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Dhoom 3 game exclusively arrives on Windows Phone 8

Another day, another exclusive game/app for Windows Phone in India. Just after Krrish3, we now have Dhoom 3, another highly awaited multi starrer sequel in Bollywood this year, is getting its own game. Publishing games for movies is kind of a new marketing avenue for the respective movie producers and Yash Raj Films, Dhoom 3’s maker acknowledges this, by partnering with game dev 99Games Online Private Limited to release the Dhoom 3 game. It is an endless 3D moto racing game, which follows the popular formula of Temple Run and Subway Surfers with perks, power ups and feels like a good fit in this genre. You play Aamir Khan, whose bike you maneuver, who is being chased by Abhishek Bachchan and Uday Chopra in two other bikes, and thus begins the endless chase to fight your boredom.

You can download the game from the Windows Phone Store here. And here’s a trailer for the game, it’s CG and does not represent actual gameplay –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0zuM-sWROs

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Nokia Lumia 1520 launching in the UK next week?

The first Windows Phone phablet, the Nokia Lumia 1520, could launch in the UK this month, less than two weeks after its announcement. According to Carphone Warehouse’s Coming Soon page, the UK retailer will launch the Full HD Lumia 1520 by the end of October and if accurate, this could be the first time Nokia has bought a handset to market within a fortnight of announcing it.

The Lumia 1520 is the first Windows Phone device to feature a 6 inch screen, Full HD resolution and a superfast quad-core processor. The 6 inch 1080p display offers 367 pixels per inch and the 2.2GHz quad-core processor is accompanied by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chipset and Adreno 330 GPU. The Lumia 1520 comes with Nokia’s imaging prowess as the 20MP camera offers ZEISS Optics, PureView oversampling technology, Optical Image Stabilisation and a dual-LED flash. Continue reading “Nokia Lumia 1520 launching in the UK next week?”

Nokia Protective Cover CP-623 announced for Lumia 1520

Alongside the Lumia 1520, Nokia also showed off a new protective cover accessory for the giant sized handset. The flip cover style accessory will double up as a stand. The protective cover is similar to the smart cover seen on the iPad and similar accessories have been seen for the BlackBerry Z10 as well. Continue reading “Nokia Protective Cover CP-623 announced for Lumia 1520”

Nokia Lumia 1320 render leaks ahead of Nokia World

While there’s just a few hours left for Nokia World to kick off, we’ve got our first glimpse of the Nokia Lumia 1320. This device will be a lower end companion to the Lumia 1520. The device will still have a large display but is expected to drop the resolution to 720p. The handset runs the latest release of Windows Phone 8 ie GDR3 and supports the three column layout from GDR3 which reaffirms that this is a restriction based on screen size and not resolution. Continue reading “Nokia Lumia 1320 render leaks ahead of Nokia World”

Nokia Glance Background beta brings Sleeping Screen personalization to Windows Phone

We all have, at one point in time, used a Symbian phone. Some of us have even used Symbian^3 phones, which had some unique Nokia software on them. One of those was the Sleeping screen beta that added glance-able notifications and nifty personalization options on a standby screen that is usually devoid of anything useful. Nokia had launched a similar thing for Windows Phone earlier with the Amber update, called the Glance screen, but it lacked and still lacks some of the functionality that came with Sleeping screen. In an effort to bring this unique feature on par with what Symbian had, the company has released a new Glance Background app through its beta channel. The app lets you choose your own wallpaper for the idle glance screen of your Windows Phone. Note that the 520 and the 625 are the only two devices that do not support this feature, the rest of the Lumia Windows Phone 8 devices do, and it works really well.

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Nokia Lumia 1520 leaks in red, expected to launch at Nokia World

We’ve seen more than our fair share of leaks for the Lumia 1520. Today’s leak courtesy of @evleaks gives us a glimpse of the red variant of the upcoming handset. The phone will mark a new high for Nokia and will bring the much wanted top of the line specs to the Windows Phone platform.

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Nokia Lumia 1020 to launch in India on 26th September

Nokia’s long awaited Lumia 1020 is finally coming to India. The brand has started sending out invites for the launch event to be held on 26th September. Continue reading “Nokia Lumia 1020 to launch in India on 26th September”

Windows Phone retains the position as India’s second largest smartphone OS with 5.4% marketshare

It’s been almost an year since Windows Phone 8 launched, but the growth has seen a spike only recently, with the Nokia Lumia 520 becoming the most popular Windows Phone, not just in India, but the world. India has definitely been a tough market to crack for anything other than Android. Even with the huge marketing and retail push by Nokia, the most trusted brand in India for quite a number of years, Windows Phone is just at 5.4% of the whole Smartphone market. With iOS and BlackBerry contributed even lesser, Android rules the market with more than 84% marketshare at least.

