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Seems as though we are finally seeing the rollout of the Tango update for Lumia devices. This morning my carrier unlocked Lumia 800 received the notification that an update was available. On plugging in device the update is listed as OSVersion 7.10.8112.7, which has been reported to be the first of three updates for the device (second is Tango 8773, and third is firmware). Whilst Tango has been seen going out elsewhere and onto other devices. Looks like the Lumia 800 is finally get to have a go with Tango.
**Update** 1st Stage updates 8112 - 2nd Stage Shows Update to Version 7.10 8773.98 3rd Stage NOKIA Update for Windows Phone
Results of fully updated phone as follows
OS Version 7.10.8773.98
Firmware 1750.0805.8773.12220
Radio S/W 1.7.50.08
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With the recent release of the Microsoft Office 2013 Customer Preview, many have been hitting a giant wall when it comes to connecting Hotmail and Gmail accounts in Outlook.
Outlook 2013 supports Exchange ActiveSync as an explicit option when creating accounts, which kisses goodbye to the pesky Outlook Connector. The problem is when Outlook can't detect Hotmail (or Gmail) accounts correctly. Should a valid address be entered into the account setup assistant and it can't configure Exchange ActiveSync, it will resort to POP and SMTP protocols. This isn't ideal.
Lucky for those who suffer from the above issue, a simple workaround is available that enables Hotmail users to enjoy the new Outlook experience...
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Tesco’s in the past were perhaps a little confused about Windows Phone. That is all set to change as they are now kindly offering the Nokia Lumia 710 and the Lumia 800 for use on their pay monthly tariffs. The Lumia 800 is being offered free of charge provided you are willing to commit to a two-year contract at £22.50 per month, available here.
The Lumia 800 is not alone in its fight for the hearts and minds of the UK’s grocery buying punters, the 710 is here too. The Lumia 710 sports the same internals as the Lumia 800 but is a little more budget friendly due to its construction techniques. Tesco are offering that on a similar 24 month contract for £20.00 a month.
If you are someone that prefers to have his or her phone without the contract shackles, Tesco offer the Lumia 800 to purchase on Pay as you go for a hefty £359.97. I will note that you can buy the device cheaper on sites such as Expansys.
Tesco mobile stocking Windows Phones is great news for the platform. Lumia handsets have proven to be popular with the phone buying public. From a recent article, it would seem that the Lumia brand has in fact overtaken Windows Phone in terms of brand awareness.
An interesting theme is emerging in that retailers are not stocking HTC, Samsung or ZTE devices. I think this has to do with the scale of advertising the Lumia devices have received. Nokia have solid relations with retailers and they seem to be capable of leveraging that advantage to push Windows Phone to places it has not been before. I wonder if Microsoft’s other partners had been more active in pushing Windows Phone earlier, instead of their Android offerings would we have seen more traction today?
Tesco as a company have a good relationship with Microsoft, so one has to wonder why it’s taken them so long to get to Windows Phone. After all, they have been offering a Tescos shopping app in the marketplace almost from the start.
So, will any of you be popping in to your local Tesco’s to buy some milk and a Lumia in the near future? Do you think the recent Hollyoaks tie up is getting retailers excited about taking on Windows Phones? Why do you think Tesco are offering this now with Windows Phone 8 around the proverbial corner? I am always keen to hear your thoughts in the comments!
Source : Tesco
Earlier this morning we reported on a neat little trick that a few Windows Phone apps can do which is keep your Wi-Fi connection active even when the display is powered off.
That’s pretty useful feature for some people who are using a public Wi-Fi access point that requires you to “accept” the terms of service each time you re-connect. On a Windows Phone, every time you turn the display off it kills the Wi-Fi connection meaning you are forced to reconnect which can be problematic--even more so if you’re downloading some files.
Over at XDA, developer Ha Mai Tung (WinPhoneViet.com) has created a neat little homebrew app called Keep WiFi Alive which exploits the trick that some audio apps use. The app creates a fake music stream that makes the OS “think” it is downloading music, thereby keeping the Wi-Fi connection active. The app is simple to use—just launch and hit the button. To disable you can either turn off Wi-Fi in Settings or restart the phone.
Demo of Keep WiFi Alive
The app is homebrew, meaning you’ll need a developer unlocked device (either AppHub or Chevron) and does not require interop access, meaning many of you can use it if you can sideload the XAP. It’s still in beta form so there could be some bugs and of course battery usage will presumably increase, so be warned.
Source: XDA Forums; via Windows Phone Daily, Plaffo
Windows Phone is very careful with how much power it uses. Normal behaviour for the OS is that whilst running on battery it will drop the Wi-Fi connection after a short period in order to conserve as much juice as possible. We have seen reports that point the finger at some apps which are seemingly overriding normal power saving behaviour. Is this a feature or a bug, I decided to do some tests.
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Browsing Bild.de can be hazardous to Tango's health
With Windows Phone Tango rolling out it is perhaps not a surprise that some isolated bugs may be discovered along the way. So far, not too many have cropped up but there is one that is interesting though seemingly rare.
