Category: Microsoft

As expected, Microsoft has announced their first Microsoft branded Lumia Windows powered phone, the Lumia 535.  The 5″ display budget friendly phone sports some pretty nice features for a budget phone and is expected to be launched in Hong Kong, China and Bangladesh shortly.

• 5-inch IPS LCD (960 x 540)
• 1.2 GHz quad-core processor Qualcomm Snapdragon 200
• 1 GB RAM
• 8 GB storage
• MicroSD card support (Up to 128 GB)
• 1905 mAh battery
• 5 MP rear camera
• 5 MP front-facing camera

Several sources today are citing that a new calendar and contact mashup app is soon to be released by Microsoft.  Revolve for Windows Phone will bring the you information about people you are going to be soon meeting from multiple sources.

Revolve, an upcoming app for Windows phones which melds aspects of a calendar and contact manager, and presents you with information about people you’re going to meet with that it’s collected from multiple sources.

This concept certainly isn’t new but it would bring a new level of information and interaction for the Windows Phone platform.  LinkedIn and Evernote both offer similar solutions for iOS while Google has recently announced its new calendar app for Android that does a similar function.

Overnight the MSN apps for Windows Phone were updated and you should see those notifications on your device now.  What was updated?  That’s a great question.  It is a complete mystery as there are no release notes in the app notes for them.  This isn’t the first time this has happened.  If you remember back in October we got a similar update of mystery.

This is a great piece of news for Windows Phone owners.  The site WMPoweruser has posted a Twitter conversation with Windows Phone insider Nawzil that indicates that all current Windows Phone devices will run Windows 10.  This is great news for a lot of different reasons but should put everyone’s mind at rest over buying a Windows Phone today knowing that Windows 10 is due out in 2015.

Yesterday Dropbox and Microsoft announced a new working agreement that will bring a lot of Dropbox integration to Microsoft devices and services.  Amongst the announcements was that there would finally be an official Dropbox for Windows Phone app released in the coming months, ending years of lack of official support from the cloud storage company.

Dear Microsoft,

It’s Clinton, that former MVP that has returned to Windows Phone after three years in the iOS wilderness.  I’m happy to be back thanks.  I’ve enjoyed connected with old friends and being back on a platform that I love.  It’s great to see how much it has grown up in the last three years and the amount of productivity I have now with my phone compared to a few years ago is in stark contrast.

There is one area though that the difference between iOS and Windows Phone remains and it is painful.  That is Office for Windows Phone.  My Microsoft friends, it is horrific.  Not to the scale of Office for Mac horrific but pretty close.  It is so limiting – so ultimately useless many times – that it is the single set of apps that I miss on my iPad.  As I put in my Windows Phone app gap article a few days ago, generally I can find anything I need for Windows Phone these days and in fact Office for Windows Phone comes built into my Lumia 1320.  But it is such a painful experience that even when I want do a quick edit to a Word document or PowerPoint, I end up lugging out the laptop.  It shouldn’t be this way.