Nokia Drive+ now available for non-Nokia Windows Phone 8 devices in US, UK and Canada

One of the key differentiators for Nokia's Windows Phone devices, the company's navigation app, is now available to all Windows Phone 8 users in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. The app, which is called Nokia Drive+, is still in Beta and is available for free on the Windows Phone Store.
This essentially means that users who own Windows Phone 8 devices made by HTC (Samsung's devices have still not gone on sale), will be able to experience features like full turn-by-turn voice-guided navigation, offline maps, speed limit warnings, and day and night modes, which were till now, only available on Nokia's Windows Phone devices.
It's worth noting that Nokia had announced that it would make Nokia Drive available to other Windows Phone 8 partners in 110 countries, coinciding with the announcement of the Windows Phone 8 platform, in June 2012. Nokia's location assets are one of the richest, with map data for nearly 200 countries. So Microsoft's strategic partnership with Nokia which aims at strengthening the Windows Phone ecosystem is finally bearing fruit. We are looking forward to Nokia releasing the app in other markets, including India, soon.

iPhone most popular in US, while Android popular worldwide in Q4 2012: Report

Apple's iPhone remained the most popular smartphone among US buyers in the closing months of 2012 while Android handsets were on top worldwide, Kantar Worldpanel ComTech reported on Tuesday.
"At the end of 2012, the global (operating system) picture shows Android on top, but clearly the rate of growth it experienced over the past year is beginning to slow as easy wins from first-time smartphone buyers begin to reduce," said Kantar global consumer insight director Dominic Sunnebo.
Apple iPhones accounted for 51.2 percent of smartphone sales in the United States during the 12-week period ending December 23rd of last year, according to Kantar.
Smartphones powered by Google-backed Android software made up slightly more than 44 percent of sales while handsets based on Microsoft's Windows operating system were a distant third-place with 2.6 percent, the report indicated.
Android smartphones continued to be best sellers in major markets including Britain, China, Spain, Australia, and Germany while iPhones were favored in Japan as well as the United States, according to Kantor.
Windows smartphones appeared to be catching on in Europe, with its shares of sales in Britain and Italy climbing to 5.9 and 13.9 percent respectively, the reported indicated.
"Windows Phone is now starting to gain respectable shares in a number of key European countries," Sunnebo said.
"However, its performance in the Chinese and US markets remains underwhelming; these remain key challenges for Microsoft to overcome during 2013."

Google unblocks Maps on Windows Phone

Various users have reported that they are now able to access Google Maps as usual on Windows Phone, indicating that Google has reversed the block it had put in place earlier.

Last Friday, Windows Phone users had reported that while trying to access the Web-based version of Google Maps, they were being redirected to google.com on their phones.

Though initially, the search giant remained quiet about the problem, it later issued a statement to The Next Web offering an explanation.

"The mobile web version of Google Maps is optimised for WebKit browsers such as Chrome and Safari. However, since Internet Explorer is not a WebKit browser, Windows Phone devices are not able to access Google Maps for the mobile web."

This was followed by a statement from Microsoft falsifying Google's explanation. In its defence, Microsoft argued that the company uses the same rendering engine in the version of Internet Explorer used in Windows Phone 8 as the one in Windows 8.  The latter has no trouble accessing Google Maps.

However, people could use the desktop version of Google Maps just fine by changing the user agent on the Windows Phone simulator to something that doesn't say Windows Phone or identifies itself as Internet Explorer for Windows Phone. To be more specific, misspelling "Windows Phone" makes Google Maps work, which is interesting.

Later, Google admitted that it had chosen to block access to Maps from Windows phone for other reasons, mainly that it didn't think that Internet Explorer was good enough. It also mentioned that Mozilla's Firefox mobile browser "did offer a somewhat better user experience" and so the company chose not to redirect those users.

As far as the epic battle between Microsoft and Google is concerned, this is a continuation of Google's war on Microsoft. It recently announced plans to drop Exchange ActiveSync support for Gmail, which means Windows Phone users will not be able to use Gmail on their phones.

In more recent events, the software giant stepped up its criticism of Google on antitrust grounds, claiming the Internet giant refuses to allow Windows Phone users "proper access" to the YouTube video service.

Nokia to build Android-powered phones? Blame the translator!

