Nicholas Kolakowski

Microsoft has issued some additional details about Windows on ARM, for which it uses the acronym €œWOA.€ The operating system on that architecture will play a vital part in the company€™s long-term strategy for tablets and other mobile form factors. When the release version of Windows 8 appears sometime in late 2012, it will come […]

Microsoft will almost certainly use this year€™s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as the venue for whipping back the curtain from its Windows 8 Consumer Preview. The company has sent eWEEK and other media an invitation to a €œWindows 8 Consumer Preview€-themed event at 3 pm Feb. 29 at the Hotel Miramar. If a release […]

Minimized Ribbon Ever since it was first announced, Microsoft’s decision to include a user-interface “ribbon” in Windows 8 has proven somewhat controversial. Those who dislike its inclusion can take a little bit of heart, however, in how it’s been minimalized. Lossless Picture Rotation Microsoft’s Windows team has designed Windows 8 Explorer to respect EXIF orientation […]

Nokia will shift phone production from Europe to Asia by the end of 2012, a move that will result in 4,000 job cuts. The cuts will occur at three factories in Finland, Mexico and Hungary. On its Website, Nokia suggested it would provide financial support and assistance with local re-employment. €œThere will be no assembling […]

How can Windows Phone claim a bigger chunk of the smartphone market? Since Microsoft released the first iteration of Windows Phone in late 2010, pundits and analysts of all stripes have picked over the best way to answer that question. For Microsoft itself, of course, any answer is more than purely academic: considering the amount […]

Consumer demand for Apple’s iPhone 4S and other next-generation devices helped the worldwide smartphone market grow 54.7 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2011, according to a new IDC report. That surpassed IDC’s earlier estimate. For the entirety of 2011, smartphone shipments totaled some 491.4 million units, up 61.3 percent from 304.7 million units […]

Research In Motion€™s BlackBerry DevCon Europe conference, which started Feb. 7 in Amsterdam, placed third-party developers front and center. Highlighting what he called RIM€™s €œcommitment to our development community,€ RIM CEO Thorsten Heins told the developer audience gathered for his Feb. 7 keynote that, €œwithout you, the BlackBerry solution wouldn€™t be complete.€ (A complete video […]

Microsoft is prepping to release its Consumer Preview of Windows 8 (also known as the beta) sometime in the next few weeks. And although many details of the upcoming operating system have already been revealed, a few new leaks suggest that the company has some radical new alterations in store for users. Chief among these, […]

A new teardown of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus reveals a device with a new, cheaper Long-Term Evolution (LTE) baseband chip and a powerful 1.2GHz processor. €œThe new chip is estimated at nearly half the cost of the prior chip€™s $23 price tag,€ read the Feb. 6 note from ABI Research accompanying the teardown. €œThis type […]

Brandon Watson, senior director of Windows Phone development at Microsoft, has left to take a new job as director of Amazon€™s Kindle Cross Platform team. €œThe rumors are true,€ Watson wrote in a Twitter posting Feb. 3. €œThe team is in great hands. I€™ll miss working on #wpdev. I will the community, but won€™t be […]