that “the content of the presentation was remarkably similar to the launch event…for Windows Phone two years ago.”

Shaw says that the main theme behind creating Windows Phone 7 Mango was to “put people first.” It’s even mentioned in a YouTube video that Microsoft uploaded back in August 2011 (seen below). So essentially, Facebook certainly wasn’t the first company to come up with such a philosophy, but it sure seemed like they tried to make it look like their own.

Furthermore, Shaw bashes Android and says that Microsoft understands Facebook’s reasoning behind wanting to “find a way to bring similar functionality to a platform that is sadly lacking it,” and also notes that Google’s OS “is complicated enough without adding another skin built around another metaphor, on top of what is already a custom variant of the OS.”

Shaw wasn’t done yet, however, and he says that Microsoft applauds Facebook’s effort on giving “some Android owners a taste of what a ‘people-centric’ phone can be like,” however Shaw wants to recommend that people should “get the real thing, and simply upgrade to a Windows Phone.” And once you have it all set up, Microsoft promises “you’ll be feeling even more at ‘home’.”

Each week, the Windows Store will feature three new apps for the Red Stripe Deals each week. Each week, there will “typically” be one Xbox game, one indie game, and one top-rated app, all of which will be marked down by at least 50% of the original price. Microsoft says that Red Stripe name comes from the red stripe that you’ll see on the apps that are on sale for that week.

What does Microsoft have on sale this week? The inaugural Red Stripe collection features Runtastic Pro, Assassin’s Creed: Altairs Chronicles HD, and King Oddball — all of which are just $0.99 each. These three apps/games will only be discounted for a week, so grab them now before next Thursday rolls around.

Windows Phone 8 has seen a lot of neat apps and games come its way as of late. Just recently, Temple Run was released on Windows Phone 8, as was Pandora, which comes with no ads until 2014, which is usually a feature only granted to paying subscribers of the music-streaming service. Now, Windows Phone 8 users get the deal exclusively.

Kindel is unable to divulge any information regarding the project nor his current position at Amazon, but he states that the project has extreme potential. He stated to GeekWire that it was an opportunity that he could not refuse, and that “the idea that I can work in such a principled and customer focused company is really exciting to me.” There are a few speculations about what Kindel’s new project may be.

Many speculate that Amazon hired Kindel to work on its potential Smartphone device. It believes that Kindel has invaluable experience in the mobile sector of the technology business that can help them create a stand-out device. The Amazon smartphone is rumored to be revealed next year, giving Kindel enough time to mark out development plans for the device. With Kindel’s knowledge and Amazon’s huge user base of Kindle Fire users, they may be able to shell out a great, affordable device.

Of course, if he isn’t working on the Amazon smartphone, there are still plenty of other services that Amazon is working on. Amazon is supposedly working on a music subscription service. They’re working on a ton of original video content, with them just releasing the series “Betas” earlier last week, and they have a bunch of acquisitions in tow that they may modify in the near future. We should find out what Kindel will be doing with Amazon soon, so stay tuned to SlashGear for the info.

[via GeekWire]

The home screen has been redesigned in a way that gives you quick access to the features you’ll most likely need when you boot up the app, including creating a new note and searching through notes. The home screen redesign also includes a small button at the top of the screen that quickly gives you access to your account information.

The update also includes shortcuts, which let you quickly jump to anything in your note collection that you access most frequently. All you have to do is long tap on any item and it will then appear on the home screen of the Evernote app. Currently, shortcuts are only available on OS X, Android, and Windows Phone, and they also sync across platforms.

As for the improved tag system, it’s a lot more compact this time around, which allows you to see more tags on the screen without scrolling up or down. Furthermore, the update includes a quick way for you to jump to tags by the letter they begin with. It cuts down on the amount of scrolling you have to do, and it’s a quicker way to jump to the tag you need.

The update also brings Evernote’s Document Search, which is actually a feature only for Premium users, but it’s available for free to Windows Phone users. It indexes any attached Microsoft Word, iWork, or OpenOffice files so that documents show up in your search results. Other than that, the new update includes Notebook Stacks support, checklist support, and a handful of bugfixes and general performance improvements. Evernote is a free download, and the update is available now in the Windows Phone store.

When this app comes to Windows Phone devices, you’ll find slightly less of a flash, but a flash nonetheless. The developers behind the app, Imangi, have made it clear that they’ll be releasing this app to Windows Phone devices soon and very soon – we’ll see exactly when just a bit sooner! In addition to this title, several other games have been revealed to be coming to Microsoft’s mobile OS rather rapidly.

The rest of the list goes like this: 6th Planet, Orcs Must Survive, Flight Theory, Ruzzle, Propel Man, Drift Mania Championship – and more! We’ll be taking a peek at each of them this week to see how fabulous they really are. Meanwhile be sure to let us know if you’ve found any of them to be particularly excellent!

Below you’ll see a brief hands-on video with the original Temple Run game for Android courtesy of our pals at Android Community. This game is essentially the same as the one you’ll be downloading for Windows Phone today, controls and all!

UPDATE: According to Microsoft, each of the games above will be available to purchase and play today! – Or if not today, throughout the rest of the week. Stay tuned!

Both Pandora and Microsoft know that you’ve been waiting a long time for a Windows Phone 8 version of the app to come out, and they even announced plans to bring Pandora to WP8 during the platform’s launch event, so as a gift for your patience, they’re giving WP8 users an ad-free experience until the end of this year. This is a feature that only normally comes to premium subscribers of the service.

Furthermore, the app comes with Live Tile support, meaning that you can check out what artist and song is playing right from the home screen, and users can simply tap on the tile to go directly to the app. Microsoft and Pandora claim this as the app’s exclusive features, so if you were expecting anything groundbreaking in the actual app (besides the ad-free experience), you may be disappointed.

Along with the ad-free experience, however, users will also be able to play unlimited music. Pandora recently stuck a 40-hour monthly limit on its service for free users, but Windows Phone 8 users will be able to listen to all of the music that their hearts desire until the end of the year, after which you can spring for the monthly or yearly plans ($3.99 monthly or $36 yearly).