Windows Phone 7

NEW ORLEANS--AT&T and Samsung must be selling enough of the "Focus" family of Windows Phones to be inspired to do it again.

The day before CTIA kicks off, the two partners took the wraps off the Samsung Focus 2, a $50 Windows Phone outfitted with LTE.

The phone also features a 4-inch Super AMOLED display and a 5-megapixel camera that can support 720p HD video. A front-facing VGA camera is also onboard.… Read more

Nokia has been hit with a class-action lawsuit charging the company with making promises it couldn't keep.

Law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd yesterday filed a class-action lawsuit (PDF) against Nokia and its executives in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on behalf of those who owned the company's shares between October 26, 2011, and April 10.

"The complaint alleges that during the Class Period, defendants told investors that Nokia's conversion to a Windows platform would halt its deteriorating position in the smartphone market. It did not," the … Read more

Windows Phone OS may not have the market share or the apps, but one thing I will say is that Microsoft is finally going after developers with more vigor. This time it's to the tune of a developer summit on June 21 and 22.

Microsoft is serious about closing the gap separating its Windows Phone application Marketplace from Android's Google Play and iPhone's App Store. The San Francisco location couldn't be a better spot to tap into Silicon Valley's software-development mojo.

It isn't that the Redmond giant hasn't tended its app garden, which … Read more

When it comes to picking out a smartphone that'll cost you less than $100, there's plenty of good news to go around. Constant sales on older-model phones mean that carriers are giving away great handsets in exchange for your two-year contract commitment.

Thanks to pitched smartphone and carrier competition, more excellent handsets launch at less than $100, too, and I'm not talking about phones labeled $99.99, even though many of those, like the Nokia Lumia 900, offer great value in their own right.

Here's my current crop of favorites, in no particular order.… Read more

LG's future with Windows Phone 7 is up in the air at the moment, but a prototype of a device the company had reportedly planned to launch has surfaced.

The folks over at Windows Phone 7 tracker WP Central claim to have gotten their hands on the LG E740 "Fantasy." The device, the blog claims, was in prototype mode in late 2011, but was eventually shelved early this year.

According to WP Central, the device comes with a 4-inch TFT LCD display and a 1GHz processor. It offers 8GB of onboard storage, 512MB of RAM, and 3G … Read more

Here in the U.S., the Nokia Lumia 900 Windows phone has sold better than Nokia expected, but significant profit loss elsewhere has led to some vocal -- and colorful -- opinions from a former Nokia executive.

Speaking exclusively to CNET UK, Lee Williams, who served as Nokia's senior vice president of Symbian Series 60 OS from 2006 to 2009, paints a portrait of Nokia CEO Stephen Elop as a cost-slashing leader who lacks long-term vision.

Williams goes even further to accuse Elop of sacrificing Nokia's fat and healthy cash cow -- Symbian -- for the chance at "US cultural magic," at the expense of the company's Finnish identity.… Read more

A software glitch and stock shortage amount to a rockier start than Nokia could have wanted for its flagship Nokia Lumia 900 Windows Phone. Today the company issued a press release via e-mail answering common inquiries about the device.

One of the most pressing questions is when the glossy white version will be available. The good news is: starting yesterday.

However, Lumia 900 handsets have reportedly been in short supply in some AT&T retail locations across the U.S. So if your online outlet or brick-and-mortar store is out of the phone in black, cyan, and white, you'… Read more

As rumors have indicated for a while, Microsoft has added paid storage options to its SkyDrive cloud service.

Brand new SkyDrive users get 7GB of storage for free. Existing users (those with accounts as of April 22) continue to get up to 25 GB of storage for free if they opt to do so. After that, an additional 20GB costs $10 per year; an additional 50GB costs $25 per year; and an additional 100GB, $50 per year.

Microsoft also made available for download on April 23 a preview version of SkyDrive for Windows, a local version of its SkyDrive client. … Read more

Although it's still too early to tell if the Lumia 900 is both Nokia and Microsoft's saving grace, numerous AT&T stores reported that the demand for the device is surpassing its supply.

According to an informal Gizmodo investigation, 36 stores sold out of the handset within the first few days of its debut, especially in the cyan color:

"Ten stores had run out of cyan entirely but had the black model available in limited quantities," the publication reported.

"Many told us stock would be replenished by the next day, with just two saying … Read more