Samsung Focus S confirmed to have no microSD expansion

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We were recently able to confirm the Samsung Focus S only came with 16 GB of storage, but questions still remained about the presence of expandable storage via a microSD card, a feature of the original Samsung Focus.

Documentation and pictures on AT&T’s support website however confirms the absence of any expansion, meaning users are limited to 16 GB of storage after all.

There are still rumours of a 32 GB version, but that is unfortunately likely only wistful thinking.

Nokia Lumia Windows Phones feature Corning Gorilla Glass

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The Nokia Lumia 800 follows suit of the N9 in more ways than one and the glass is no different. The first two Windows Phones from Nokia feature Corning Gorilla Glass, both the 710 and 800. The manufacturer has a long track record in using this glass technology to improve the toughness of the screen. So to recap for the Lumia 800, we have AMOLED, curved glass and Gorilla toughened glass being implemented. The 800 should be fairly resilient when it comes to being flung across a room in rage, or accidentally dropped while out and about. Check out our product review for a walk through.

Though this is interesting news, it's nothing new for Windows Phone. HTC have a number of devices using Gorilla Glass, as well as the Dell Venue Pro and even some LG handsets.

Source: wpcentral.com

Nokia promises tethering for Lumia 800, points finger of blame at FCC

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Nokia's mission to reclaim smartphone competitiveness with its Windows Phone clan isn't over. We may have bemoaned the lack of data tethering in our Lumia 800 review, but it appears the Finnish phone titan has already announced that it will be coming to its Mango-flavored handsets. The apparent reason behind the inability of its flagship Windows Phone to share its data connectivity at launch was due to the FCC's stringent requirements.

Nokia Teams Up With ST Ericsson For Future Windows Phones

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ST Ericsson today announced its official partnership with Nokia. In the light of the agreement, ST-Ericsson is now selected as a supplier for future devices Nokia plans to introduce with Windows Phone at its core.

Back in may we heard that ST Ericsson dual-core chips might be powering Nokia Windows Phones at one moment in time. We've also heard with that occasion that there are 12 devices planned for 2012 and they might be powered by future versions of the U8500 chip, which is a dual core one. Gilles Delfassy, president and CEO of ST-Ericsson said that "NovaThor platforms continue to gain traction as they enable customers to bring great smartphones to the market".

Nokia Ad Push Raising Lumia's Profile; 800 Available November 16?

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Nokia product announcements for the Lumia 710 and Lumia 800 Windows Phone Mango handsets have gone over in a big way, dominating today's headlines and generating a lot of buzz. It's clear that Nokia is very interested in seeing its first WP7 efforts a success – it certainly has enough at stake – already releasing tons of content showing-off the pair of phones and their capabilities. We're still taking it all in, while Nokia is one step ahead, starting what looks to be a very prominent advertising campaign for the Lumias, and helping to narrow-down when we could expect the phones to arrive.

Steve Ballmer hits back at Android and praises the iPhone

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Google's User Experience Director for Android, Matias Duarte, said about Windows Phone being too forceful everything into a constrained look and feel. While he says that he offers the web, there's no denying that Metro is a beutiful UI and effectively provides content with no pixels wasted to chrome. Even Android took some pointers from Windows Phone (as well as other platforms).

Steve Ballmer, being the legend that he is (see the above image), has lashed back at Android but praises the iPhone to keep it from being a targeted attack. Ballmer mentioned that Android is simply difficult for the user to get into from the off.

Nokia Windows Phones to use "Pure" Font

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After Long Zheng saw those first press-shots of the Nokia 800 Windows Phone that is expected to be announced next week, he noticed that the images are using Nokia's "Pure" font style for the text as opposed to Microsoft's usual Segoe font originally designed for Windows Phone. As we know, Nokia has special privileges when it comes to modifying the Windows Phone operating system due to their deal with Microsoft. Changing the font to something more in tune with Nokia's branding is a subtle way to really differentiate Nokia's Windows Phones without fragmenting or deterioriating the Windows Phone design too much.

