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Windows Phone 8.1 is official, brings Cortana and a ton of new features

Microsoft has finally revealed Windows Phone 8.1, the long awaited update to its mobile platform. Packing lots and lots of new features, the operating system finally gets up to speed in several departments. Starting from the action center, the parallax wallpapers to Cortana, the intelligent digital assistant, it would be safe to say that the OS has finally come of age. It may be a little late, but it is definitely not a little minor update, as it brings with it the potential to change the ecosystem of devices it runs on. The update, announced today, will be available for all Windows Phone 8 devices in the coming months, while enthusiasts can get a hold of this update in the first half of April. Besides that, the OS will come pre-installed on all the new Windows Phone devices, including the just announced Nokia Lumia 930 and the Lumia 635 and the Lumia 630 Dual SIM phone.

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Xbox One Smartglass beta previews support for OneGuide and Universal Remote

Xbox One, the latest gaming console from Microsoft, surprised a few by being the first console to have HDMI input for TV, and support for a unified TV channel guide, with voice activated navigation. The voice commands, using the next generation Kinect, might have performed well enough for most, but there is a better way to control the console now. Smartglass, the app that acts as the second screen input for Xbox One, is now in a separate beta channel which lets users preview the new and upcoming features. Amongst the latest features that are going to be added to this app later are support for One Guide, the channel guide that was initially usable only on the console, and a universal remote that can give out commands through the Kinect’s IR blaster.

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Cortana shows up on Bing’s personalization settings ahead of reveal

Cortana, Microsoft’s own take on a virtual personal assistant, is all set to be revealed at the //build/ developer event today in San Francisco. While we still haven’t heard anything straight from Microsoft regarding Cortana yet, it’s own property, Bing, which will power Cortana, now has references to the long awaited assistant. Cortana has been rumoured to be like Apple’s Siri and Google Now combined, with it offering personalized results, recommendations and more, apart from setting your alarms, reminders etc like Siri.

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Phil Spencer will head Xbox, promises increased gaming focus on all Microsoft platforms

The Xbox division at Microsoft was caught in a flux after Don Mattrick, the previous head, left the company for Zynga. Julie-Larson Greene then took over along with other hardware divisions like Surface until she was reassigned to user experience recently. And then Marc Whitten, who was all set to become the head of Xbox, left the company for Sonos, so now, the baton has been passed on to the head of Microsoft Studios, Phil Spencer. Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, announced this and other changes over a company-wide email, welcoming all the new heads into the senior leadership team. Phil Spencer will be leading the Xbox team responsible for Xbox – the console, Xbox Music & Video and Microsoft Studios.

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Nokia’s devices and services sale to Microsoft delayed to April

The Microsoft takeover of Nokia’s devices and services division is easily one of the most high profile acquisitions from the recent past. After the announcement of this deal, it was said that the regulatory bodies all around the world would have to give their go ahead and only then can the deal be closed. Initially, it was meant to be completed within the first quarter of 2014, but it has now been revealed that some of the regulatory approvals are still pending and the deal is now expected to close in April 2014.

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Microsoft unveils Direct X 12, lists benefits for Mobile

After a long wait, Microsoft has finally unveiled its plans for the next generation of its graphics APIs, Direct X. These APIs were developed by Microsoft for making game development easier on Windows and eventually on all of its other platforms. It provided a standard way, an abstracted layer, for developers, to take advantage of complex graphics hardware. This spurred the PC gaming industry, until the recent years, in which the development of the API tapered off, with evolutionary additions.

With Direct X 12, which is apparently a big departure from the current programming model, Microsoft hopes to reinvigorate game development on all its products, right from PCs to phones, tablets and of course, the Xbox One. Direct X 12 was revealed at the Game Developers Conference with hardware partners in AMD, Nvidia and Qualcomm, to name a few, and will ship on products starting 2015.

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Microsoft and Google don’t want dual OS(Windows+Android) devices, Asus Transformer Duet may be cancelled

Earlier this year, at the CES 2014, Asus announced the Transformer Duet which ran Android and Windows side by side. This was probably designed for those who wanted the best of both the worlds and it was quite a hit at the CES 2014. Even an Indian manufacturer – Micromax, announced a similar dual boot device – Micromax Laptab which was supposed to be available in February.

