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Microsoft WP7 Interview

I think that quite a few of you will have been following our interview with Microsoft’s Alex Reeve, Director of Mobile Business Group in the UK. We spoke with Alex live via Twitter earlier today and asked him some of our own questions as well as some from our followers and forum members.

We had half an hour of Alex’s time during which we managed to ask about 10 Windows Phone 7 Series related questions. Alex then opened the questions up to those that had been following along throughout the interview.

You can find the full interview conversation listed below. There were of course many other questions that we just didn’t get time for so we’ll be sending these to Alex later and hope that he might be able to come back with some more answers.

I welcome your feedback to the questions and answers below!

Want a HTC Tattoo for a bargain price?

The guys at Devicewire.com have got a good thing going with Vodafone at the moment if you fancy a HTC Tattoo?

For only £25.00 per month the HTC Tattoo is free with 300 minutes, unlimited texts and unlimited internet.

That sounds like a pretty good deal if you ask me but rather than me yakking on about it just head on over to Devicewire.com and have a look. 

If you need to discuss it with them remember you can call them free on 0800 198 0000 or alternatively you can click the ‘Live Chat’ tab at the top of the page and talk to one of the team over the internet. You don’t get a better service than that!

If you cant make your mind up about the HTC Tattoo you can check out our full review to see what we think of it!

Posted by: James

Windows Phone 7 Series – ask your questions!

I’m sure that I wont have to remind anyone that Windows Phone 7 Series (what we all thought would be Windows Mobile 7) was announced just last in a Microsoft press conference held at MWC in Barcelona.

Personally I’m really looking forward to seeing Windows Phone 7 Series for myself, particularly the ‘Live Tiles’ and the 5 hubs.

Now I bet you have a lot of questions about Windows Phone 7 Series which is great because Microsoft have granted us an exclusive Twitter interview this week. We’ll be talking to Alex Reeve, Director of Mobile Business Group in the UK, via the Windows Phone twitter account. The interview will take place on Thursday 25th February at 12 Noon. I will be asking the questions and Alex will reply in real time.

So follow me on Twitter @TRACYANDMATT and the Windows Phone Twitter account @WINDOWSPHONEUK to see both sides of the conversation.

Please submit your questions via This Forum Thread and we’ll ask Alex Reeve the most appropriate ones during the interview. If you miss the session live we’ll also post a copy here after the fact.

Posted by: Matt

[ Post Tags: Windows Mobile 7, Windows Phone 7 Series, MWC, Microsoft ]

Watch Sky on your Nokia!

It looks like Sky and Nokia have been working on something rather cool.  Within the Ovi Store you can now find a Sky app!

Users will be able to watch Sky Sports live on their phone, Barclays Premier League goals and match highlights with 24-7 Football, record their favourite programmes straight to their Sky+ box using Remote Record and have access to breaking Sky News headlines.

The first compatible handsets are the N97, N97 mini (pictured), 5800 XpressMusic and the 5530, with the 5230 and X6 following shortly. A version of the application with non-mobile TV features will also be available on 10 further handsets, which are yet to be announced.

HTC Legend vs HTC Hero

Well it certainly was a hectic few days at MWC and I wasn’t even there! James is on the late flight home from Barcelona and has all the good stuff on his laptop so we should have plenty of photos, video and write-ups for you over the next few days and that’s before we start looking at some of the review devices that James brought back with him and the ones that should be arriving over the next few days!

Just to whet your appetite a little and because it’s a question that we’ve heard asked a lot over the past few days we have a few photos of the new HTC Legend, announced a few days ago, next to the HTC Hero which has been around for a little while. The Legend is widely regarded as the ‘replacement’ for the HTC Hero although it is our understanding that the Hero will remain as part of the HTC product catalogue.

So have a quick look at the images after the break which should give you some idea of the size differences between the two devices. We’ll have plenty more content like this for you tomorrow and over the next few days.