Nokia 800 SeaRay press shots emerge

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Although not exactly revealing, these high resolution renders are supposedly the final look of the Nokia 800 aka SeaRay, which is expected to be announced officially next week in London at Nokia World. The SeaRay, sporting a 3.7" AMOLED screen with a 1.4GHz CPU and 8MP camera, is expected to go on sale in various European countries as early as mid-November.

The renderings here don't show too much new outside of Nokia Navigation and Nokia Musik apps on board, which should be great OEM offerings to those who like the Nokia brand. Other than that, the devices look exactly like the Meego N9, including the same three color schemes of pink, grey and blue.

Steve Ballmer: A "Bunch of New" Nokia Windows Phones Next Week

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Nokia's World event is happening exactly one week from now and Steve Ballmer, while talking at the Web 2.0 Summit, is pretty excited about what the Finnish phone maker has up its sleeves.

Microsoft's CEO was excited to tell the world that Espoo "will have a chance at their Nokia World show next week to show a bunch of new devices running Windows Phone". "It should be pretty good", he said, and he definitely knows more than the rest of us who are expecting two Nokia Windows Phones to see the light of day.

Microsoft officially launches Windows Phone in India with trio of Mango devices

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You may have already been able to get a Windows Phone device in India without too much trouble, but Microsoft has only just now made things fully official -- complete with Windows Phone Marketplace, voice recognition support, and a trio of Mango devices. That includes just the HTC Radar initially, which will be available next week for the local equivalent of $490, while the Samsung Omnia W and Acer Allegro (believed to be the same as the W4) are set to follow sometime in November. Of the three, the Allegro is said to be the cheapest of the lot, and there's also some reports that it will launch in Europe for €299 (or roughly $400) off-contract. Those curious about the Radar can check out our review from a few days ago.

Microsoft officially launches Windows Phone in India with trio of Mango devices

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You may have already been able to get a Windows Phone device in India without too much trouble, but Microsoft has only just now made things fully official -- complete with Windows Phone Marketplace, voice recognition support, and a trio of Mango devices. That includes just the HTC Radar initially, which will be available next week for the local equivalent of $490, while the Samsung Omnia W and Acer Allegro (believed to be the same as the W4) are set to follow sometime in November. Of the three, the Allegro is said to be the cheapest of the lot, and there's also some reports that it will launch in Europe for €299 (or roughly $400) off-contract. Those curious about the Radar can check out our review from a few days ago.

LG Germany confirms a small update for Internet Sharing is coming

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Assuming LG Germany isn't fibbing here, users of the Optimus 7 can expect sometime in the (near) future a small firmware update to enable internet sharing aka tethering. We know the phone's chipset supports the function but since it was a late-added feature to Mango, most OEMs have had only a little time to play with the drivers. Looks like LG though is prepped to enable this for its users, which will involve updating the firmware in a quick and painless fashion.

Lets hope it comes this year.

Microsoft's giving away Windows Phones to those frustrated with BlackBerry

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In another great publicity stunt, Microsoft, via Windows Phone evangelist Ben Rudolph, is giving away 25 Windows Phones to those with the best BlackBerry stories of why they are frustrated with the company and their phones.

In case you didn't know, RIM is undergoing some serious issues right now with their BES Email and BIS service, where customers are experiencing major issues world-wide. It's been so bad that the company had to hold a press conference to address that matter (and which did little to alleviate any concern). Needless to say, this is doing nothing for RIM's image nor their plummeting market share and stock.

WiFi Tethering on handsets and the Dell Venue Pro

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There has been some confusion surrounding tethering (Internet sharing) in Mango, but a list of supported handsets has been compiled over at the XDA Developer forum. OEMs and carriers have the choice to enable tethering for customers should firmware allow it, for example Orange has recently alerted customers to a tethering add-on, but work has begun for workarounds in enabling the feature. Unfortunately, tethering depends on LAN chipset used and we have bad news for Venue Pro owners.