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Why the Microsoft – Nokia acquisition happened

Nokia and Microsoft just ended their joint press conference, in an effort to explain the acquisition the companies announced earlier today. As with any major announcement, especially with a brand like Nokia which invokes a lot of emotion, the reactions were predictably…. emotional. Risto Siilasma probably said it best, at the joint Nokia press conference in Finland – The acquisition is “Rationally perfect, emotionally complicated.” which we wholeheartedly agree with. But what drove the companies towards this deal? Why did Microsoft buy Nokia? What’s in it for both the companies? We try to explain with two points of views, read on.

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Microsoft and Nokia, what does it mean?

By now, you’ve likely read about Nokia’s Devices and Services division being acquired in a deal by Microsoft. You’ve also likely read about the movement of CEO Stephen Elop amongst others back to Redmond and Microsoft. What has been less clear is the fallout likely to come from this deal as well as the reasoning behind this acquisition.

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Nokia Lumia 625 Review

Having placed all its bets on Windows Phone and its Lumia range of devices, Nokia has been consistently introducing compelling hardware at prices that are all over the spectrum. Following the recent trend of extra large devices, Nokia Lumia 625 employs a large screen with mid range specifications at a fairly appealing price point. Will that be sufficient to fend off competition from spec monster Android devices ? Read on to find out our opinion. Continue reading “Nokia Lumia 625 Review”

Nokia Lumia 1520 with 6 inch 1080p display appears in leaked image

Nokia’s intentions to introduce a large screen device are fairly obvious by now. It has been long rumored that the Finnish smartphone company is working on a phablet class device that would bring a large 6 inch screen to Nokia’s Lumia hardware. The image leaked earlier today corroborates all that we know about the device. Placed next to the Lumia 1020, the handset appears positively gargantuan.

With the screen switched on, we also seem to be getting our first look at the upcoming GDR3 update that would bring support for 1080p screens, faster processors. To make use of all that screen real estate, Windows Phone will now allow you to place a double wide tile next to a medium sized tile. Additionally, a third row of tiles can be placed on the homescreen. The leaked image closely resembles an image that had earlier this year that claimed to depict the front panel for the upcoming device. Additionally, the engraved proto.nokia.com text is true for all Nokia prototype devices. Continue reading “Nokia Lumia 1520 with 6 inch 1080p display appears in leaked image”

There Are Six Major Problems with Windows Phone, and Apps Isn’t One of Them

I keep running into this same sentence, over and over again “Windows Phone lacks apps”. Every single review of a Lumia for example ends with the same foregone conclusion: “it’s a great phone but there are no apps”. I usually shake my head at this statement, but the recent talks about Nokia blaming Microsoft and the lack of apps have me worried.

If anyone — at Nokia, or elsewhere — thinks that this is the culprit behind Windows Phone’s failure to gain market traction, then they’re clearly disillusioned. It’s not as if the release of Instagram will be the magical panacea to the platform’s issues.

While the app problem is partly true, it is in no way, shape or form, the sole reason why Windows Phone isn’t gaining traction. As a matter of fact, you will likely find 80-90% of the same or equivalent apps that you are used to on Android or iOS, and the community is very active — and creative — in trying to fill the remaining gap, so the app problem is only minor, if anything.

Windows Phone’s issues run way deeper than that. The apps are a symptom of the problem, an outward expression of it, if you will, but they are not the underlying cause. And while I don’t claim to be an expert on mobile phone markets and strategies, there are six problems I can see with Windows Phone that I will explain below.

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Google extends Windows Phone calendar and contact syncing deadline to December 31st

There was huge uproar after Google announced its plans to drop EAS support for all non-corporate GMail accounts, mainly because that affected Windows Phone, which has no in-built support for the new CardDAV and CalDAV technologies. Hence Microsoft and Google decided to extend the support for Windows Phone devices until July 31st, yesterday, a date from which devices without the GDR2 update would have stopped supporting syncing to Google servers. Thankfully, the companies have extended the date yet again, to December 31st, since most devices haven’t got the update yet.

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Nokia Lumia 1020 with 41MP camera, OIS, Xenon flash announced

At an event in New York, Nokia has just announced the long awaited Lumia 1020. The phone combines the stunning 41MP sensor seen first on the PureView 808 with the Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) system of the Lumia 920 to create an imaging powerhouse. An improvement over the 808’s sensor is the back side illumination technology built in.The phone saves both full resolution as well as an oversampled image simultaneously when you shoot. The oversampled image combines 7 adjoining pixels to create a super pixel with greater detail, clarity and extremely low noise. The optical image stabilization system uses ball bearings to keep video absolutely stable. The Xenon flash helps to achieve that in low light conditions. The Lumia 1020 uses the new six lens optical system that should allow for superior image quality. To take advantage of the advanced hardware on the handset, Nokia has built a new Pro Cam application that gives the user full control over the camera including manual exposure, focus and shutter speed controls. Continue reading “Nokia Lumia 1020 with 41MP camera, OIS, Xenon flash announced”