The confusion over whether Windows Phone 7 Series will be coming to older phones continues to rage as the HTC HD2 was shown running the OS.

Admittedly it was a hacked version of the operating system running on the device, with HTCPedia forum member Tom Codon behind the port.

But, apart from a slight amount of lag in certain operations thanks to some incompatibility issues with the graphics processor (which will apparently be resolved) the phone performs well.

Present and correct

The GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth all perform correctly, which can often be a problem when shoving a new OS on a phone, and the web browser looks fine in early pictures.

The problem Microsoft is claiming that the OS can’t be ported backwards, as it doesn’t have the correct hardware specifications that future devices will be running to.

And despite this new hack clearly showing that it can work fine on legacy phones, we doubt Microsoft will be changing its tune any day soon.

Windows Phone 7 Series will run on HTC HD2 via http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techradar/phone-and-communications-news/~3/Btd7_BI0EXg/story01.htm TechRadar Mobile

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Virgin Media has launched a new range of mobile phone tariffs as it mounts a new assault on the handset market.

The real cost savings are being offered to its current customers, making use of the ‘quadplay’ offering of TV, internet, landline and mobile bundles.

The headline deal for these customers is £5 off the standard ‘high street’ tariff for phones, or a shorter contract.

Cheaper deals

For instance, the HTC Desire will be offered by Virgin Media to the general public in the near future for £30 per month, 800 minutes and unlimited texts and internet on a 24 month deal.

But existing Virgin Media customers can choose to have £5 off, meaning a free Desire for £25 a month, or shorten their contract to 18 months at the full rate.

This deal applies to a number of new phones appearing from Virgin Media, such as the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10.

Virgin Media is also offering SIM only deal starting at £10 a month, with inclusive Virgin Mobile to Virgin Mobile calls as it ramps up its mobile strategy.

Virgin Media offers cheapest HTC Desire deal yet via http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techradar/phone-and-communications-news/~3/dcALVVvpyJk/story01.htm TechRadar Mobile

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While all of the current wave of Apple pre-launch hype is focused on next week’s iPad launch, it is rumoured that Steve Jobs’ “next big thing” is going to be a personalised mobile advertising platform, possibly called ‘iAd’.

Online Media Daily reports that Apple’s new mobile ad platform will be officially unveiled to the ad execs on New York’s Madison Avenue on April 7 and has been described as “revolutionary” and “our next big thing” by Steve Jobs.

Jobs on Madison Avenue

As ever, Apple is not responding to requests from press for further information, but the fact that Apple bought mobile advertising developer Quattro back in January for nearly $300 million surely means that the Cupertino computing giant has some plans in the mobile ad arena.

“The war has been mounting ever since Google introduced its Android mobile operating system to compete with Apple’s iPhone, and agreed to acquire mobile ad firm AdMob for $750 million, but it is expected to reach ballistic proportions following Apple’s April 7th announcement, which insiders say will be every bit as important as other recent marketplace introductions, including the iPod, iTunes, iPhone and iPad launches,” writes MediaPost’s Joe Mandese.

“Apple appears to have been more successful in its revenue diversification, developing substantial software and service businesses, including iTunes downloads, iPhone wireless subscriptions, and App Store downloads. And while advertising has always loomed as a huge possibility for Apple, it had essentially been unexploited as a business model until Apple acquired Quattro.”

Jobs and Schmidt spotted in coffee shop

Is this why Steve Jobs was spotted chatting over lattes with Google chief and former Apple board member Eric Schmidt the other day?

The smart money is on Apple offering advertisers a hypertargeting capability for location-based advertising so that consumers get ads based on their locality at any given time.

“Everyone will be following this very closely,” says Josh Lovison, the mobile lead at Interpublic’s Emerging Media Lab, adding: “Given the way that Apple is able to package things up, with very slick presentations, it will be interesting to see what they do with that advertising.”

Via MediaPost.com

Is Apple’s ‘iAd’ Steve Job’s ‘next big thing’? via http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techradar/phone-and-communications-news/~3/u4bCfe6zRrc/story01.htm TechRadar Mobile

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Spotify is about to release a key update for its iPhone – with Last.fm scrobbling a key addition for the mobile service.

The update is ‘coming soon’ according to the Spotify blog, suggesting that those interested should keep checking back over the coming weeks.

Update desire

“It’s been a little while since we first released our iPhone app to the public and many of you have been wondering when you’re going to see an update,” blogged Spotify.

