microsoft

Microsoft has just announced another //BUILD/ conference for developers. The event will take place sooner than expected and will be held in a new location. We cannot wait for summer.

Good news for Chinese HTC 8S owners: there's a firmware update over the air. Bad news: the update may just kill your phone. On March 21st, owners of HTC 8S in China started to get a firmware update, and a fair portion of them were permanently stuck on the start up screen after the installation and reboot. HTC and Microsoft are trying to figure out what exactly is wrong with the firmware. Meanwhile the OTA update has been suspended.

Microsoft's Windows Phone Next App Star competition is heating up and 64 finalists have been selected for the public voting phase. If you're not up to speed, it's a contest for Windows Phone apps to be voted on by the public for $60,000 worth of prizes. Through head-to-head style voting, the grand winner will pocket the opportunity to have his (or her) app featured in a Windows Phone prime-time TV advertisement spot in the US.

There's nothing worse for developers than updating their Windows Phone apps to address bugs and for the release to get lost wondering around the vast plains of the Microsoft Dev Center. Our own Jay Bennett has experienced an issue with the latest version of the Windows Phone Central app finding itself stuck in limbo (or rather "Certification Passed" and "Not Submitted" stages of approval).

Microsoft has since acknowledged the issue and has stated engineers are looking into reports.

Many in our audience here know our opinion on Samsung—they lead the way with the Focus back when Windows Phone 7 was launched and up until recently, appeared to be a major competitor on the platform.  But with Windows Phone 8 and their ATIV S and Odyssey phones (with on the runt of the litter getting US carrier support), we’re just going to say: Their phones and effort to promote the platform look half-assed.

That’s not to say they aren’t good devices, indeed the ATIV S has quite a few things going for it and we would actually have no problem recommending it. But between the lack of advertising, reported price drops and even the “late to the show” arrival of their flagship phone, one gets the impression that Samsung is not really into Microsoft any more. (Samsung blames the carriers).

A rather interesting discovery was made over at WindowsPhoneApps.es. Should you make use of the search functionality in Nokia App Highlights for Windows Phone, you'll be able to check out apps that are not yet available on the official store. This is a pretty revealing find that alerts everyone to what consumers can potentially expect to see in the future.

The first publishers to be searched were of course Nokia and Microsoft, both populating the results page with numerous apps that have yet to hit the Windows Phone Store. But if you've yet to try this out, you might be out of luck. The loophole has since been fixed. Luckily, we managed to take some shots before our access was slashed.

Ever since Microsoft has been a bit more candid about some of the problems with the 7.8 update, specifically Tiles that either don’t update or suck down too much data, there have been reports of Microsoft halting the update in some countries. Germany has been pretty much confirmed at this point as throwing the brakes and now Russia is evidently joining the crowd.

The Windows Phone 8 Company Portal App does exactly what it says on the tin. The app enables Windows Phone 8 hardware that are managed by Microsoft System Center 2012 and Windows Intune to view, download and install business applications. Administrators are in control of the installation and signing of the app, which can then be made available to the management infrastructure to enable device enrolment.

Shh. Can you hear that? Yup, that's the sound of a pin dropping when it comes to Microsoft shouting out and marketing Windows Phone. The company had a rather elusive presence at CES earlier this year, as well as the recent Mobile World Congress. If you ask anyone, "Who's powering Windows Phone marketing?" I bet the majority (if not everyone) will answer, "Nokia." So what's up with Microsoft?