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Windows Phone Central's Roundup of Hurricane Apps

We've touched on Windows Phone apps to help everyone stay up on Hurricanes at the start of Hurricane Season back in May. With Tropical Storm Isaac brewing in the Caribbean we thought it would be a good time to revisit the Hurricane app roundup.

These Windows Phone apps keep you informed of the tropical systems as they develop into hurricanes, monitor the storms track, help you weather out the storm, and monitor any systems that may follow Isaac.  So far this season tropical activity has been light and hopefully it will continue to be quiet once Isaac passes.

Flat or curved for the Phi--Why not both?

Although details are not confirmed and scarce at this point, many in our audience are asking and debating if the new Lumia phone headed to AT&T, codenamed ‘Phi’ has a curved screen or not.

For some, the Lumia 800’s curved glass was the pinnacle of design and elegance. Indeed, it does feel exceptionally nice in the hand both for holding and swiping across the screen. When the Lumia 900 forgo this detail, some were disappointed as the 900 instead has a completely flat screen with a raised edge.

What many in our audience may not know is that Nokia actually gave an official reason for this design change on the 900 during a Q&A sessions on their blog...

As expected, the Xbox Live for Windows Phone game Shoot 1UP landed in the Marketplace this morning. The vertically scrolling shoot-em up game from Mommy's Best Games and Microsoft Studios was first spotted at E3 and made a nice first impression.

Shoot 1UP's claim to fame is that unlike other shoot-em up games where you battle the enemy with one ship, Shoot 1UP allows players to build up groups of ships to take on the enemy at the same time. Instead of earning extra lives, you earn extra ships.

Good night, sweet prince: HTC Arrrive 2011-2012

We reported a few weeks ago that Sprint threw down the flag on the venerable HTC Arrive, giving the device end-of-life (EOL) status.  Now tonight, we can sadly report that Sprint has all but wiped the device from its online site, making the Arrive officially a has-been. Store availability is expected to be very limited with only replacement devices available for order.

Launched in March 2011 the Arrive was Sprint’s only Windows Phone offered on the CDMA network and the only other Windows Phone with a horizontal physical keyboard (the other being the LG Quantum), carving itself a nice little niche for itself. Though slightly bulky with an underwhelming LCD screen (as was common with Gen 1 devices), the phone has a loyal following and some of the highest satisfaction ratings from customers...

The Nokia PureView 808

It’s a big question whether or not Nokia’s upcoming lineup will feature any PureView technology in it. While it’s nice to dream of a 41MP camera alongside Windows Phone 8, we’re holding down our excitement until we learn more because so far we have seen little to make us believe otherwise.

Now, the Nokia team (via Twitter) have teased users with the following exchange between themselves and Philip G. He was asking and hoping for some PureView love in the next Lumia series form Nokia. Nokia replied with the following:

“Just keep your eyes and ears open in the next coming weeks....”

That certainly seems like a reference to the joint Microsoft announcement that Nokia is hosting in a few weeks here in New York.  From our own sources, we’ve been leaning towards no PureView device this time but instead slightly further down the road, as Nokia plans to release numerous Windows Phones over the next year.

With Nokia’s tweet though, we could be looking at something sooner. But the question for us is What is PureView exactly?

We knew a while back about the proposed Odyssey and Marco handsets from Samsung. Well it looks like some more detailed specs and pricing has emerged. With Windows Phone 8 only a whisper away from being launched it seems as if the leaks just keeps on coming.

Samsung are one of Microsoft’s launch partners and it looks like we can expect some impressive hardware for this round of devices. One device is reported to have a 4” screen and the other a whopping 4.8” HD AMOLED display.. Rumour caution is advised in lieu of an official announcement.

Howdy folks, your grouchy but occasionally lovable editor here for our new segment, appropriately titled From the Editor’s Desk. (Truth be told, it’s more of a couch-n-laptop kind of setup rather than a desk, because that’s how I roll).

Here at Mobile Nations, all the site editors are doing these posts on Sundays as a way to recap the week’s news, our opinions on things and anything coming up. I encourage you to check out iMore, Android Central and CrackBerry for their often hilarious insight. As usual, I’m a bit behind them but I’m slowly catching up.

This past week we had an odd combo of August-slowness combined with breaking leaks of new Nokia phones. There was also that Metro-controversy, which turned out to be nothing and of course Nokia and Microsoft announcing that they’re going steady…err...having a press conference.

We had a chance to sit down and chat with Thom Brenner, Vice President of Location and Commerce for Nokia and Pino Bonetti who writes about location on the Nokia Conversations blog. We wanted to hear what Nokia are planning for the future with its location services, which the company has touted as its main focus and differentiator for Windows Phone.

Being number one in location and mapping is not anything new to Nokia as they have been at this game for many years, ever since they purchased NAVTEQ back in 2007 for a reported $8.1B. Their services power products from Microsoft, Yahoo, Flickr and four out of five cars on the road today use Nokia mapping technology. Nokia have announced their intention to be the “where” company, making location services the very heart of what they do.

Mapping and location are set to get a big boost from this drive, as Windows Phone users we will be pole position to see some of those fantastic innovations.

How close are we to a Nokia Windows Phone 8 device?

If there is one thing we can say about Nokia and Microsoft lately is that both companies have faith in their products. Whatever the sales or marketshare figures show, the Windows Phone OS and Nokia hardware are a brilliant combo.

So we’re relishing the words by Chris Webber, Nokia’s Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing, who Tweeted this morning a nice little message to rival Samsung:

“Samsung take note, next generation Lumia coming soon.”

It is a bit unusual for companies to directly call each other out so publicly, which is why this probably has garnered so much attention. If we wanted to deconstruct that tweet a bit we could highlight the usage of “note” by Weber as a hint to Nokia’s upcoming Windows Phone 8 plans. Samsung has quite successfully launched and sold a few GALAXY Notes in recent months (see our hands on when we compared it to the HTC Titan).