It has been confirmed that Microsoft has been optimizing Windows Phone 7 to accommodate lower cost hardware specifications, which basically means that rather than taking on the likes of the iPhone 4S with high-end smartphone offerings, WP7 can now also be installed on low-end devices and cheap mid-end offerings.

Apparently the changes will be unnoticeable to many, but under-the-hood apps will be able to use more RAM than what is physically available. This sounds to us a lot like virtual memory (a feature which Microsoft has given its operating systems for years) and we think it’s a great move which could put some pressure on low-end Android devices, we’ll have to wait and see. As for the new hardware requirements we are told that WP7 and nearly all the apps available at the Marketplace will run well on devices with 7×27 processors and 256 MB of RAM.

This is good news for Nokia and even better news for Microsoft, let us explain why: It looks like Nokia could seriously begin forgetting about the dated Series 40 operating system and instead utilize WP7 on a lot more devices, which in-turn means that the Windows Phone 7 platform will be more appealing to developers. As soon as more developers see the WP7 Marketplace as a place to make serious money we’ll start seeing thousands more apps go live and all that competition should ensure that developers thrive to create apps which are better than rival offerings.

One smartphone which runs Windows Phone 7 with just 256MB of RAM is the Nokia Lumia 610, this was recently revealed at MWC 2012 and if you check out the video embedded at the bottom of this you will see that there’s no sign of slow-performance – obviously multimedia capabilities such as HD video playback will probably suffer, but not everyone cares about such features. You can see a couple of images of the Nokia Lumia 610 below and find out everything about this new smartphone here. (We’ve also embedded Nokia’s official Lumia 610 introduction video at the bottom of the page).

Microsoft has also revealed that the Windows Phone Marketplace will be enabled in 23 more markets (check out the WindowsTeamBlog for full details), these new markets are said to equate to a 60% increase in the total addressable market for WP7, combine that with fact that cheaper devices will soon run WP7 and you have to say that 2012 and beyond is looking very bright for WP7.

What is your favorite OS for mid to low-end smartphones? I must say it can be hard work configuring Android to run well on the Samsung Galaxy Europa….

It’s no secret that Nokia plans to bring NFC connectivity to future smartphones, however a recent article over at Guardian.co.uk highlights the fact that one of Nokia’s design chiefs has revealed that the Finish company is also paying close attention to wireless charging technologies – could this mean that a portless Nokia Lumia isn’t too far away? It sure looks this way – especially if you read the following quote from Marko Ahtisaari (Nokia’s head of design).

“If you can take away a moving part and make it more beautiful in the placement of the components, we’ll do it, so that’s something where we can certainly keep improving. Take it to the extreme, and why are there any connectors?”

These days people don’t utilize ports as much as they used to, all top-end smartphones feature WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity which both allow for fast data transfer, not forgetting the fact that cloud storage is very popular at the moment and mobile data carriers offer much faster internet connectivity than they did a few years back. So, why do we need USB cables to link our smartphones to our computers? There’s really no need these days.

Some people used to link their smartphones to their computer to update the software phone’s software and perhaps utilize the smartphone’s internet connectivity, however mobile operating systems like Android now allow over-the-air updates and mobile WiFi hotspot functionality. Currently iOS and Windows Phone 7 don’t allow such functions natively, but the hardware is already there so it’s something which could be built into future OS builds. If Microsoft make such progress with WP7 there will be two fewer reasons to connect your Nokia Lumia smartphone to a computer via USB.

Currently all smartphone also feature a 3.5mm headset jack, here consumers can plug-in earphones/headphones and hands-free kits, but there are wireless options available. NFC headphones and headsets are beginning to take off and Bluetooth hands-free kits have been around for years, so despite the fact that a 3.5mm headset is convenient it is by no means a necessity.

Finally let’s talk about wireless charging. CES 2012 showed that wireless power solutions are making strides, albeit slowly, but we remember when 3D technology and dual-core processors coming to smartphones was laughed at, so it’s not out of the question.

Would you like a portless smartphones? Or do you think current ports are convenient?

It seems that the early signs of the Nokia and Microsoft partnership are looking good, and an article over at TG Daily is saying that Nokia already has 45 percent of the current generation Windows Phone devices. Only just behind is HTC that currently has 40 percent of the market.

Making up the top three is Samsung with only 12 percent of the market. Nokia decided to ditch its Symbian operating system in favor of Windows Phone in an effort to get its brand back into the spotlight, and make an impact in markets such as the US. It is also hoped by both companies the partnership will help it compete with the iPhone and Android platforms.

At the moment it is certainly getting the Nokia name back into the limelight, which has been helped by the entry level Lumia 710. The device offers consumers with less money the chance to get onto the platform, and also gives them their first taste of the operating system.