“Well, we’re happy to announce that earlier today we submitted a new version to the nice people over at Apple for approval.

“Along with a number of fixes to the app we’ve added a range of great new features. Those additions include Last.fm scrobbling, the ability to open and play Spotify links and support for lower bitrate streaming (96kbps) for slower connections.”

Updates appear to be making it through the Apple vetting process a little quicker these days, so we’ll keep an eye out for it arriving.

Spotify to get iPhone app refresh via http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techradar/phone-and-communications-news/~3/EOCiQTRskQM/story01.htm TechRadar Mobile

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With MeeGo set to launch on ARM-based and Intel Atom-based devices this month, we grabbed a few minutes with Peter Schneider from Nokia recently to talk about MeeGo, the first fruit from the Nokia-Intel joint venture announced last June.

MeeGo itself was announced at Mobile World Congress last month. It brought together the Moblin and Maemo operating systems from the two companies into a single open source OS.

At the time, a joint statement said the open software platform “will accelerate industry innovation and time-to-market for a wealth of new internet-based applications and services and exciting user experiences.”

Schneider heads up the marketing effort at Nokia for MeeGo. The project is hosted by the Linux Foundation.

Where does this leave Symbian?

We asked Schneider, who has beenat Nokia since 2000, what the new OS meant for Symbian and future devices – will they still run Symbian?

“We see Symbian and MeeGo as being quite separate. Symbian is strong…and will continue to have success on smartphones. MeeGo covers a different market. MeeGo is a new operating system, while Symbian is well developed.”

At the launch of MeeGo, Nokia’s Vice President for Devices, Kai Oistamo, said that “the two operating systems would co-exist” and that MeeGo will run on “multiple processor architectures.”

He then added that Symbian and MeeGo would share some “forward compatibility.”

Nokia wants MeeGo to take full advantage of its open source status by getting as much interaction as possible. “We want MeeGo – like Maemo – to be really collaborative,” says Schneider.

“Maemo was the result of a big community effort and we have thousands of [open source] developers working on lots of projects.” Symbian has also recently moved to an open source model.

Atom and ARM-support

Schneider was coy about the types of devices being developed for MeeGo, but it’s clear from various comments – not least those of Oistamo – that many types of devices will be able to support the OS.

MeeGo will be able to run on Intel Atom as well as ARM-based devices. So we could see it running on some budget netbooks as well as high-end mobiles like the N900.

Schneider also maintains “it doesn’t compete” with smartphone operating systems such as Android or Windows Phone 7 Series. Instead, it’s more likely to be compared to Chrome OS when that hits the streets later in the year.

Even though the project is fully collaborative, changes to source components of the software are made by a joint Technical Steering Group.

In Depth: ‘Symbian and MeeGo are quite separate’ via http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techradar/phone-and-communications-news/~3/mtLWE9zqYCE/story01.htm TechRadar Mobile

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Motorola might be releasing approximately a bagillion phones per minute these days, but that hasn’t stopped it keeping it an eye on the older ones.

Well, we say older, as the Motorola Milestone only launched at the tail end of last year – hardly ancient in phone terms.

But it ‘only’ launched in the UK with Android 2.0, which is so last year – it’s all about Android 2.1 these days, with all them fancy things like interactive wallpapers (trust us, they’re awesome).

Upping the ante

So the good news if you’re in Europe and have forked out the moolah for the Motorola Milestone: it will be getting the upgrade in a matter of days.

It’s currently available for the Hong Kong and Macau markets at the moment, so if you can’t wait and know a thing or two about modding your device, you can download it directly.

Otherwise, be patient and you’ll be using a faster and more slick Moto Milestone before the end of Easter.

Motorola bringing Android 2.1 to Milestone by April via http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techradar/phone-and-communications-news/~3/7dyRM_jBmx4/story01.htm TechRadar Mobile

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Samsung has unveiled the next in its Android-powered line of smartphones – the Galaxy S.

The new phone packs a huge four inch screen with Super AMOLED technology – meaning a wider viewing angle, more vivid colours and a more ‘immersive’ experience according to Samsung.

The Galaxy S also comes with a 1GHz processor – bringing it up to speed with the likes of the HTC Desire and the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 – which should mean lightning fast loading times.

It’s Android 2.1-enabled right out the box, which means some cool extras like Live Wallpapers, and Layar augmented reality browser is included as well.

The camera side of things is taken care of with a 5MP snapper and forward facing video camera, although there’s no mention of an LED flash.

