windows phone

Windows Phone 8 one step closer to 1080p support -- report

Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 operating system might soon support 1080p resolution, leaked file information in Visual Studio 2013 suggests.

Former Nokia and Microsoft engineer Justin Angel tweeted out on Monday an image of Visual Studio 2013. The image showed Windows Phone 8 emulator files containing 1080p resolution of 1,920 x 1,080.

Microsoft's mobile operating system supports 720p resolution, as well as WVGA and WXGA. Full 1080p support, however, has been sorely lacking from the operating system. The resolution is available on several Android handsets.

For its part, Microsoft hasn't confirmed that 1080p support is coming … Read more

Microsoft highlights start button return at Build

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer highlighted the return of the start button on Windows 8 at its Build developers conference Wednesday in San Francisco.

The news got a round of applause from the audience, but it may not be everything users had hoped for. Ballmer said users can also boot to the desktop and the Start screen has been tweaked to see many applications at a glance.

Check out CNET's review of Windows 8.1 here and read more news from the conference on CNET's live blog.

Sprint to offer Windows Phone 8 devices with unlimited 4G LTE

Looking for a smartphone with no data caps? Sprint has a couple of new candidates lined up.

The HTC 8XT and Samsung Ativ S Neo, both Windows Phone 8 handsets, will be available sometime this summer through Sprint's self-dubbed Truly Unlimited plan. Offered in select markets, the plan promises unlimited 4G LTE data use with no overage charges. The cost rings in at $79.99 per month for an individual user and 179.98 per month for a three-line family plan.

Sporting a 4.3-inch WVGA display, the HTC 8XT is powered by a 1.4GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon … Read more

Telefonica inks deal with Microsoft to break Android, iOS 'duopoly'

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

iOS and Android to get Xbox and Microsoft PC games?

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.

While Microsoft's Windows Phone has access to dozens of Xbox and PC games, both … Read more

Microsoft flirted with buying Nokia, WSJ says

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

Microsoft revs speedier, smarter speech recognition for phones

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

Twitter for Windows Phone gets photo filters, 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.

Apple still smartphone champ, Android the No. 1 OS, ComScore says

Research firm ComScore has released its latest U.S. smartphone industry report, estimating that Apple remains top of the pile in the smartphone industry with a market share of 39.2 percent.

Based on data gathered through the company's MobiLens service -- which harvests user information based on subscribers 13 years and older -- ComScore says that in the three month period ended April 2013, Apple and South Korean rival Samsung were the only manufacturers that enjoyed a positive increase in market share values.

Tech giant Apple managed to snag 39.2 percent of U.S. smartphone … Read more