For now the platform is still a long way behind the likes of Android and iOS but it is a promising start. Many consumers are seemingly reluctant to give the Windows Phone operating system a try, and instead choose either the iPhone or Android platform.

Have you tried a Windows Phone device?

You can find out why CNET were so fond of the Lumia 900 here, you could argue that compared to some of the Android smartphones which were showcased at the expo the Lumia 900 is a little underwhelming, but we are beginning to learn that comparing WP7 devices against Android counterparts doesn’t always paint the full picture as different software platforms run better on different hardware – for example I still can’t believe how well the Lumia 800 runs with a single-core 1.4GHz processor and 512MB of RAM.

A few days ago we told you that the Nokia Lumia 900 would be coming to AT&T exclusively, however like always Nokia will be selling this smartphone direct from Nokia.com. A recent article over at Engadget pulls in information from multiple sources (mainly the Windows Weekly Twit.tv channel) and it looks like this smartphone could be headed for retail on March 18 – whether this will also be the date it hits AT&T is currently unclear.

Last year Nokia made a huge decision to scrap Symbian in favor of Windows Phone 7 and it looks like this decision is beginning to pay off, the massive growth Google Android saw throughout 2010 and 2011 played a big part in poor sales for smartphones such as the Nokia N8 – not adopting WP7 could have been the worst decision Nokia ever made, so let’s hope we continue to see plenty of WP7 smartphone emerge – perhaps some more affordable models are what we need to see next.

We have high-hopes for the Nokia Lumia 900 and think that it could play a massive part in putting Windows Phone 7 on the map in 2012 – will you buy the Nokia Lumia 900 in 2012?

When Alan Ng spoke about the HTC Titan II in detail he suggested that the 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera could capture video at 720p, however this never quite sounded right to us so looked into things further. It turns out that the rear-facing 16 megapixel camera is what’s capable of 720p video capture – this is disappointing, especially considering the fact that there’s plenty of smartphones which feature 8 megapixel sensors which can capture 1080p Full HD video. You can see the extract from HTC’s press release below which seemingly confirms that there will be no 1080p capture:

The smartphone also enables 720p HD video recording with the rear-facing camera

We carried out a little research and from what we can see there is not a Windows Phone 7 smartphone currently available, or announced, which boasts 1080p video capture, therefore perhaps this is a limitation with the Mango update (aka Windows Phone 7.5), maybe the Apollo update which is said to arrive in mid 2012 will add this capability – we sure hope so.

It seems weird to us that on one hand the HTC Titan II can boast the highest-resolution camera sensor we have ever seen in a smartphone, yet not allow 1080p video capture. We would have thought that if HTC knew that the Apollo update would bring 1080p capabilities they would have told us this at CES as some may see this limitation as a dealbreaker – wouldn’t you/.

Hopefully we will find out more about the reason for the HTC Titan II’s mediocre video capture soon, when we do we will keep you posted.

The Lumia 800 has sold well in the United Kingdom and is considered by many (including me) as Nokia’s best-ever smartphone, part of its success in the UK has been due to the fact that it has been offered by pretty much every carrier out there, so why make the 900 exclusive to AT&T? We’re not quite sure to be honest as this will act as a massive bottleneck – but we imagine that AT&T and Nokia have great reasons for this, One great thing about the Lumia 900 hitting AT&T is the fact that it boasts LTE connectivity, this makes it AT&T’s first-ever WP7 smartphone to boast such connectivity.

There are two reasons why the terms “counter-productive” have been added to this post’s title, firstly over the past few years Nokia has failed to impact the smartphone market heavily, therefore restricting this handset to a carrier which has a lot of critics could be a bad decision, secondly Windows Phone 7 has its work cut out trying to take on the likes of iOS and Android and Nokia’s decision to back AT&T will mean that a huge potential customer base has been blacklisted before it even arrives – that said the early iPhone models proved that a carrier doesn’t necessarily determine a products success/failure.

We published a post one week ago with lots of leaked specification information, it turns out that all the details in this post were spot on and now we know a little more. Firstly we can confirm that it will run Mango, also we know that the battery should allow for up to seven hours talk time and 300 hours standby time. Other specs which we told you all about last week include a single-core 1.4GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 512MB of RAM, an 8 megapixel camera (with dual-LED flash) and a 4.3-inch ClearBlack AMOLED display which outputs at 800 x 480.

In terms of release date and pricing nothing has been confirmed, we are told that it should arrive “in the next couple of months” with an “aggressive” price – but that doesn’t tell us a great deal – when we hear more we will have to keep you posted.

You can find out more about the Lumia 900 over at Nokia.com, will you buy the Lumia 800? If not, what puts you off?

The Nokia Lumia 900 may be referred to as the “Ace” when it is released, apparently this smartphone will be on show at CES 2012, but thanks to a recent PocketNow article and a not-so-recent BGR post we already have an idea as to what we can expect. Before continuing please note that none of the following specifications have been officially confirmed by Nokia, so take them with a pinch of salt.

