Nokia Lumia 610
Nokia announced today that the Lumia 610 is rolling out in Asia. The press release stated that sales will begin in the the Philippines in the final week of April. China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam will follow in the next few weeks.
Hit View Post for the press release.
Nokia Lumia 900, White
Nokia US just wrote on their Facebook wall that the white Lumia 900 is now available in the States. This glossy white color is in addition to the original Black and Cyan color alternatives.
This is the post made by Nokia US:
A little bird told me that some AT&T stores are already selling the white Nokia Lumia 900!!
I’ve got a pair of white Monster Nokia Purity in-ear stereo headsets to the first three people who upload a photo of themselves (include a link below) with their new WHITE Lumia 900!!
AT&T Nokia Lumia 900
The Nokia Lumia 900 was launched a little over a week ago on Easter Sunday in the States. Ever since then, the smartphone has rocked Amazon’s sales charts. To give you an idea of the massive volumes it has sold, it even appeared on Amazon’s Top 30 list for Cell Phones and Accessories. The device also sold out in many of AT&T’s stores in the States.
Now Nokia has also commented on the situation by saying that they’re producing more Lumia 900s as fast as they can. This certainly is great news for Nokia, Microsoft, AT&T and Windows Phone!
“The inventory situation is primarily a function of demand because we are seeing that most customers are opting to keep their units and simply update via Zune,” Nokia spokeswoman Karen Lachtanski told AllThingsD. “So the impact of customer swaps is insignificant. We are producing more devices to satisfy demand as quickly as possible.”
This story just keeps on getting more interesting! Stay tuned for more news on Nokia’s re-entry to the States.
Windows Phone 7.5 Logo
Well this is a big bag of confusion. Will current generation Windows Phone hardware get updated to Windows Phone 8 / Apollo? We’ve seen numerous rumors telling that yes, it’s coming, just to be bashed next day by someone with insight saying that it’s not coming.
Yesterday we saw a Twitter conversation by Nokia India confirming that an update is coming. Then, late last night there was a video from a Microsoft Developer Evangelist in Portugal who claimed that every single Windows Phone device will get updated to Windows Phone 8. Even the very first generation like the Omnia 7 will get updated. After all those “confirms” there has to be some denials too, right? And yes there is. The Verge and IntoMobile have at least three insiders that claim that Windows Phone 8 will not make its way to old hardware. The Verge’s guy is someone in close relations to Microsoft, while IntoMobile’s two sources are Nokia employees.
So what to conclude out of this? You’ll just have to wait and see! It appears that you can’t take anyone’s word on whether the update will be released or not.
Hit View Post to see the interview with Microsoft Portugal’s Developer Evangelist.
AT&T Nokia Lumia 900
Nokia acknowledged a Lumia 900 bug in memory management a few days ago, and promised an update on April 16th. Today they surprised many by announcing that the update is now available, a whole three days earlier than promised! The company also promised $100 credit on their AT&T bill through Midnight PST on April 21st, and this is obviously still valid.
Versions after the update:
Isn’t this the way you should really handle software/hardware problems? We’ve seen another quite big company by the name of Apple going totally camouflage and saying that users are basically stupid, using their phones incorrectly, and that there isn’t really a problem. Then three weeks later the company provides a software update that fixes exactly this problem that was reported.
Fire up Zune or Windows Phone 7 Connector for Mac to get your share of this update!
Apollo
WPCentral writes that they’ve received word from a trusted source that Windows Phone 8 has now entered internal testing at Microsoft on March 30th. The term they used is “dogfooding”, and for those that haven’t heard that term before, here’s a short description from Wikipedia:
Eating your own dog food, also called dogfooding, is a slang to define a scenario in which a company (usually, a software company) uses its own created products
To add more credibility to this, also “I’m a WP7!” app logs show that Windows Phone 8 build 8.0.9662.0 has been let online.
Nokia unveiled the first ever NFC capable Windows Phone, the Lumia 610 NFC edition, yesterday at the WIMA NFC event. The device is an addition to the ever-growing selection of NFC gear that comes out of Nokia’s production pipeline. Check out the video to get an idea of what is possible with NFC.
Nokia now has a wide range of NFC enabled smartphones. This video tells you what you can do with the technology and what exactly went on at the WIMA NFC event in Monaco April 11-13.
Nokia brought a bit of a surprise today when they announced that the Lumia 610 is packing an NFC chip. When the device finally hits the markets, it’ll be supported by both Visa and MasterCard.
The Lumia 610 will be the first Windows Phone to come with NFC support. Nokia didn’t specify on what NFC version will be used. Could it be Secure NFC since Visa and MC are both in the game?
Edit: The device is actually an NFC capable variant of the original Nokia Lumia 610. The Nokia Lumia 610 NFC edition will be available via Orange.
