Microsoft | Fone Arena

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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Microsoft releases Microsoft Office for Apple iPad – Word , Excel and PowerPoint

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At an event in San Francisco today, Microsoft’s new CEO Satya Nadella announced the availability of Microsoft Office for the iPad. The company has released 3 new iPad apps for Word , Excel and PowerPoint . The news is not a big surprise considering this is a much expected move but instant availability on the App Store is a great piece of news of Office users especially those with a Office 365 subscription. The apps are free for download and event viewing office documents is free. But editing the documents requires an active Office 365 subscription. This is clearly Microsoft’s attempt at getting more users to sign up for their cloud based Office offering.

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Microsoft Office for iPad – Word , Excel and Powerpoint – Download Links

DownloadMicrosoftOfficeforiPad

Microsoft unveiled the much awaited Microsoft Office suite for iPad with 3 separate apps for Word , Excel and Powerpoint. The apps just went live on the US iTunes App Store at 11AM Pacific time and 2PM Eastern time. The apps are free to download and viewing office documents is free. However to edit the documents, an Office 365 subscription is required.

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Dell to pay Microsoft tax for its Android and Chrome OS devices

Dell is not just one of the biggest PC makers out there, but also a close ally to Microsoft, with the latter recently helping out when the company went private. But being an independent company, Dell did make its foray into other platforms, with Android, and eventually even Chrome OS, both Google products. So, naturally, much like any other OEM, Dell is now in a patent licensing agreement with Microsoft where it will pay royalties for its products based on Android and Chrome OS. But surprisingly, even Microsoft is licensing some patents from Dell for its Xbox gaming consoles, making this deal more balanced than usual.

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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 Surface 2 with LTE announced, priced at $679 for the 64 GB version

After confirming the presence of a mobile-enabled version in the works when launching the Surface 2, the Redmond giant has finally taken the wraps off Microsoft Surface 2 with LTE 4G on the AT&T network, retailing at a price of 679$ for the 64 GB version. The Surface was Microsoft’s first play as a PC hardware company. The first product, called Surface RT, was largely a flop due to poor usability and performance, and even took a write down in the company’s earnings. Surface 2, the successor, was launched almost an year later, with good reviews and better reception from consumers, but still not as popular as Microsoft would like. Touted as a portable productive machine, the Surface 2 in its initial variants lacked a LTE chip for mobile data, which was apparently a highly requested feature, and hence we are seeing it now, in the form of the slightly modified LTE variant of the Surface 2.

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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 reportedly makes Windows Phone free for Indian partners

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Microsoft would offer Windows Phone free, without any licensing fee for its Indian partners, according to a recent report from the Economic Times. Last month Microsoft announced nine new partners, that includes, Karbonn and Xolo from India. Karbonn recently announced that it would launch dual-boot phones in coming months. Xolo did not announce its plans for Windows Phone devices yet, but it recently unveiled Xolo Win, the company’s first Windows 8 tablet powered by AMD chip. Continue reading “Microsoft reportedly makes Windows Phone free for Indian partners”

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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Meet Cortana, Microsoft’s Voice based Personal Assistant

Apple has Siri and Google has Google Now, what does Microsoft have? It had Bing search on its phones till now, but things are expected to change soon as the next version of Windows Phone – Windows Phone 8.1 which is expected during Spring will come with Microsoft’s very own voice based personal assistant and it will be called – Cortana.

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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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Hands on with the Nokia XL: Lumia 520 killer?

In a courageous and cunning move, Nokia launched its new series of Android devices under the X moniker, a ploy to capture the entry level Smartphone segment, which they had initially planned to capture with the Asha platform. Three devices at different price points were launched, with the XL being launched at a higher 109 EUR price point. Sporting hardware design from the Asha phones and software design from Lumia, Nokia wants to create familiarity to Windows Phone in the low end and hopes to catch aspiring buyers and make them move to their hopefully more profitable platform. But the pricing is treacherously close to their low end Lumias, which might just end up cannibalizing the sales of the latter, even when providing a choice with similar hardware. The XL, a 5 inch Android phone with almost the same or better specifications than the Lumia 520, poses a threat, or may be is it opportunity for Nokia and Microsoft?

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