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Microsoft opens up Office 365 Android SDK

Microsoft has released the Office 365 software development kit for Android. With this, Microsoft is now opening up its SharePoint lists and files, Exchange contacts, mails and calendars to developers. Microsoft has made the preview available for download straight from GitHub.

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Microsoft’s top executives Bates and Reller to leave

It hasn’t been long since Satya Nadella took up his job as CEO of Microsoft and now, we have rumors that two of the company’s executives are leaving the company. According to reports from Recode, the company’s EVP of business development and evangelism Tony Bates and EVP of marketing Tami Reller are leaving the company.

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Microsoft partners with 9 more manufacturers for more Windows Phones

One of the main reasons that Windows Phones haven’t sold as much as Android smartphones is because of the lack of manufacturers. At launch, Microsoft had only a handful of manufacturers and as Windows Phone grew, the number of manufacturers shrunk and at one point, Microsoft bought out Nokia, which was probably the only company making Windows Phones.

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Dual SIM support coming soon to Windows Phone

dual-sim-windows-phone

Get ready for Dual SIM Windows Phones people ! At Mobile World Congress 2014 here in Barcelona, Microsoft announced that it is adding support for Dual-SIM functionality in Windows Phone with an upcoming update. This is heavily requested feature amongst users especially in India and China.Dual SIM smartphones are extremely popular in India and that is one of the main reasons that Windows Phone has failed to catch up with the ever expanding Android smartphone market. With support for Dual SIM cards, Microsoft can now compete with Google in the mid-range dual SIM smartphone market. One example of a hugely successful Dual SIM device is the Motorola MotoG which went on sale in India recently.

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Microsoft’s SkyDrive is now OneDrive

Microsoft was involved in a Trademark fight over the name “SkyDrive” and it lost. So, they had to rebrand it and from now on, Microsoft’s SkyDrive will be called as “Microsoft OneDrive”. Microsoft’s OneDrive is one among the many cloud storage options offered by big companies of the Internet – Google offers Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and many others.

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Microsoft reportedly discussing support for Android apps on Windows Phone and Windows

Microsoft is in discussions to add support for Android apps in Windows and Windows Phone, according to a report from TheVerge. Sources have told TheVerge that Microsoft is serious about bringing Android apps to both its platforms, but the discussions are still ongoing and nothing is concrete yet. The ongoing talks currently point to adding Android apps in the Windows Phone and Windows Stores, according to the report, which will inadvertently boost the app numbers, something that Microsoft really needs. Windows Phone and Windows have been second thoughts for any new developer looking at developing an app, and at most of the times, there are not enough resources to dedicate for a third platform, so will Android apps support on Windows and Windows Phone make sense?

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Stephen Elop will lead Microsoft’s Expanded Devices team, working on Xbox, Surface and Nokia

Stephen Elop, the ex-CEO from Nokia, will be heading the expanded devices team at Microsoft, as per reports. Previously rumoured to be in the running for the top job at Microsoft, Stephen Elop now gets to lead the newly formed team, like previously agreed upon. This is pretty obvious now, as Microsoft just announced its newest CEO, Satya Nadella, who takes over the position from Steve Ballmer. Elop stepped down from his role as the CEO of Nokia immediately after the announcement of Nokia-Microsoft acquisition, to avoid a conflict of interests.

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Microsoft invests $15mn in Foursquare, enters deal for licensing data

Foursquare, the popular location-based social network, has just received a 15 million dollar investment from Microsoft. This equity investment from the Redmond company comes after a successful $35mn round of VC funding for the New York based Startup in December last year, reports the Wall Street Journal. Along with this fresh investment, Microsoft has also entered into a multi-year deal with Foursquare for licensing its vast location-based data. This will apparently be put to use in its Search Engine Bing, and naturally in Windows Phone too, as an extension. Foursquare has a massive point of interest database that’s heavily crowd sourced with tips, check ins, comments and so forth, hence we think this deal is a biggie for Microsoft.

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