Pocket-light

Dimensions-wise we’re looking at 64.2 x 122.4 x 9.9mm and a weight of 118g, so not too bad in the pocket at all. Plus Samsung is throwing in either 16GB or 8GB of onboard storage with a microSD card slot for extra movies.

Add in all the natural Android extras – GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 etc – and you’re looking at a pretty well-specified phone. Well, it needs to be to erase the memory of the Galaxy and Galaxy Portal, which were pretty snooze-worthy from Samsung.

The bad news is that while this is definitely going to be a worldwide release, there’s no UK release date and certainly no UK price as yet for the Samsung Galaxy S – but all will become clear soon, we reckon.

Samsung fights back with new Android Galaxy S via http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techradar/phone-and-communications-news/~3/2hIA4c0ijrM/story01.htm TechRadar Mobile

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T-Mobile appears to have offered the HTC Desire for sale ahead of even its own schedule.

When HTC announced the Desire last month, networks were quick to announce they were stocking it, with T-Mobile at the front of the queue.

The network promised the phone would be released on 26 March, but customers are now getting emails proclaiming “The HTC Desire has arrived!”.

The web page allowing consumers to purchase the phone has also gone live, with a seven-day delivery time for those wanting to pick up the mobile.

All about the price

If you’re wondering about price, that’s there too: £35 a month on a two-year deal will nab you the phone for free, with 1,200 minutes, 500 texts and free internet to boot.

However, there appears to be confusion over whether this phone has actually gone on sale or not, as T-Mobile’s support Twitter feed is claiming that this is pre-order only.

Phone calls to outlets directly have resulted in TechRadar being told there won’t be any in store ‘for a week or two after launch’.

T-Mobile will be joined by Vodafone, O2, 3, Orange and Virgin Media in the next month in offering the HTC Desire – but even if T-Mobile doesn’t offer the phone until 26 March that’s still ahead of the game.

T-Mobile offering HTC Desire ahead of schedule via http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techradar/phone-and-communications-news/~3/8lvF6J3AgMo/story01.htm TechRadar Mobile

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T3 has launched T3 App chart, with reviews of over 400 application for iPhone, Android, Nokia and Windows Mobile.

T3.com which, like TechRadar, is part of Future Publishing, allows users to give their rating to the featured apps alongside reviews written by T3’s mobile experts.

BlackBerry and Samsung apps will be coming soon to the site, with 50 new apps rated and reviewed each month.

Phenomenal rise

Kieran Alger, editor of T3.com says: “There seems to be no stopping the phenomenal rise of apps.

“The promise that all life’s little problems can be solved at the click of a few buttons is really seductive but with the burgeoning apps stores comes the problem of having to sort the good from the bad and the frankly ugly.

“With the T3.com/appchart, combining expert reviews and user ratings, we’re out to make sure people can find apps that are genuinely worth downloading.

“I think we’re one of the first places on the web to offer reviews of apps across the majority of platforms.

“That means users can compare the strength of the apps stores before they head out to buy a handset.”

T3 launches mobile app reviews site via http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techradar/phone-and-communications-news/~3/sDI4NLHYlh8/story01.htm TechRadar Mobile

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HTC has responded to Apple’s alleged patent theft claims as it readies itself for the forthcoming court battle.

Apple has stated that HTC has nabbed a number of its patented ideas, from the simple ’swipe to unlock’ gesture to deeper functions related to the UI itself.

Against Google

Given the weight of allegations levied at HTC’s Android range, some critics have stated this is the beginning of a larger suit against Google.

But now HTC’s chiefs have come out with a strong defence of their brand:

“HTC disagrees with Apple’s actions and will fully defend itself.

“HTC strongly advocates intellectual property protection and will continue to respect other innovators and their technologies as we have always done, but we will continue to embrace competition through our own innovation as a healthy way for consumers to get the best mobile experience possible,” said Peter Chou, CEO of HTC Corporation.

Cutting edge

“From day one, HTC has focused on creating cutting-edge innovations that deliver unique value for people looking for a smartphone.

“In 1999 we started designing the XDA and T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition, our first touchscreen smartphones, and they both shipped in 2002 with more than 50 additional HTC smartphone models shipping since then.”

This one is likely to rumble on and on – but we hope that Android continues to run along at its terrific development pace.

HTC fights back in Apple lawsuit via http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techradar/phone-and-communications-news/~3/bozQxicD5gM/story01.htm TechRadar Mobile

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