Category: Windows Phone

A gaming site from France is reporting that the FIFA 15 is coming to Windows Phone platform soon. However EA Mobile has not made an announcement regarding this.

The game is already available for both iOS and Android platforms though. It is free on both and comes with in-app purchases.

Here are the features of FIFA 15:

* Experience authentic football with real players, real teams, and real leagues
* Feel the excitement of every pass, strike, and tackle with new touch controls
* Live every moment of real-world football mastery with EA SPORTS Football Club Match Day
* Listen to commentaries in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish
* Create a squad of international superstars with Ultimate Team
* Upgrade your game to unlock three extra modes: Manager, Tournament, and Kick Off

Compared to FIFA 14, the game offers new touch-optimized gameplay improvements, which can be seen in the video shown below.

We do not have concrete release date but we will keep you posted on it.

• Via EA.com

Microsoft which now owns Nokia is all set to release successor to the Lumia 820, the 830. It will be announced officially within few weeks from now but a few of its alleged photos have already surfaced online.

In fact it includes data that points to its different variants for US as well as for other parts of world.

The Nokia Lumia 830 was spotted on Brazil Anatel certification website.

The Brazil’s Anatel website is similar to what we have in the US. So far the phone looks very interesting chiefly because of two facts – it has a removable battery like low end Lumia phones and second, it has pure view camera optics.

The phone measures 139.4 mm x 70.7 mm x 8.5 mm and is thus very thin. On the top there is a micro USB charging port near to the headphone port.

The Lumia 830 model that we spotted is RM-985 which will change to Lumia 830 once it goes public. Other specifications include 4G LTE, dedicated camera button and capacitive hardware buttons for navigation.

• Via wpcentral

Nokia Lumia 530 review summary

The Nokia Lumia 530 is an excellent entry level phone from Microsoft and it is mighty impressive for what it does and costs. While there are few things the Nokia Lumia 530 could do a lot better but we feel it does a lot for little money.

Pros and cons of Nokia Lumia 530

+ Great value for money
+ Excellent performance
+ Good battery life

– Low built in storage – you must have a micro SD card to make most of it
– No front facing camera
– No 4G LTE model.

Full Review of Nokia Lumia 530 and its specifications

After success of Lumia 520, it appears that Nokia has struck gold with the Lumia 530. The phone is equipped with everything that is required to outsell every single windows phone released till date and other smartphones in the below 100 euro range.

Windows Phone runs amazingly well on low end hardware and it totally flies on the Lumia 530 thanks to the quad core Snapdragon 200 processor. Phones in this range lag as they Android which is a bloated operating system.

It is safe to say that Nokia is back with the Lumia 530 in the budget smartphone game and will strike lightning twice with it.

Nokia Lumia 530 – Power for the people

Display

The 530 comes with a 4 inch display packing the same number pixels as the Lumia 630 but since the display is smaller than 630, PPI is 245 which makes it look very sharp.

In comparison the high 4” iPhone 5S packs 960×540 so 854×480 pixels don’t look bad on a 4 inch screen. However the screen quality is bog standard LCD type and not IPS like the one on iPhone.

Nevertheless it is much better than the phones in its class.

Design and Build Quality

From a 5 meter display you will easily be able to identify 530 as a Lumia. The back cover is removable and Nokia offers them in variety of colors.

It weighs a modest 129 grams and it feels just right in hands.  It measures 119.7 x 62.3 x 11.7mm and feels compact in hands.

Performance and Gaming

The phone comes with a quad core 1.2 GHz Snapdragon 200 processor by Qualcomm which brings almost lag-free experience to the end user.

For many 512MB sound too low but since it runs windows phone OS which is super optimized for such hardware, you will find it quite nippy. In fact you would be able to run a CPU intensive game like Halo on it without any lag. We ran it and were pleased with the results.

In other words you will never feel like you are using the cheapest windows phone in the market.

Battery and storage

It comes with a 1430 battery that gives you a full day of good use. The battery runtimes are better than the Lumia 520 thanks to more optimized OS and processor.

Built-in 4GB Storage could have been a big problem if it did not come with WP8.1 but since WP 8.1 lets you move application and games to micro SD card, you can easily overcome this problem by using a good class 10 card.

Camera and Video quality

We really did not want to discuss the camera quality of a budget phone because we thought it would be unfair.

Let us keep it short and simple – it is disappointing because it has fixed focus and thus the photos do not turn out super crisp. However they do seem to do an “ok” job for Facebook and Twitter.

The 530 is the first windows phone that is incapable of recording 720p videos. That said it can perfectly play them back.

Verdict – Lumia 530 is more capable than you think

Yes you read that right. While the phone is not impressive the storage and camera department, it offers a very compelling package in areas like performance, gaming, expandability and display.

Nokia Lumia 530 Specification

Dimensions : 119.7 x 62.3 x 11.7mm
Weight: 129 grams
Screen size: 4.0” TFT (480 x 854)
Screen Resolution: 480 x 854 display resolution
Pixels Per Inch (PPI) : 245
Processor: 1.2GHz Quad core application processor
RAM: 512MB
On-board Memory: 4GB (microSD support)
Camera: 5MP (rear) 480p@30fps (no front-facing camera)
Operating system: Windows Phone 8.1
Ultrafast / 3G / 4G LTE: Yes/ Yes/ No
Bluetooth / NFC : Yes/ No
Battery capacity: 1430mAh
Colours: Bright Orange, Bright Green, White, Dark Grey
Launch Date: August
Price: £79 / 99 euro

Sony used to be a strong supporter of Windows Mobile and churned out several devices running that platform. But when the platform eventually died and MS released Windows Phone, no phones were announced from Sony.

