We will see smartphones running Tizen OS starting to hit the market in the coming months. The OS is backed by the Linux Foundation, Samsung, and Intel. Now it seems the chip maker has been busy developing the company’s own UI overlay, codenamed “Obsidian”, for Tizen. There is also talk that it could eventually be used on Android devices as well.

A leak has brought out pictures and videos which allow us to take a peek at Obsidian. The work on it is certainly not finished, but we can see some of its unique features.

As you will see in the video below, there’s slide-to-unlock on the lock screen and also “Life magazine” text. We saw the same thing on a Samsung reference Tizen device earlier. The apps are seen as boxy, closely-packed icons. It is similar to the flat designs of Windows Phone and Android (no iOS skeuomorphism here).

There will always be three buttons at the bottom of the screen: phone, messages and people. A single swipe left from the apps screen will take you to a single contact screen, and one more left swipe and you get to the contacts list. To alert notifications an app icon will be rotated 45 degrees and there will be a red notification at its bottom. Opening clock and settings or other apps will reveal a quick-view pane at the screen’s bottom with a button to fully open the app.

The Obsidian UI will reportedly run over Tizen 2.0 and the company’s reference device with the UI will be codenamed Josephine. But keep in mind that nothing is official at the moment.

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Nokia’s 41-megapixel 808 certainly turned a lot of heads, especially those of all the shutterbugs out there. But only if it came with Windows Phone, right? Well, Nokia is said to be having plans to introduce a WP device (“EOS”) with the same camera sensor as the 808 and with their famous PureView technology, and that device could be the one seen above.

As you can see, the device has a pretty giant bulge on its back. Of course those who like to click a lot of pictures with their phone wherever they go won’t be bothered about that hump as long as the photos are amazing, and from the looks of things it should have awesome cam capabilities. Carrying it around surely won’t need as much effort as walking with a big DSLR.

It also seems to a have a big flash. And we have a doubt whether that “XX” is suggesting that it’s a 20MP camera.

Whether it’s the EOS Windows Phone or not we are expecting the device to be official sometime soon. In the meantime, we are digging in for more info. So stay tuned for updates.

Would you mind such a bulge on your phone if it can take great pictures?

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In fact, when you compare the three month period ending in April 2013 to the three month period ending in February 2013, Windows Phone actually grew over 36% in terms of market share in the United States. To be fair, even with that growth, Windows Phone still only occupies a mere 5.6% share in the American smartphone market, but that’s a pretty sizable improvement over the 4.1% it had previously. To put that in perspective, RIM stayed steady at 0.7% and Symbian, oddly enough, increased from 0.1% to 0.3%. The growth of Windows Phone can largely be attributed to Nokia and its launch of the Nokia Lumia 620, as well as its wider availability of the Lumia 820 and Lumia 920. And then there is low-cost Lumia 520/521.

As far as Android and iOS are concerned, Apple fell from 43.5% to 41.4% and that’s probably because we’re still waiting on a new iPhone refresh later this year. By contrast, Android grew slightly from 51.2% to 51.7% and this trend may continue when the numbers for the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S 4 come through. In any case, even though Windows Phone is a distant third, it has clearly established itself as the obvious third.

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If you are looking for a job then Microsoft is hiring. It looks like they need engineers to help them prep the latest version of their Windows Phone mobile OS.

A job posting states that Microsoft is looking for a software development engineer to work on a Windows phone update scheduled to release during the holiday season:

“This is a great time to join us as we’re completing our current release and getting ready for our next release targeting the holiday of this year.”

While we the details don’t mention a major release, the time frame certainly indicates this could be the case. Previous Windows phone updates have been released in September and October, perhaps Windows phone 8.5 is heading to phones for Christmas 2013? Considering all the previous rumors about Windows Blue and Windows Phone Blue, this could certainly end up being a job related to that effort. What do you think?

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It looks like Microsoft and Chinese phone manufacturer Huawei are gearing up to release a new smartphone for the African market. The Huawei 4Africa phone features a 4-inch screen and 5 mega-pixel rear camera all while managing an extremely affordable $150 price point, without contract. Microsoft also plans to bring Nokia into the game with 2 custom African Windows Phones from the Finnish handset maker.

Africa is one of the fastest growing smartphone markets in the world, and with Huawei as the leading supply of communications technology on the continent, Microsoft has a powerful ally. According to researchers, Africa has an average sales growth of 43% which is set to increase with most phones going to South Africa and Nigeria where smartphone penetration is expected to reach 30% by 2013.

