New Windows Phone device to be launched by Colors Mobile in Nepal

In it's bid to conquer the world with Windows Phone, Microsoft has adopted some unusual, yet creative, ideas by which to win the public over. By far, the most prominent of these has been its efforts to bring more localized OEMs into the fray through the use of reference designs.

With the likes of Blu, Micromax, and Kazam joining the platform in the last year, or at least announcing their intentions to do so, this approach has seen some success. As such, the news that Nepal's own Colors Mobile is to launch a Windows Phone device within the coming year is welcoming news.

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Windows 10 for phones preview release tipped for 4 February

The preview version of Windows 10 for phones will reportedly be released in a couple of days.

Nokiapoweruser had earlier reported, via its sources, that the technical preview for phones will be released within 2-4 weeks from 21 January, which is opposed to Microsoft's given schedule for late February.

A new disclosure from an anonymous tipster, quoted by the site, now asserts that the first preview build of Windows 10 for phones will be out on the 4th of February. Considering this release timing is too early, take this information with a pinch of salt.

There is a good chance that Microsoft might release the preview build soon, as only a few days ago Microsoft had pushed out an update for the 'Phone Insider' app that will allow registered Insiders to receive pre-release OS updates on their phones.

The name of the app is now 'Windows Insider' which hints that Microsoft is planning to have the Windows name across all platforms of Windows 10.

The update for Windows Insider now offers users the option of logging in with their Microsoft account, after registering as a Windows Insider. If you have already registered for your Windows 10 desktop, you are ready to go.

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Dumb Move: Chase And Bank Of America Pull Support For Windows Phone Apps

When you consider the current installed base of Windows Phone devices and the ongoing issue Microsoft MSFT -3.82% has with the lack of  depth in app selection for the Windows Store, it’s easy to be dismissive, if product development budgets are on the chopping block. Then again, cutting support for any mobile platform right now, especially in the banking arena, where customer convenience is king, is a thin tightrope to walk. More and more, people are purchasing, browsing and banking on their mobile devices and the current projections are all up and to the right. You cut support for any mobile platform, and you better be damn sure you can stick a fork in it and declare it “done.”

Here’s where Bank of America BAC -1.81% and Chase may have just showed lack of strategic planning. However, I’ll emphasize that there are multiple possibilities for these decisions, because there are a multiple angles to consider. And before I dig in, Microsoft haters, please reality-check your bags at the door.

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Acer adds variety to spice up Windows Phone options at MWC

The Windows Phone catalogue is short on options. Apart from the Nokia/Microsoft smartphone, the HTC One M8 and a few low-end Huawei entries, there isn’t much in the way of variety.

Acer is looking to spice the offerings up a bit with some new Windows Phone, to be launched at Mobile World Congress (MWC) on 1 March.


Acer’s CEO Jason Chen confirmed that Windows Phone devices would be coming to the event, but all of the phones announced at the event will be entry-level devices for developing markets.

The entry-level market is Windows Phone’s most popular segment, making waves in India, Latin America and Eastern Europe. However it still only equates to 2.5 per cent of the total mobile market share.

Investing in a high-end Windows Phone doesn’t make sense in the current climate, when the same smartphone running Android would do much better on the market. HTC did the smart thing: ported the existing M8 and slapped Windows Phone on it.

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Windows 10 phones and tiny tablets won't get the desktop

Prognostications about Microsoft killing the desktop in Windows 10 are coming true—but only for the smallest of tablets.

New tablets with screens smaller than 8 inches will not ship with a classic desktop, and won’t be able to run legacy Win32 (read: desktop) applications according to Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Operating Systems Group. These devices will instead run something very similar to the phone version of Windows 10 that Microsoft showed off last week.

If you already have a 7-inch Windows tablet like Toshiba’s Encore Mini, don’t panic; Belfiore clarified on Twitter that existing tablets will retain their desktop functionality. They’ll also support the new Continuum feature that switches to a mouse-and-keyboard interface when you dock the tablet with a desktop monitor.

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The dream of Windows Phone on tablets is almost coming true

The Windows desktop is at once the most important and least important part of the Windows experience. On the traditional desktop and laptop, it's fundamental; it's where most apps run, and it's where most users want to be. The perceived downplaying of the desktop in Windows 8 was one of the many reasons that desktop users were unhappy with the operating system.

But on the tablet, the desktop is a liability. Small, fiddly apps that aren't designed for fingers do not make for a good tablet experience. Every time a tablet user has to use the desktop—and on Windows 8.1, they will have to do so at least some of the time—then that tablet user has to suffer an experience that is, at its heart not a tablet experience, and it's no fun at all.

The Windows desktop: totally essential in some situations. Totally unwanted in others.

Microsoft does have a desktopless Windows—it's called Windows Phone—and many wanted the company to use the operating system as the basis for its tablet platform. Through necessity, Windows Phone is a complete touch environment, with every feature usable with fingers alone. When Windows 8 materialized, with the full desktop in tow, the reaction was bemusement. Sure, technically you could add a mouse and a keyboard to a tablet and use that desktop for desktop software, but that was hardly the point of tablet systems.

This was doubly so on the ARM-powered Windows RT tablets. These had the full desktop, but unlike their x86 counterparts, couldn't even run desktop software. The desktop was a necessary evil because the touch-friendly Metro environment lacked things like a complete settings app, a competent file manager, and any kind of productivity software.

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Windows 10: What it will bring to Windows Phone (hands-on)

Following the announcement that Windows Phone will be Windows 10 in the near future, does it still feel like a smartphone operating system? We got some time with a preview handset at the Microsoft announcement press conference in Seattle to see whether the death of the Windows Phone guise is a sensible move.

From Cortana, Photos, universal Outlook and Maps, to the notification pane and a reading mode in Project Spartan, Windows 10 actually gets a lot of features from Windows Phone, rather than the other way around.

The phone version isn't just a tweaked version of Windows 10 for PC though. For a start (no pun intended) it has a feature set familiar to Windows Phone 8.1 – but many elements will be improved, addressing a lot of user requests – in many ways feeling like "Windows Phone 10" (which, while not the official title, seems a natural adoption) with some of the PC elements. Windows 10 devices on PC, tablet and smartphone will also be able to "talk" to one another more easily, which is a big take-away point of the incoming update.

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