HTC & O2 announce the HTC Smart

It’s a device we’ve known about for a while but that we’ve struggle to find out much about, however, at a joint press conference at MWC this morning HTC and O2 have announced that the HTC Smart will be coming to Europe.

The headlines from the announcement then:

• HTC Smart – bringing Smartphone features to more people.
• HTC Smart to be half the cost of a ‘smartphone’
• HTC Smart will be in UK, Ireland and Germany in April.
• HTC want more and more people to be using social networking apps. Then they can buy a HTC Smart!
• O2 will be adding 1500 cell masts in the UK this year to help cope with the increase in data users.

Full press release and some nice images follow after the break.

HTC & O2 press conference at MWC

HTC and O2 are holding a press conference at MWC at midday today. James will be in the room tweeting the news and I’ll be covering from here in the UK. I would imagine that there will be some official press releases to go along with whatever is announced.

What do we think? HTC Legend and Desire on O2 maybe or something totally different? Stay tuned and we’ll find out shortly after 12 noon.

EDIT: They announced the HTC Smart. You can see the full story now on site.

Posted by: Matt

Orange announce they will have HTC Desire

Well that was quick, only announced a few hours ago by HTC, Orange have now stated that they will have the HTC Desire available from April 2010! Really looking forward to this handset!

• Orange to retail the HTC Desire free on selected consumer pay monthly and business price plans from April
• The HTC Desire will feature Qualcommm’s superfast Snapdragon 1GHz processor and Google’s Android 2.1 Operating System  
• An Orange Signature device, The HTC Desire is the first of several Android handsets to be unveiled by Orange in 2010

Orange’s full press release follows:

HTC announces the HTC Desire

This is the third and final handset announced by HTC at MWC today and one that maybe slightly more of a surprise than the other two already mentioned. True, you may recognise the form of the HTC Desire, previously codenamed the HTC Bravo, looking an awful lot like the excellent Nexus One (see our Nexus review), and for good reason, they are essentially the same device.

The HTC Desire has a few hardware differences that you can see, an optical trackpad in place of the trackball and an additional set of hardware buttons at the bottom. The other change you may not immediately notice is the lack of dual-microphone noise cancelling. HTC say that the reason for this change is cost, wanting to make the handset as accessible as possible.

So specs for the Desire read much the same as the Nexus. Still Andoid 2.1 but HTC include their latest Sense UI and their own updated web browser. The browser features Flash Lite 4 (pre installed) and the excellent text re-flow system that we first saw on the HTC Touch Diamond where text is re-rendered in the browser to fit the screen area when you zoom. All HTC Android devices will have Multitouch from now on too.

HTC has also added some of their own features elsewhere in the OS. Tabs in email for unread messages for example and a calendar with agenda view are just a few examples.

Of the new handsets announced I certainly think this is the one for me! 🙂

Video and photos should be along soon but for now the official press release follows.

HTC announces the HTC Legend

I know this is another device that has been rumoured and leaked over the past few days but once again HTC quash the rumours by making the HTC Legend official in their press conference this morning at MWC.

The Legend looks like an updated version of the HTC Hero, complete with angled chin at the bottom. The Hero will stay for now though.

The Legend is the first HTC device to have ‘Hidden Power’, a new philosophy that we’ll hear a lot more about over the coming months. The idea here is beauty through function. The all aluminium body is machined from a single block of metal, the frame and the body thus become one and the same. This in itself leads to a reduction in size and weight and adds to the beauty of the handset.

The handset, like other Android handsets from HTC, will have their own Sense user interface but this has been updated for the HTC Legend. We now see some additional new and cool features such as 7 desktop panels or screens and a pinch to zoom ‘helicopter view’ that allows you to see a live preview of each of those screens.

New apps include the fantastic looking ‘Friend Stream’ which brings together Twitter, Facebook, Flickr etc. in to one place with both an integrated timeline of activity or just the one individuals activity. James and I were both impressed when we saw this last week! 🙂

We should have more video and photos for you later but the official press release follows.