Tag / HTC

by Henry Hunt

What we’re looking forward to in 2012

2011 is nearly over and we can all agree that it has been pretty good for tech. Nokia’s credibility returned and people began to talk to their phones. We all know, however, that 2012 can be epic. Here is what we want from the year ahead.

Windows 8

We know it’s coming in 2012 with a beta as early as January. I love the Metro UI on my phone and I am looking forward to seeing it on both tablets and computers, and not to forget Windows Phone 8 that is rumoured to be coming in the third quarter of next year.

Nokia’s Windows 8 tablet

Following straight on from Windows 8 comes the Nokia tablet that Paul Ansellem, GM of Nokia France, assured us would be available by June. Due to the recent partnership between Nokia and Microsoft, the ‘Lumia Tab’ would likely be the first Windows 8 tablet so this inadvertent announcement could give us information as to the release date of Redmond’s next OS. Plus, if it looks anything like an enlarged Lumia 800 as My Nokia Blog’s mockup suggested, the DX offices will be full of productive happy bunnies.

Nokia Lumia 900

Speaking with a French paper, Ansellem said that the fantastic Lumia 800 was like the BMW 5 series. Great, but a 7 series is better. Numerous leaks have suggested that it will be an 800 with a larger screen, the Lumia 900. The 800 is a great phone but in my opinion a 4.3 inch device with a high resolution and HSPA+ is what the market needs. I don’t give a damn about LTE because I hate Ofcom.

The inevitable rise of Windows Phone 7

With the number of apps on the Marketplace recently having broken the 50,000 barrier, it’s no surprise that our favourite OS Windows Phone 7 is growing. Unfortunately it is not yet at the same level as iOS or Android, but hopefully in the next 12 months Microsoft will catch up to their competitors and Nokia will produce some awesome handsets and WP will eat it’s way into the market.

Apple without Steve

With Steve Jobs having passed on earlier in the year, we still are not sure as to how Apple are going to cope without him. Even though Steve will have planned ahead before his passing, Tim Cook is having to fill a big gap that was left by the father of the modern computer.

RIM

I am sure that everyone is looking forward to the final nail in RIM’s airtight coffin which is most likely going to come in the coming year. So yeah. Death to RIM.

webOS goes open source

Since Leo Apotheker won the idiot of the year award, people have been wondering whether webOS was dead or not after HP announced they were discontinuing its use in their products. However at the beginning of  December, it was announced that HP would be making it open source, in the coming year we are looking forward to manufacturers creating webOS devices.

HTC going for quality over quantity

Apparently HTC are going to completely change their marketing philosophy and go for quality over quantity. Hopefully in the next year we will see something good come from the Taiwanese company instead of such abominations as the HTC Sensation, Sensation XE and Sensation XL. DEATH TO SENSE.

That is all.

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

webOS lives!

HP have announced that webOS will live on as an open source platform, much to the dismay of ousted idiot of a CEO Leo Apotheker. His replacement Meg Whitman announced the news last night, also confirming that hardware manufacture from HP will not be resuming but the OS will be developed by both HP and the community for OEMs that may want it. Rumours have said that HTC and RIM are among the interested parties and we will report on any news regarding this as we get it.

YEAH!

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

The Poll: What is the best smartphone at the moment?

by Henry Hunt

Windows Phone 7.5 Mango review

First things first, this review will be from the point of view of a Microsoft enthusiast and will largely include my opinions and hatred of Android that all writers on this website share.

I’ve had a Windows Phone for around a year now and I love it. Last year for Christmas I received my HTC HD7 and it was the best thing I’d ever been given. The UI amazed me, the fact that it had Microsoft Office was so cool that I could hardly put it into words. I even wrote this epic review on the 4.3 inch The best bit of all was that it connected to my Xbox Live account and my games got me achievements. However after about a week usage I began to notice a few major flaws in the first version of WP7.

However it was announced within a month or two that NoDo, the first big update to be announced for my new phone, was to be released in March and that Angry Birds (the main reason that I had wanted a smartphone) was to finally be on Xbox Live. I was very excited as all of the things that made WP7 inferior to Android and iOS were going to be fixed. In reality all we received was copy and paste. And Angry Birds was not released for another four or five months.

After this series of let downs when Mango was announced I was not expecting great things but I looked on the WP7 website and liked what I saw. Groups seemed like a good idea. And the social network integration looked like something that I would use. On the October 15th I finally downloaded Mango. It was one of the best things I’ve ever done. Read on past the break to find out why.

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