Today Evleaks is reporting that Sony is working on a new handset called Lue Z and by the picture leaked, it is safe to assume that it runs Windows Phone 8.1 operating system.

No specifications are available at the moment but it is great to see WP platform being adapted by more and more OEMs.

• Via twitter

Nokia has launched its new Lumia 930 smartphone in the market and it offers absolutely high end equipment for the first time in a reasonably compact form. The Lumia 930 has a lot to offer. Nokia has packed everything that is good and expensive.

For almost 480 euros, the customer gets a Windows Phone with five inch large AMOLED display which is very bright – almost like no other Nokia smartphone so far.

It is therefore also easy to read outdoors. Under the hood lies the Snapdragon 800 with its four 2.26 GHz cores and 2 GB of RAM.

For storage you get 32 GB of flash memory, which unfortunately can not be extended.

LTE and Qi wireless charging are also integrated and there is the powerful Pure View camera with 20.7 megapixels and Zeiss optics on the back.

Nokia Corporation will be shutting down Desti on September 3 2014. Desti has already started issuing notifications to its users about about its permanent shut down, following the closure of deal with Nokia.

The Finnish company acquired the personalized travel planning app in May and said that the Desti app will be closed forever after 90 days.

The users using Desti service should save the schedules and share this news with others to access it later after the app shuts down permanently.

However this is a good new for the HERE Maps/Drive users as Nokia will be incorporating Desti’s technology in HERE location search to make it better and more personalized.

Their technology makes use of natural language processing technology and artificial intelligence to offer information to the travellers on the trips base on their choices. So a user will not have to check the hotels, shops and restaurants before planning the holiday.

• Learn more at desti.com

A new graph has been released by Kantar which shows the UK market share of smartphone operating systems over the 10 year period from March 04 – March 14. In the beginning we see Windows Mobile and BlackBerry being the leader until Apple’s iOS comes out in late 2007 and poses itself as big threat to the two dominant operating systems.

In the year 2009, Android operating system enters the picture and squeezes the marketshare of Windows Mobile (which was on its deathbed) and BlackBerry (that was churning out atrocious phones like Curve 8520).

As of this past March, BlackBerry’s marketshare in UK is still higher than Windows Phone and to make things look worse, the graph shows only consumer data and not enterprise market which BlackBerry’s main market.

Source: Kantar

It shall, however be noted that if you notice the last 10 percent of the graph, the BB’s share is shrinking as more and more consumers become aware of the excellent windows phone platform.

Micromax has launched two dual SIM windows phones W092 and W121 both of which have been rumored from quite long time. First is the Micromax Canvas Win W092 which comes with a 4 inch display and Snapdragon 200 quad core processor. RAM is 1GB that will ensure that you get access to all windows phone store applications.

On the back there is a 5MP camera and there is a VGA webcam on the front. For storage there is 8GB of flash storage that is expandable via micro SD card slot. This phone will compete with the Lumia 520 and 525 that are being sold for INR 6000-8000 now.

W121 on the other hand is bit more expensive but that gets you a bigger 5 inch display with HD resolution and 8MP camera.

However what worries us the most is the atrocious build quality that Micromax is so infamous for. People often complain about their handsets failing in less than 3 months. So the support is horrendous and so is its built quality.

Nokia X and XL come with 512MB and 768MB RAM respectively and that is not a lot of memory for running big apps. Fortunately there is a way to free around 300MB RAM. You can do this by using a script called TweakDrypt which decreases memory usage. This is what it does:

{} Less RAM usage through zipalign
{} Graphics Enhancement
{} Overall Better Performance
{} Less lags through LMK Tweak and Various VM
Tweaks
{} Faster SDCARD Read/Write Speed
{} CWM / TWRP Flashable
{} Increase touchscreen sensitivity
{} System cleaner script for regular cleaning of system
{} better battery performance
{} Ad blocking
{} Entropy (optional)
{} GPS optimization script
{} BUILD.prop tweaks (optional)
{} Kernal tweaks
{} Sqlite optimization

Here are its installation instructions:

1. Delete all others ram scripts you have installed in "/system/etc/init.d"
2. Download the flash able zip.
3. Reboot into recovery mode.
4. Install the ZIP file
5. Reboot your phone when finished installation
6. Done

This script has an uninstaller script with it. For that open Terminal emulator
Type ‘su’ [enter]
Type ‘uninstall’ [enter]
Reboot for the clean uninstall

Micromax to launch its first Windows Phone handset on June 16 in India if the words of the people associated with the country are to be believed. The company has also sent out invitations that suggest they will be launching a Canvas branded phone on Monday.

Microsoft has also made the WP platform free for phones to encourage more and more companies to make windows phone.

No price or specifications have been released about this upcoming phone.

On another note, Karbonn and Lava are also planning to launch their own Windows Phone handsets in coming months.