In what may be an accidental unveiling a page for the Nokia Lumia Icon, a new Windows Phone with a 5 inch and 1080p resolution screen, has appeared on Verizon's website. The device, which is understood to be exclusive to the US operator, is a follow on device to the Lumia 928 and, based on the available information, is essentially a smaller screen version of the Lumia 1520.
Panagraph, a computational photography app that creates David Hockney inspired multi-image mosaics, is now available in select markets (US, AU, NZ) exclusively for the Lumia 1020. The app, which was first mentioned at the Lumia 1020 launch event in New York, uses gestures to manipulate and break up high resolution images for artistic effect.
The latest set of Kantar Worldpanel data, released today, shows that Windows Phone is holding steady on its recent gains in market share. The figures for the 3 months ending November 2013 indicate Microsoft's mobile platform has a 10% sales share in Western Europe and just under 5% in the US.
Microsoft today published the Xbox Video app to the Windows Phone Store, enabling the purchasing and viewing of video content on Windows Phone 8 devices. The arrival of the app completes the initial roll out and relaunch of the Xbox video service and fulfils Microsoft promise to provide a multi-device, cloud-enabled, "three screen" video service.
Nokia Motion Monitor Beta, the latest release from Nokia Beta Labs, allows you to use your Lumia 1520 to track your physical activity, based on steps and motion detected by the sensors built into the phone. The new app, which provides functionality akin to wearable accessories such as Fitbit Ultra and Nike Fuelband, is enabled by new hardware, built into the Snapdragon 800 SoC, that off-loads sensor data processing from the main processor, thus allowing the necessary tracking algorithms to run constantly in the background whilst using very little power.
The latest set of Kantar Worldpanel data, released yesterday, shows that Windows Phone is continuing to grow its market share in Western Europe, surpassing 10% market share for the first time in the EU5 (Germany, UK, France, Italy, and Spain). In the US market share has recovered to just under 5%, after falling to 3% earlier this summer, but still remains significantly behind the leading European markets.
AdDuplex publishes regular reports on the breakdown of devices (and countries / languages) active in the Windows Phone ecosystem based on data drawn from its advertising network (2,087 apps running AdDuplex SDK version 2.0 for the November report). The data represents a sampling of the active installed device base for Windows Phone, albeit one biased to those users who are more likely to install apps, as of November 22nd 2013.
At a low key virtual event in Singapore, Nokia just took the wraps off the new "accessibly-priced" Lumia 525, a variant of the successful Lumia 520. Powered, out of the box, by the latest Nokia Lumia Black version of Windows Phone 8, the Lumia 525 has a 4" screen and 1GB of RAM, along with the usual Nokia imaging apps, maps and navigation from HERE, and free music streaming from Nokia MixRadio.
As part of a relaunch of its streaming music service, Nokia has renamed its Nokia Music app to Nokia MixRadio. The new version of the app also adds a new "Play Me" feature, which offers a personalised mix crafted from your unique music profile. Also new is the capability to share mixes by social network, email, and SMS, and the ability to "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" down tracks, something that helps refine your personal music profile.
Microsoft Research has a released Office Remote, an app that lets you control documents open in Microsoft Office 2013 on your PC from your Windows Phone device. The most obvious use case is for controlling a PowerPoint presentation, but it can also be used to move around Word and Excel documents, making it a handy tool for showing off documents in both formal and informal group settings.