HTC Titan and Radar coming to Taiwan

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Today HTC announced that its island home of Taiwan will be seeing the HTC Titan and Radar in the very near future. The Titan, HTC's new flagship phone, is set to hit shelves later this month at a retail price of Tw$18,900 ($619.67). The Radar, its lower price point counterpart, is expected in November and will fetch Tw$13,900 ($455.74).

Taiwan joins the expanding Mango marketplace, along with India, who gets official Windows Phone support today. you can bet that both will see their fair share of the bump in marketing recently promised by WP7 phone manufacturers like HTC.

Acer Announces Allegro As Its First Windows Phone Mango

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Acer was accepted as an official Windows Phone OEM together with Fujitsu and ZTE at the time when Windows Phone Mango was announced and now the manufacturer is reportedly making its first device running the Redmond platform public.

The Acer Allegro (you might know it as the W4) will land in Europe before Christmas and will be priced around EUR 299 (around $410) unlocked. From the W4 days we remember that the phone will be powered by a Qualcomm MSM8255 chip at 1GHz and have a 3.6-inch WVGA display, five-megapixel camera with auto-focus and 8GB internal storage.

First Nokia 800 ads spotted, announcing the arrival WP7 for Finnish faithful

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Nokia keeps promising that its first Windows Phone 7 device will be shipping by the end of the year and, though the company is cutting it close, we may actually see that vow fulfilled. It's already been caught in spy shots a few times over, but now marketing materials for the Nokia 800 have started to leak out. With Nokia World only a few weeks away, it makes sense that the Finnish manufacturer would want a campaign ready to roll. The ads for what was formerly known only as Sea Ray talk up WP7's social features, with one declaring "Take, tag, sort and share. All in a flash." It's hardly a confirmation, but this is as good as sign as we've seen that Nokia will actually deliver us a little slice of Mango before it's time to buy a new calendar.

AT&T HTC HD7S Reportedly Getting Mango Today

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The Windows Phone 7.5 Mango update roll-out process is going very well according to Microsoft with a relatively quick spreading period over carriers and manufacturers.

According to recent reports users of the HTC HD7S on AT&T will be getting their Mango treat starting today. The information comes from an allegedly leaked internal memo to AT&T staff that states: "On October 11, 2011, Microsoft is scheduled to begin rolling out the new Mango 7720 update to AT&T customers with existing HTC HD7S Windows Phone 7 devices".

HTC Radar Arriving On October 1?

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It looks like Mango could be nearly upon us, with rumors suggesting Microsoft could officially launch the OS any day now. Once that happens, we can expect the floodgates to open and start to see the arrival of all the new Windows Phone hardware we've been hearing about for months and months. One such model will be HTC's Radar, which we've already seen described as "coming soon" to a carrier. Now we may be able to put a date to its release, with one retailer announcing plans to carry the phone beginning October 1.

The UK's Phones 4u made a statement today concerning its sales of the just-announced HTC Sensation XE Android, and its plans to carry the phone in white starting October 1.

Nokia's First Windows Phone To Ship In One Month? [Update]

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The first Nokia Windows Phone -- we just assume it will be the SeaRay but we've heard names like Nokia 703 and 800 too -- is going to ship in the middle of month October, according to recent reports. We initially heard that Nokia is planning a Europe-only launch limited to six countries this year and one month from now allegedly seems to be the date.

The American market will get its Nokia Windows Phone treat around March 2012 and Australia doesn't seem to be in luck either, as Q1 2012 is the timeframe Nokia made public.

Of course, the phone shipping in Europe mid-October is still just a rumor as we've heard nothing official from Nokia. We didn't even hear anything official from Microsoft either, but a Mango launch announcement is expected really soon (tomorrow, according to some rumors).