Windows Phone

Telefonica, one of the world's largest carriers, has signed a deal with Microsoft to promote far more heavily the software giant's Windows Phone 8 operating system and devices running it.

The carrier said in a statement on Wednesday that over the next year, it will enhance its marketing efforts for Windows Phone 8 and Windows Phone 8 devices. The company will focus those marketing efforts in several of its major markets, including the U.K., Germany, Spain, and Brazil.

Telefonica said that its move is designed to enhance competition in the marketplace. The company said Wednesday it wants … Read more

Microsoft's Xbox and PC games may be coming to Apple's iPhone and Android devices sometime this year, according to a report by Nikkei via Reuters.

The tech giant is allegedly working on a licensing deal with Japanese mobile game maker KLab to bring its games to other smartphone platforms, according to Reuters. One of the first games said to be released is Age of Empires, which reportedly will be free and available on iOS and Android smartphones by the end of this year.

Microsoft was in deep discussions to acquire Nokia, but talks have broken down, according to the Wall Street Journal.

With such a deal, Microsoft would gain direct control over the mobile device maker, which has been the marquee partner for the software giant's fledgling Windows Phone operating system. Such a deal could shake up the smartphone business in the same way that Google did when it acquired Motorola Mobility.

Nokia and Microsoft both declined to comment on the report.

Both Microsoft and Nokia had been struggling to regain their once dominant positions. Microsoft has been pushed back on its … Read more

A new phone model named Nokia RM-877 recently spied at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Web site suggests that AT&T could be among the first carriers to offer the rumored Nokia EOS smartphone.

Details in the FCC documents indicate that the mysterious device features NFC, Bluetooth, dual-band Wi-Fi, and support for AT&T's LTE network through its 4G bands.

A diagram accompanying the filing shows a handset that measures 130.35 x 71.4mm, a shade larger than the Nokia Lumia 925.

Additional information gleaned from the listing show the device as having been tested with … Read more

To peck away at the vast lead that rivals Google and Apple have in the mobile phone market, Microsoft is tapping its vast research unit to help improve speech recognition for folks who speak their text messages or use their voice to search the Web.

Microsoft researchers say they have come up with a novel approach to boost the accuracy of speech recognition and rev up the speed in which it's rendered by creating a computation model that mimics the way the brain works. By applying so-called deep neural networks to speech recognition, Microsoft researchers claim that users in … Read more

We know you've been wondering about Nokia's return to metal body plates in its new flagship Nokia Lumia 925.

Well, our sister site CNET UK has the full review of the unlocked, global version. The verdict? This Windows phone is light and slim, and its sixth camera lens seems to do the trick with slightly better photos than even its Lumia 920 cuz.

The Lumia 925 is eventually coming to T-Mobile. We'll review it for U.S. readers here. In the meantime, check out CNET UK's 925 review.

Nokia fans, prepare yourself for...something. On Thursday, the Finnish maker of Windows Phone devices invited press to a New York launch event on July 11, promising that the phone maker would "reinvent zoom."

Although the invite teases nothing about a camera, I'm putting my money on another Lumia smartphone, this time, perhaps with the PureView camera zoom lens we've all been waiting for since Nokia first wowed us two years ago with its 41-megapixel monster.

Recent rumors point to a phone code-named Eos that includes a zooming camera lens, though some point out that the … Read more

For all of your smartphone-owning life, you've been told you can't use your expensive device while wearing gloves, no matter how low the mercury plummets. You weren't really sure why, you just knew it wasn't going to happen.

And so rocketed sales of fingerless gloves, conductive gloves, and even conductive thread for those brave (or thrifty!) enough to hack their own touch-screen hand coverings.

Then something wonderful happened that obliterated this sad certainty of specialty winterwear dependence forever, and that was Nokia.

Starting with the Nokia Lumia 920 and Nokia Lumia 820, the industry got a … Read more

The official Twitter app for Windows Phone got a huge update today, bringing it more in line with its siblings on iOS and Android. The most important of the new features is undoubtedly the photo filter tool, which comes with options like Vignette, Warm, Antique, and Cool.

Other new features include lens app integration, the ability to play Vine videos right from your timeline, and an option to save tweeted photos to your device.

The updated Twitter app is available now in the Windows Phone Store.