Much fanfare has been given the Nokia 808 PureView – widely heralded as the best camera phone in the world; and our sister site, All About Symbian, has recently shown how you can get artistic by taking bokeh shots with the 808 PureView. This is great for anyone who wishes to remain in the Symbian world. However, those who have bought a Nokia Lumia 800 or 900 may be feeling a little short changed after the double whammy of not being able to upgrade to Windows Phone 8 and hearing that PureView technology will now feature in Nokia's Windows Phone 8 devices. On the bright side, current Lumias are not losing any functionality, and they already have a great camera. In this, our guide to Windows Phone 7 bokeh photography, we step up against the 808 PureView and show it just what we can do.
Internet sharing, or tethering, is the way in which you can use your smartphone and its mobile data connection to act as an access point to the Internet for other devices you have with you. Whether you're using a laptop, tablet, or even another smartphone, your phone acts as a WiFi hotspot which relays data between your devices and the rest of the world, via your phone's mobile data connection. It's been a feature of Windows Phone 7 for some time, but Nokia have only recently enabled it for Lumia devices. I took the Lumia 800 on the road and put its Internet Sharing to the test.
This is the fourth in a series of articles giving real world, honest feedback from Symbian users of varying levels of expertise who have tried moving to Windows Phone in general and the Nokia Lumia 710 in particular. Here uber-power user James Honeyball, despite generally being very open in terms of mobile platforms, finds a few showstoppers for him, at least, with many astute observations along the way. Here's his attempted move from Nokia N8 (and then 808) to Windows Phone on the 710.
TechRepublic's Debra Shinder is looking over at Windows Phone 8, and wondering if she'll be jumping mobile platforms when her next upgrade is due. "Ten reasons I want a Windows Phone 8 device" makes for interesting reading, and likely mirrors the thoughts and discussions that many people are having over the upcoming platform. More importantly, it shows that by filling in the gaps in the specs and features on Windows Phone, Microsoft will make it easier for people to jump to a new platform.
This is the third in a series of articles giving real world, honest feedback from Symbian users of varying levels of expertise who have tried moving to Windows Phone in general and the Nokia Lumia 710 in particular. Here Stephanie Brear, admittedly a user quite far from the Symbian cutting edge, finds that the 710 is a 'massive improvement' from her 5230 - perhaps not surprising, but a good example of the type of user upgrade that Windows Phone is perfect for.
Windows Phone 7.5 Refresh is the latest version of Microsoft's mobile operating system, and is rolling out now across the world. This is the most significant update of the operating system since Mango, which added many new features, including Fast Task Switching. In this latest update, which was codenamed Tango, we find support for devices with lower specifications; e.g. the Nokia 610 with its 256MB of RAM. There are many more features too, including a few that are exclusive to Nokia. Here's our guide to Windows Phone 7.5 Refresh.
I commented the other day that the Rich Recording in the Nokia 808 PureView has the potential to change the way we capture our lives, digitally - i.e. when no scene, no noise environment is off limits and everything comes out accurately, why be restricted by the technology, why not go for it and shoot anything you really enjoy, anything you love. The same applies just as strongly to the PureView zoom - add the two together and your smartphone becomes the ultimate phone for the Digital Creator, whether now on the Nokia 808 on Symbian, in the near future on Nokia Lumias on Windows Phone 8, or on another manufacturer's implementation of similar technology in a year or two.
Cloud storage is becoming ever more popular. Thanks to the rise of Dropbox, both Google and Microsoft felt the time was right to launch their own solutions, which also include tools to edit files as well as just storing them. While cloud storage gives us the ability to access our files anywhere, and instantly share them with anyone in the world, it comes at a cost - and not just a financial cost.
As regular readers will know, I do like to pick head-to-heads which are appropriate - it's maddening when I see another blogger pitch items which are a wild mismatch in terms of form factors, prices and use cases. Here we have three mid-priced smartphones, all offering good value for money, all definitely phone-sized rather than superphone-sized. One powered by Symbian, one Windows Phone and one Android. What are their pros and cons, which comes out on top overall?
This is the second in a series of articles giving real world, honest feedback from Symbian users of varying levels of expertise who have tried moving to Windows Phone in general and the Nokia Lumia 710 in particular. Here Laurie Garratt takes perhaps the archetypal Symbian geek position, despite being a teenager, and approaches the Lumia fairly critically.
