Microsoft planning 'next release' of Windows Phone for this holiday season

A new job listing over at Microsoft has revealed when the outfit is planning to serve up the next iteration of its smartphone OS. According to the post, work on the current version is being finished up and they're "getting ready for our next release targeting the holiday of this year." Presumably, the update will be part of the wider Blue umbrella of tweaks for Windows. Though a vague "next release" doesn't offer any details in terms of features, it's likely the OS will carry a significant set of changes as the team in need of a developer is responsible for the Start screen experience, the shell, first party apps and more.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Microsoft

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Via: WMPoweruser

Source: Microsoft

[From Microsoft planning 'next release' of Windows Phone for this holiday season]

Coming this summer: Plummeting phablet prices

Samsung (005930) stared down an army of critics when it launched the Galaxy Note in 2011. The 5.3-inch screen was viewed with deep suspicion by many industry experts. By August 2012, Samsung had sold 10 million units. Now the handset industry is set to face the onslaught of an armada of copycats. Huawei's Ascend P2. ZTE's Grand Memo. UMI's X2. HTC's (2498) One. Sony's (SNE) Xperia ZL. And on and on. These smartphones all have display sizes ranging from 4.7 inches to 5.7 inches, and most of them are fairly close copies of the Note concept.



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Caterpillar CAT B15 smartphone offers a taste of rugged Jelly Bean

We've seen our fair share of rugged smartphones, but there's a certain amount of attention due when a heavy equipment builder like Caterpillar gets involved. Its newest smartphone, the CAT B15, undoubtedly has the survivability you'd expect from a company that makes bulldozers: the aluminum-and-rubber shell can survive 5.9-foot drops on to hard concrete, stay immersed in 3.3 feet of water for half an hour and keep working in temperatures between -4F to 122F. Just don't expect top-flight performance elsewhere. While we're big fans of the CAT B15 shipping with Jelly Bean, its 4-inch WVGA screen, dual-core 1GHz Cortex-A9 chip, 512MB of RAM and 5-megapixel camera won't have many of us giving up our faster, more fragile devices. The phone's £299 and €329 European prices (about $437) could still lead to the more accident-prone among us picking up a CAT B15 when it ships in March.

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Source: T3

[From Caterpillar CAT B15 smartphone offers a taste of rugged Jelly Bean]

Apple working with MicroLatch on fingerprint recognition

Apple has signed a deal with an Australian company, MicroLatch, to work on fingerprint recognition technology, The Australian reports. The information comes by way of David Murray, formerly the head of the Commonwealth Bank and now a major MicroLatch investor. He claims that the help Apple wants is explicitly related to mobile payments using NFC (near-field communications). MicroLatch has patented fingerprint technology said to meet banking security standards without the need for central processing, something Murray calls a "self-registering" system....













[From Apple working with MicroLatch on fingerprint recognition]

An Apple Apology (Comic)

[From An Apple Apology (Comic)]