Articles

Just a quick reminder, if you're in the United Kingdom and are interested in winning a Nokia Lumia 820, you only have a few more hours to enter the Expansys/Windows Phone Central giveaway.

We have gotten our hands on (courtesy of Expansys) a red Lumia 820, a wireless charging pillow, and a set of Bluetooth Monster headphones to give away.

All you need to do to enter is:

1. Live in the United Kingdom
2. be a registered WPCentral.com member, which you can do here.
3. post in the comments below what local app you'd like to see come to the Windows Phone Store.  It could be a UK banking app, retailer app, or anything that would make life more covenant in your neck of the woods.

We'll shut things down at midnight on Thursday, May 9th and randomly draw one winner shortly there after. Again, you need to be a UK resident to qualify.  Good luck everyone!

What’s better than a free game? Not much, which is why you should check out Tiny Space. That’s two new free games this week we've covered, the other being Monster Burner with Xbox Live. Tiny Space is a tiny game, but it’s pretty fun. Let’s check it out.

The Nokia Lumia 928 is arguably the worst kept secret in the world of Windows Phone handsets. We’ve known about it for quite some time and have pieces of its existence surface frequently. Nokia even put the device itself up on their website last night. Without an official announcement to boot. Here’s a new video and image of the device.

We’ll just do this as a PSA post as there probably no new features on board, but just 24 hours after being released to the Store, the official (and new) YouTube app got an update.

Version 3.0.0.1 is now live on the marketplace, and if a 0.0.0.1 update sounds minor, we’ll, you’d probably be right. Most likely this is a quick bug fix for something that could affect a lot of users, so it’s good to see such a high profile app get its due.

Since last week we’ve been undergoing a small communications hitch with Microsoft’s gaming division that will hopefully be cleared up soon. Earlier this week though, French site MonWindowsPhone passed along the news that N.O.V.A. 3 would be today’s Xbox release, so we reported it as such. Of course we asked Gameloft to verify the release date, but they could only say for certain that it will come out in May – not specifically today.

A short while ago, a different Xbox Windows Phone game popped up in the Store: Monster Burner from Ubisoft! That’s not a bad thing, because it’s FREE, seems like a fantastic game, and runs on both Windows Phone 7 and 8. But given that Gameloft couldn’t say for sure whether N.O.V.A. 3 will come out today, we are left slightly unsure about its release status. Will we get one Xbox game this week or two?

That question aside, most of you guys will dig Monster Burner in a big way. Read on for our first impressions.

Want some free Lumias? Of course you do! AT&T currently has the Nokia flagship Lumia 920 Windows Phone listed for free when taken out with a two-year contract. Checking out the official online store will present one with an online discount that drives down the price of the handset with only the contract to be added to the monthly bills.

Mindbloom (www.mindbloom.com) has released its first Windows Phone app. Titled Juice, the app is an interactive energy tracker to help consumers maintain a healthy lifestyle. While it's not for those who are serious about fitness (there are other solutions for such activities and training - look back at our Mobile Nations Fitness Month for more), Juice will certainly cater for those who are interested in how to improve general health.

Hey developers, if you ever wondered what we at Windows Phone Central look for when reviewing apps and games, you’ll want to check out the latest episode of the AppBizDev podcast, run by Alan Mendelevich (AdDuplex) and Senior Technical Evangelist for Windows 8 in Microsoft's Developer and Platform Evangelism group, Ben Riga.

In case you haven’t heard of it before, AppBizDev (www.appbizdev.com) focuses on the business end Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8—advertising and monetization. It’s a solid tool for tips and advice how to make the most of your app strategy.

Oh, Canada! If you've been looking for a way to hop onto the Windows Phone bandwagon for cheap, then look no further than your local Rogers, Koodo, or Telus store. Nokia has announced that these three Canadian carriers have just picked up the Nokia Lumia 520.

The ever-affordable Lumia 520 is available starting today on Rogers for free with a three year contract or $199.99 outright. If Koodo is more your flavor, the 520 official launches there on May 9th for $150 without a contract or free on contract (though in reality you can already order one). And if your carrier of choice is Telus, you'll be able to pick up the 520 for $149 with a pre-paid plan.

As well as Ringtone Maker, Nokia has also pushed out an update for its beta instant messaging solution. We previously looked at Nokia Chat when it was released for Windows Phone 8 last month, but the app was limited to a select number of markets. The company has now increased that pool to cover more regions.

Nokia has released a new beta version of its Ringtone Maker over on the Nokia Beta Labs. The app enables consumers to create ringtones from locally stored music files, removing the requirement to upload, edit and save files using various free web services. Numerous tools and controls are available to edit the chosen file.