The Internet was buzzing Monday after Nokia CEO's alleged remarks about being open to the possibility of building Android-powered phones.
Nokia CEO Stephen Elop gave an interview to a French website and not long after the following translation started doing the rounds:

In the current ecosystem wars we are using Windows Phone as our weapon. But we are always thinking about what's coming next, what will be the role of HTML 5, Android... HTML5 could make the platform itself-being Android, Windows Phone or any other-irrelevant in the future, but it's still too soon to tell. Today we are committed and satisfied with Microsoft, but anything is possible.

Needless to say, the Interwebs were on fire, excited that Android-powered phones from Nokia, once everybody's darling, were even a possibility. The craziness went on for quite a while, until Nokia clarified that the translation floating around wasn't an accurate one and issued the 'correct' translation.

So, the way I think about it is, in the current war on ecosystems, we are fighting with Windows Phone. That's what we're doing. Now, what we're always doing is asking, how does that evolve? What's next? What role does HTML5 play? What role does Android or other things play in the future? We're looking further into the future, but it terms of what we're bringing to market, and what we're immediately focused on, we're focused on Windows Phone.

Needless to say, Nokia is committed to the Windows Phone platform. File this one as another non-news that caught on like wildfire.

sam4sammy :: Windows Phone 7.8 coming soon to Nokia Lumia 510, 610, 710, 800, 900

There's good news for owners of Nokia Lumia phones with Windows Phone 7.5. According to a report over at Nokia Power User (NPU), the update is now available at NaviFirm, indicating it should become officially soon enough.

Great news for those waiting for WP7.8 update for their Lumia 510, 610, 710, 800 and 900. The Firmware build 8858 appears now at NaviFirm for all the above devices and it is available for most of the European countries and APAC variants. So, pretty strong indication of near future roll out of the update for most of the devices.

If you are adventurous, you can download the update via NaviFirm, but we strongly recommend holding out until Nokia rolls out the update officially.
Windows Phone 7.8 is Microsoft's olive branch to existing Lumia users, having announced that they will not be eligible to receive the feature-rich Window Phone 8 update.
Microsoft finally shared some Windows Phone 7.8 details recently. The update will add new features like a new start screen UI with resizable live tiles, as found in Windows Phone 8. The update brings Windows Phone 8 branding to existing Lumia devices on the splash screen and icons for Games, Office and Windows Phone Store.
Windows Phone 7.8 doubles the number of theme and accent colours to 20 and adds other new lock screen features: the option to automatically display the Bing Picture of the Day plus the 'A1B2C3' PIN/password challenge to prevent accidental device wipes on phones connected to Exchange accounts.

Microsoft's #DroidRage Twitter campaign backfires, leads to #WindowsRage

Microsoft Windows Phone team kicked off a #DroidRage campaign on Twitter earlier this week encouraging users to share their stories related to malware on their Android smartphones. In return, Microsoft promised "get-well presents" to the best/ worst stories.

Windows Phone

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@windowsphone

Do you have an Android malware horror story? Reply with#DroidRage with your best/worst story and we may have a get-well present for you.

5 Dec 12

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While the campaign received some genuine responses, it wasn't long before it backfired on Microsoft, as people started sharing their horror stories related to Windows Phone, tagging them with #WindowsRage. Here are a couple:

Mohammad Tarakiyee@Tarakiyee

I once thought about writing malware for a @windowsphonebut then I thought, aren't they suffering enough?#DroidRage #WindowsRage

5 Dec 12

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Ollie Reardon@ojdon

You'll never get Malware from our Windows Store. You'll never find any third-party support either! #WindowsRage

6 Dec 12

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This is not the first time Microsoft has targeted Google, though this is likely the first time things have gone wrong so spectacularly for Redmond. Microsoft held the #DroidRage campaign last year as well, with not-so-embarrassing results.


More recently, Microsoft attacked Google in a series of TV ads, describing the dominant search engine as a lousy holiday shopping guide in its latest attempt to divert more traffic to its Bing search engine. To punctuate its point, Microsoft warned consumers that they risk getting "scroogled" if they rely on Google's shopping search service.

Earlier, Microsoft launched a campaign called "Bing It On", trying to show web users the quality of its Bing search engine is better than Google's. The software company unveiled the site "bingiton.com" where users input five search queries and the unbranded search results of Bing and Google were shown in two columns. For each query, users were asked to choose a winner (or a draw) and the test showed which search engine come on top in the end.

With agency inputs