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It is perhaps because, while Nokia has lost significant market share, it still does reasonably well with lower-end cell phones for emerging markets like India, an area that some of the other cell phone companies tend to ignore. It also helps that Nokia is growing its Lumia family of Windows Phone devices and these are starting to do pretty well in places like India, Russia and parts of Asia. These hit the higher end market, helping to balance Nokia’s portfolio.

To further spur on its success in India, Nokia is even hosting a reality television show there where consumers can present app ideas to a panel of judges. The best ideas are then made into a reality, turning them into real apps for Nokia’s Windows Phone devices. Windows Phone and Nokia may be lagging behind in markets like the United States, but it shows that the Finnish company is able to capitalize on opportunities where it sees them.

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The post Nokia Crowned Most Trusted Brand in India appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Android has been labeled the “undisputed volume leader” by Neil Mawston of Strategy Analytics, because of dominating the market percentage over Symbian, iOS, Windows Phone and Blackberry. Even with a large increase in sales over last year, it was not enough for iOS to budge the deficit.

In total there were an estimated 700.1 million smartphones shipped in 2012 which is up from the 490.5 million handsets in 2011.  While it is not really a fair fight due to the fact there are many low end handsets on the market, Apple really only has two fighters in the game.  Pulling a 20% market share is somewhat reminiscent of the movie 300. [Spoiler Alert]  In the end the Spartans were defeated, but they took out quite a few Persians on the way!

To be really honest, 20% is actually rather impressive considering Apple really is only competing with a few handsets globally (iPhone 4, 4S and 5) versus the many, many Android competitors.

This latest information basically reveals nothing we didn’t already know, but it is interesting to see the actual estimated numbers and contemplate on the sheer magnitude in the volume of mobile phones out there.

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This week during an interview at CES, a senior project manager for Windows Phone, Greg Sullivan, didn’t exactly deny the possibility of a forthcoming Windows Phone handset with an Intel chip.  ”Our architecture is such that it’s hardware independent. For the same reason that Windows 8 [tablets] could run on Wintel, right now Windows Phone is on Qualcomm. We have a portable OS architecture.” While that leaves as many questions as before the statement, the lack of denial certainly makes the notion possible.

Intel Mobile Communications Group has a similar stance with President Hermann Eul stating that Intel is open to the idea of supporting the Windows Phone platform with an x86 chip. He also stated the decision would be made according to how successful the Windows Phone was in the future.

Intel has already seen success in the mobile phone chip market with companies like ZTE, Motorola and others already building smartphones with Atom and other Intel chips. Some tests have shown the Atom chips having better performance and battery life than that of many current ARM chips. Recent benchmarks, if they are to be trusted, ran on a Lenovo Atom-equipped smartphone showed performance nearly twice that of a Droid DNA with a Snapdragon S4.

Could Intel chips be the new standard for upcoming phones or will ARM always dominant the mobile sector?

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When the HTC HD2 originally hit the market it was just an ordinary Windows Mobile 6.5 handset, nothing special or worth gawking at. Now, years later? The HD2 has continued to dodge the Grim Reaper by continuing to live on as a hackable device that allows would-be modders to push modern software onto the device.

The HTC HD2 not only moved past Windows Mobile 6.5 over to Windows Phone 7 via hacking efforts, it was also recently shown off by Cotulla running Windows Phone 8. While the HTC HD2 probably doesn’t run these modern operating systems blazingly fast, the fact that it can run them at all is impressive.

Not impressed with the HD2 running both Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8? What about Windows RT, the ARM-version of Windows 8? That’s right, Cotulla has now returned with a new mod that allows Windows RT to be installed onto the HD2.

Considering RT is meant for big screens, this probably doesn’t run or look all that wonderful, but it is still pretty cool.

For those that are hoping for something less Microsoft-ish, there have also been hacking efforts in the past that put Android onto the device as well.

So what’s the secret to the HD2′s hacking success? Part of it is that it managed to lure in some very dedicated and talented hackers. The second reason is that its Qualcomm chip and the rest of the hardware is all very hack-friendly and highly compatible with a vast array of operating systems it seems.

Do you have an old HD2 laying around? Have you tried any similar projects to give the device renewed life?

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To all our friends in Mexico, are you wanting to get a Windows Phone, but not wanting to spend a ton of money?

Nokia is set to release its Lumia 505, which is essentially a scaled down version of the Lumia 510.  The handset is currently set to be released by Telcel in Mexico. The Lumia 505 has a 3.7 inch AMOLED 800 x 480 resolution display, an 8 MP rear facing camera, 256MB internal memory and 4 GB of available storage.

This phone runs Windows Phone 7.5 and will not be upgraded to Windows Phone 8 but is a good low cost alternative.  It is available in pink, red and black.

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