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In a very late breaking story, the site WinP.cn is reporting that a new ad from China Mobile shows the soon-to-be-announced Huawei Ascend W2 in video. The image appears to match up with those shown by @evleaks

The ad itself is not for the W2 itself, as numerous other Samsung phones are shown too. Instead, this appears to be an ad for the TD-SCDMA based China Mobile, which then uses several smartphones to bolster its image as leading network provider.

We’re only three weeks away from Nokia’s Zoom Reinvented event in New York City. It takes place July 11 and it’s there we suspect the Fins to take the wraps off of the Nokia Lumia “EOS”. Over the past few weeks we’ve seen the upcoming device in a variety of different states – smartphone housing, full images of the device, FCC filings and more. When it comes to the FCC filing the device was going under the name Nokia RM-877. Now there’s another device hanging out with the FCC – the Nokia RM-875.

Enjoy Windows 8 but feel like you could use some more apps? Chief Evangelist for Windows, Steve Guggenheimer has you covered. He has taken the opportunity to highlight a handful of apps that are heading for Windows 8. We're closely approaching this year's Build conference (which we're attending), but that hasn't stopped Redmond from building momentum in the desktop app store.

Following up on the Huawei news from yesterday, the Wall Street Journal is now reporting that Microsoft and Nokia were in advanced discussions about a Redmond purchase of the Finnish phone maker, but the talks have failed to materialize an agreement.

Citing “people familiar with the matter” the online paper notes that discussions eventually broke down due to “the price and Nokia's own strategic predicament”.

Deliberations were evidently held in London as recently as this month, but due to the talks faltering, they likely won’t be revived anytime soon. The WSJ also adds that both companies were close to an oral agreement with Microsoft purchasing the device division of Nokia, using some of Redmond’s reported $66 billion held in off-shore businesses. That method would have let Microsoft avoid a hefty tax penalty for purchasing the massive phone maker.

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.