Users have found that navigating to the German news site Bild.de on their phone, with “Desktop” enabled can result in the browser locking up the device. The site Bild.de does default to a mobile WAP version and there is a Windows Phone app too but users are free to use their IE9 in desktop mode to view the site “as is”.
We’ve tested the scenario on our Tango phone (Focus 2) and sure enough, upon loading the page the second time it does lock up the device. Since Internet Explorer is a native app, native apps can crash the OS whereas third-party apps should not be able to do so.
The theory seems to revolve around the idea that Bild.de is very graphic intensive with a lot of photos being pushed to the browser. Combined with Tango's low-overhead for 256MB devices and it seems to zap all of the available memory on the phone (of course we can’t rule out javascript errors or something else, either). You can replicate the crash yourself by following these directions:
The resulting crash means you would have to pull the battery (or hold the power button for 10 seconds) to reboot the phone. We tried this on a Windows Phone Mango device (HTC Titan) and could not replicate the crash. We also had no issues with a Galaxy Nexus with Android 4.1 meaning this most certainly seems correlated with Windows Phone “Tango”.
Is it a dire bug? Certainly not but it could be used as a browser-exploit by some nefarious people out there, even though that seems remote to us. Still, hopefully Microsoft will see this and patch it up for their next OS build.
Update: To make things even more confusing, it's not all devices. Our Lumia 900 with Tango is okay, but reports at XDA of the Radar, Omnia 7, Lumia 800 and our Focus 2 do have the crash.
Source: XDA; Thanks DerAusgewanderte, for the tip
Samsung has the Tango update but AT&T is not pushing it
Although AT&T itself is not pushing out any Tango-8773 updates for its current Windows Phones, the OEMs evidently have it on tap, or at least Samsung does.
We’ve had isolated reports that the Focus S was getting two OS updates (some are reporting new firmware, we’re still at 2103.11.10.1). However, whenever George Ponder or I would plug in our Focus S devices, it was always reported back to us that we had the latest update (7740).
The trick is to rig the system—basically use the same trick many of you did for Mango where you put your phone into Airplane mode (disable all radios), plug into Zune and check for an update. You then navigate away and go back to “Check for update” but as soon as it starts to look (about 2 seconds) you kill your internet on your PC. Now you wait about 30 seconds and an update will be shown. For more info on how that works, read our tutorial here.
You need to do that at least twice—once for 8112 and again for 8773 (Tango)—but yes, it does work and it’s officially from Samsung. We manually installed 8107 back in the day, so our phone was already on that OS version. The majority of you will need to upgrade to 8107, then presumably it will go to 8112 or 8773.
The changelog for Windows Phone 8112/8773 on the Focus S
So why is this happening? We can only speculate that Samsung has delivered the update to AT&T but the carrier is either holding it, still evaluating it, not releasing it or maybe they’re waiting on HTC and Nokia to do a universal roll out. Honestly, your guess is as good as ours.
We also have heard this works for the Focus Flash and possibly the Focus 2 (we manually installed Tango on our Focus 2 so can’t really verify). In other words, for all of you Samsung users who are on AT&T (and even non-branded versions), feel free to try this method to grab some updates.
We’ll keep you posted if anything official happens in the meantime.
While it is very rare for any Windows Phone to crash or freeze, we have on a few occasions seen it happen. It's rare because 3rd party apps don't have access to the core of the OS and therefore it's very difficult to cause the system to become unstable. Still, the problem may pop up and we figured we would cover you for the Lumia 800 & 900.
Why these two Nokia devices? With their unibody design, there's no physical way to access and therefore pull the battery. That puts users in a pickle if they need to soft-reset a stuck device. So without further ado, here's how you do it:
Lumia 900
Lumia 800
That's it. So although you will probably never need this it's good to know if you're in a pinch.
Edit: Some are saying in comments that just holding the power button for 10 seconds works too.
Recently here at Windows Phone Central we've received a few help requests through our app from users who's live tiles all appear to have stopped updating, including our own. Previously there have been bugs in our app that would cause its tile to fail, but when all live tiles on a device that rely on Background tasks get stuck, there's a bigger problem.
Up until this point I have been unable to reproduce the issue myself so I've been struggling to assist those of you asking us for a solution. In a stroke of luck though my Lumia 800's tiles recently stopped updating at all (excluding those updated through push notifications), and after a simple restart of the phone didn't help I have a solution to share with you all.
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By now Nokia’s commitment to the Windows Phone OS should be well established. What has made their role so vital to Microsoft is not just the hardware they’ve created (4 phones in 12 months) but the support they’re providing to the platform from all directions.
Whether it’s original OEM apps, exclusive titles, developer support tools, mapping data, dispersing thousands of free Lumias to devs or their promotions, Nokia has gone beyond their competitors in many ways.
One of those is one that may not be too familiar with Windows Phone Central readers but is just as impressive: Nokia’s SmartStart program.
What’s SmartStart? We get a behind the scenes glimpse of Nokia’s growing support system for new Lumia owners and share what’s coming next…
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