exclusive

There has been much speculation and angst about the availability of the Lumia 920 here in the UK due to EE having an exclusivity deal on the hero Windows Phone 8 device.

Looks like the folks over at Clove are about to step in and provide the Lumia 920 in glossy white for your SIM-free and unlocked buying pleasure. That is, if you have £520.00 laying around to invest in one..

Today sees the release of the Nokia exclusive app Angry Birds Roost. Bird and Pig lovers everywhere can now rejoice! We first saw signs of this back in Sept which we wrote about.

Before you get too excited, this isn’t a game, merely a one stop shop for all things Rovio and Angry Birds.

AT&T is gearing up to launch the Nokia Lumia 920 very soon—in fact we expect an announcement on pricing and availability sometime on Sunday.

Word is that AT&T reps are also in the midst of training with the device, becoming familiar with its main features and selling points. Part of that training is being done with these videos that demonstrate the highlights of the Lumia 920.

With yesterday’s announcement of the Nokia Lumia 820 and 920 coming to AT&T, the word that caught our eye and yours was “exclusive”. Even Rogers is now in on the "exclusive" action. The term was applied to both Lumia devices, although as pointed out in our forums, the 820’s exclusiveness to AT&T was dropped from Nokia’s site later in the day. 

The tech’o’sphere has responded quite negatively to the news if only because the Lumia 920 has built up such demand that many people are cheering for its success. That success though depends on how many people can actually buy it, which in turn translates into carrier availability. If the Lumia 920 is only available on 1 of 4 major US carriers, well that’s certainly less people than had it been on two or three carriers. A pretty obvious impact.

Will only AT&T have the 920 in the US?

In today’s press release from AT&T making the Nokia Lumia 820 and 920 official, the word “exclusive” unfortunately was tossed in to the mix raising some red flags.

When addressing the Lumia 920 specifically it was used in this context:

“Exclusive to our customers and featuring unique innovations…the Lumia 920 will be one of the hottest phones for the holidays,”

To us that sounds like AT&T has managed to make a deal with Nokia to be the only carrier offering the flagship phone. While the Lumia 820 has been expected to go to T-Mobile and even Verizon, the 920 was always a toss up. Many people have been hoping big Red would finally get a top of the line Nokia Windows Phone. In fact, an earlier report from PhoneArena strongly suggested that to be the case.

The popular VOIP service Viber has been a long time in the making for Windows Phone. The fist app was merely a preview beta that only had direct messaging but no voice capability. Then a few weeks ago we got word that the ‘HD’ version with full VOIP capability was headed to Nokia Lumia phones.

During that time though, a lot has happened including a very long delay, much to the surprise of the developer who had anticipated a quick releases. Due to Microsoft’s quirky (and backlogged) app submission process, Viber got lost in the shuffle and had to have some pushing before the Store could give birth.

It looks like Nokia has hit the publish button on yet-another-exclusive app, this time it’s the Bloomberg Hub, bringing the latest in financial news and videos right to your phone.

Nokia gave a few screenshots of the app in question along with details of the features that it contains.  Some of those are..

Reading news and articles on the go is a huge benefit to having a Windows Phone. These days there are a bewildering array of website specific apps, RSS readers, read it later clients and even tailored magazine apps to help sift through and read it all.

When mobile, being able to quickly check and access posts, articles and features from all your favourite websites can be tricky. One of the popular ways to pull all this content into one stream is by using the Google Reader service. NewsSpot is a slick Google Reader client for our Windows Phone that is due to receive an update towards the end of September that will bring some nice new features to the app. We had a chance to check out the latest beta of this popular client.