Let’s start with its most noticeable feature, the display, the Lumia 900 is said to boast a 4.3-inch display which utilizes Nokia’s ClearBlack technology and somewhat trumps the Lumia 800′s 3.7-inch display, we don’t know what resolution the 900 will support, but we hope it improves on the Lumia 800′s 480 x 800 resolution. PocketNow also suggest that the Lumia 900 will have 512MB of RAM at its disposal, an 8megapixel camera on the rear and a great-sounding 1830mAh battery. BGR has stated that we should expect a 1.4GHz Qualcomm CPU, which should run WP7 nicely, however lacks in comparison to some competing smartphones – again this may turn out to be false.

Less interesting information which has been stated includes talk of 1700MHz band and LTE connectivity and a design which weighs 160 grams and comes in at 12mm thick. Many had hoped that this smartphone would run Windows Phone 7 Tango upon release, however the rumors are currently suggesting that it will run Mango out-of-the-box, which pretty much sums up that this will not be the most exciting handset we see at CES 2012.

With all that said, Nokia spent years releasing lackluster feature phones and lost market share, so maybe a few average smartphones will solidify the company’s position – as long as they are not priced similarly to top-end Android dual-core smartphones etc the Lumia 900 may attract quite a lot of attention.

Are you excited or underwhelmed about the Nokia Lumia 900?

This app is called ‘Ask Ziggy’ and not only is it free, but it is not supported by ads either, the official descriptions states that it brings Siri-like functionality to WP7 and we forgive you for being skeptical, but keep reading on to find out just how good this application really is. You can get Ask Ziggy from the Windows Phone Marketplace here.

At the bottom of the post we have embedded a video which was uploaded to the WMExperts YouTube channel, here we see Ziggy deal with a long-list of questions and the app does incredibly well – we have to remember that this app has been developed by a relatively small dev team called Averotek. The look of the application and how it runs is very much like Siri, however we are hoping to see future updates to enhance functionality and further integrate itself into WP7.

You can see a full list of commands over at the official Ask Ziggy website, we were pleasantly surprised by the answers given to questions such as “What’s the square root of 100?”, “Who directed Star Wars? and “What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?” – in fact the answers given went above and beyond what we expected – see the image below. Answers are read out by Ziggy and shown in text, if an answer cannot be found a link is usually provided.

Perhaps the most impressive feature is something which Siri is incapable of, basically if you say “Update” followed by a sentence it will tweet that message and set it as your status on Facebook – how neat is that!

Comments on YouTube suggest that Microsoft should hire the guy that came up with the application and we agree, reviews on the WP7 marketplace are mixed, however we think that you should see this app as a work-in-progress and understand just how much hard work has gone into this app to get it to the stage it is currently at.

Have you asked Ziggy? If so, are you impressed?

If you scroll down to the bottom of this page you can see a video where the Lumia 800 is the subject of some pretty rigorous testing. You get to see a key being scratched across the beautiful 3.7-inch AMOLED display, it is also scraped across a masonry wall and dropped multiple times, despite all this not only does the smartphone still work, but it also seems to stay free from bumps and scratches.

The display is rugged thanks to the curved gorilla glass display, however the fact that the Lumia 800 can survive multiple drops is testament to Nokia’s great build quality and the great decision which the design team made when choosing a solid plastic unibody design.

We really think Nokia has stepped up to the plate with the Lumia 800, not only is it physically sound but the decision to scrap Sybmian in favor of Windows Phone 7 was a great one in our opinion. There have been mixed reports when it comes to sales figures, however the fact that lots of carriers have backed this smartphone suggests that this release will be seen as much more of a success than last year’s Nokia N8 release – what do you think?

Are you impressed by the ruggedness of the Lumia 800?

The way in which the attackers gain access to these phones is by simply sending an SMS to any WP user. You will know if you have been attacked, as your Windows Phone 7.5 will reboot and then you are unable to send any text messages. WinRumors has tested the problem on a number of models running different versions of Windows Phone, including Mango.

This bug will not just affect the SMS feature, as other areas will also come under attack in other ways, such as locking your device via live tile and Facebook, which WinRumors will elaborate more on. You can get around this issue, but only if you are fast when you boot your device up, as you have a limited amount of time to get past the lock screen.

As for the SMS bug, the only workaround for this is a hard reset of your handset – now that seems a little drastic. The likes of iOS and Android have also had SMS bugs, for the former attackers were able to gain total control over an iPhone, the issue with the latter was not as bad, as attacker could only manage to knock the phone offline.

Let’s not start panicking just yet, as we are told that the problem is not a security issue, just the way how Windows Phone handles SMS; we should expect some sort of update, but first we await a response from Microsoft.