Articles

It’s been a long, long time since we’ve written about Fox News for Windows Phone. The app was last updated, at least significantly, back in late 2011 when it picked up some ‘Mango’ features, including pinnable sub-sections. (Fox News was also one of the first major news apps on Windows Phone 7, going back to January 2011).

That version is still on the Store, virtually untouched but Fox has also co-released a separate “4.0” version strictly for Windows Phone 8 users—a nice move.

We've covered Photoplay in the past and more recently took a quick look at an upcoming update that was to introduce push notifications and Live Tile support. This new release is now available and has been pushed out to the store. If you're not familiar with the brand, Photoplay is an Instagram-like service that enables consumers to utilise smartphones for photography and share shots on social networks, as well as their own.

We have another vague update inbound for the popular (and long overdue) Temple Run on Windows Phone 8. The addictive game has now been bumped to version 1.5.2.0 with no Changelog in tow, unfortunately. That means we’ll have to rely on you for some testing to see if you can discern any noteworthy changes.

We can say that if you were hoping that the 1GB of RAM limit was lifted, you will be disappointed. Firing up the QR link for our adorable Lumia 521 resulted in the now familiar “App not compatible” error message. Sorry folks.

Looks like Nokia is finally letting the cat out of the bag, if only slightly, on their latest Conversations post from their official blog.

The post, entitled “41 million reasons to zoom in to Nokia Conversations on July 11th”, simply recapitulates the media invite news we reported on last week—namely that Nokia will be holding a press conference in NYC to announce new hardware.

The T-Mobile Lumia 521 is essentially the Nokia Lumia 520 with the usual North America mobile operator branding for exclusivity. The Windows Phone has been rather difficult to locate, particularly at Walmart stores. The device has appeared on SlickDeals and we've looked around the Walmart online store at various locations to confirm that there's stock available, depending on your location. 

Windows Phone is performing well in Estonia, according to a report over on ZDNet. Mobile operator EMT states that Android is the most popular platform and sports a rather large lead over Windows Phone, iOS and competing mobile options. That said, Windows Phone is said to have more than 10 percent of the market, beating Apple sitting on 9 percent. Not only is Microsoft sitting firmly in second position, but we're even seeing some movement with iOS.

News flash. Nokia is making a Windows Phone that is going to be packing a camera with something like 41MP. That’s bonkers and we’re getting more and more proof of the existence of this upcoming, groundbreaking phone. We were recently invited to a press event in NYC on July 11th where we suspect and expect to officially learn all about the Lumia “EOS”. But until then we keep getting leaks here and there about the phone.

Today is no different.

The popular Talk.to Messenger app for Windows Phone has been updated with some interesting features and is a great solution if you use Google Talk on the go.

If you're into the app and service to keep in touch with contacts, you'll love some of the new features in this latest release. We're looking at lockscreen support in a freely available solution. Talk.to Messenger can now tap into one of five notification spots on the main locksreen and display a counter. Simple but effective.

If you have never heard of Microsoft’s social network, So.cl, we aren’t surprised. The service launched back in December 2011 and was a private beta for students of the University of Washington, Syracuse University, and New York University. Currently, the site is open to all users, but Microsoft keeps So.cl on the down low.

So.cl is a truly unique experience which tries to mix Bing with social networking. The site can be described as a mixture between pinterest and tumblr; it is currently being run by Microsoft’s research division.

A team at Microsoft advertising set out last year to create “a series of new and truly unique ad experiences.”

Today, they are finished and are presenting prototypes from their journey. Five iconic brands including All Saints Clothing, Mercedes-Benz USA, Vans Shoes, MasterCard, and Dell are ready to strut their stuff. Let’s take a look at some of the ads Microsoft has been working on.

Samsung has released updates for two of its apps available for Windows Phone. RSS Times and Photo Editor have been bumped to 3.0.1.0 and 1.0.0.449 respectively. The main change in RSS Times is the backend system being switched from Google to FeedAce since the former is shutting down its RSS service. 

The Nokia Storage Check app for Windows Phone has gotten a small update to version 1.2.1.2. Unlike the last bump, which added some significant features, this is just some bug fixes.