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Windows Phone 8 Announced: Here’s A Summary Of Its New Features

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Until yesterday, only the most enthusiastic Windows Phone 7 fans (or Microsoft execs) could have compared the Mango platform to iOS or Android, but today, things have taken a rather sudden and welcome turn for the folks over at Redmond. Microsoft just announced Windows Phone 8 for 180 countries and in 50 languages. It is an absolutely gorgeous variant of their mobile platform, but the announcement could be termed as a true example of mixed emotions. WP8 sounds just about perfect, but the bad news is that it will not be compatible with any of the existing WP7 devices (you read that right; not even the exalted Lumia series made the cut). Although Microsoft has got a set of sound reasons for this exclusion (which will be discussed past the break), the news won’t be pleasant for current Mango users. Having said that, maybe you will forgive MS once you hear about the awesomeness that constitutes Windows Phone 8. Plus, Mango users haven't been completely forsaken either, thanks to Windows Phone 7.8. Read More

AVG Family Safety For WP7 Released; Censors Inappropriate Web Content & Ensures Safe Browsing

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The rather strong presence of Internet Explorer as the stock browser in Windows Phone 7 has made sure that no other web browser app gains too much popularity in the Marketplace. It’s not that IE is the perfect browser for your Mango phone (it doesn’t even have private browsing), but most people are content with the convenience and efficiency it brings to WP7. AVG Family Safety is a new app (by AVG, the antivirus guys) that aims to go one step ahead of IE by offering the option to control content that can be browsed on your Windows Phone. If you are using the AVG PC suite, you can block any website on your phone (the WP7 app requires the same credentials as the PC variant), and in addition to that, the app also alerts users if there is malware on any website you visit. AVG Family Safety might be lacking some of IE’s flashiness, but it certainly does provide you with a more secure way of browsing the web. The app can be extremely useful for people whose children use their phone for surfing the net. Read on if you think AVG Family Safety can be of use to you. Read More

Get SMS Preview & Badge Count On The Messaging Live Tile In WP7

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Rooting your Windows Phone 7 might reduce the overall stability of the device, but most people aren’t likely to notice that, thanks to the awesomeness Homebrew apps can bring to your Mango phone. You can get a lot of cosmetic and productive customizations for your WP7 if you have an interop unlock. Developed by Windows Phone Hacker, SMS Tile is a new homebrew that changes the overall behavior of the Messaging live tile in WP7. By default, the live tile only shows the total count of unread messages, and the smiley changes its mood with respect to the amount of messages in your inbox (winking on a new text, amazed at a lot of new texts and sad when a delivery fails). SMS Tile takes away the emoticon from the Messaging tile, and replaces it with a preview of your last unread message, while revamping the badge as well. The app doesn’t affect the banner text notifications, and you can learn all about SMS Tile by heading past the break. Read More

The Official CNN App Now Available For All WP7 Devices

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One of the strategies Nokia is using in order to lure customers is the offering of Lumia-exclusive apps for Windows Phone 7. While Nokia may choose to keep their own apps (like Nokia Maps, Nokia Music and Drive) limited to the Lumia series indefinitely, there are some other apps that are released for the Nokia devices first, and come to all other Mango phones at a later date. One such app is the official CNN client for WP7, which was released for Nokia WP7 devices a few months back. Now, the app has arrived in the Marketplace for all Windows Phone users, and you can get the latest news and other content from CNN on the go even if you don’t own a Lumia phone. The app comes with push notifications (for breaking news) and live tile support. Head past the break if you want to know more about this official app of one the most popular news sources in the world. Read More

Get Daily Amazon, Woot & Newegg Shopping Deals On WP7 With Deal Flux

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A few months back, we covered a Windows Phone 7 app named Quixby Deals (review). That app focused on integrating deals from various sources, so that you can shop for everything in a more economical manner. While Quixby is a pretty good app, its developers have come up with an even more convenient and efficient app for letting users find the best deals from different stores. If you choose to use Deal Flux on your Mango phone, the app will ensure that you don’t have to do anything yourself, as it comes with live tile support, displaying the best deals of the day on your phone’s Start screen. Another plus point of the Deal Flux app is its integration of Woot, 1saleaday, Newegg and Amazon. Rather than pelting its users with tons of useless data, Deal Flux just presents the best deals of the day, along with detailed descriptions of each product. Read More

LINE: A Fun & Free Cross-Platform Instant Messenger For WP7

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Although the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace now boasts more than 100,000 apps, WP7 is usually labelled as the smartphone platform with the least number of apps. Having said that, there is no shortage of text chat apps for Mango phones, and WP7 has steadily accumulated all the popular chat clients available on Android and iOS. Samsung’s ChatOn (reviewed here) is the latest major messenger app to arrive in the Marketplace, but that doesn’t mean that the flow of such apps has finally subsided. WP7 developers have more to offer to users, and LINE brings a new dimension to the whole niche of messenger apps for Mango. Like all good chat apps, LINE is cross-platform, but rather than taking the whole business of communicating with your friends too seriously, the app makes chatting more fun and attractive. Instead of emoticons, LINE relies on packs of stickers that let users express their feelings even more thoroughly. The app is highly customizable in terms of its looks, and you can choose any background for separate chat windows. Read on for details. Read More

Markets & Me: Keep An Eye On The Stock Market & Manage Your Shares [WP7]

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Maybe there is no specific reason for the phenomenon, but the finance-related apps in the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace are a class of their own, especially with respect to quality. The likes of WSJ Live (review) and IntelliStocks (review) have already been covered by us, but Markets & Me is a Mango app that takes comprehensiveness to the next level. The app serves the dual purpose of keeping its users apprised of the latest situation in the stock market (just about all major markets are supported), and letting them manage their own portfolio(s). You don’t need separate news and financial management apps any more; if anything is related to the stock exchange, Markets & Me has got you covered. Read on to learn more about this awesomely through app for WP7 devices. Read More

Samsung’s ChatON Messenger Now Available For Windows Phone 7

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ChatON – Samsung’s multi-platform mobile instant messaging app – has finally made it’s way to devices running Windows Phone 7 and 7.5 Mango, adding Microsoft’s smartphone operating system to its list of platforms including Android, iOS, BlackBerry OS and Windows Mobile. With several players like iMessage, Whatsapp, Kik, GroupMe, Viber and Tango already in the game on WP7 amongst others, does Sammy’s offering come up to par against the competition? Let’s find out after the break. Read More

Official TopGear App Released For Windows Phone 7

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Anyone who is even remotely interested in cars probably knows a thing or two about the popular TV show TopGear that airs on BBC. TopGear keeps you up to date with all the latest happenings in the four-wheeled world, bringing you news and reviews of all the new cars in the market. In case the show alone isn’t enough to satiate your desire to know everything about cars, now there’s a Windows Phone 7 app that will let you view all the interesting bits from the show, along with photos, videos (downloadable) and other information related to all your favorite automobiles. More about the official TopGear app for Mango phones after the break. Read More

Wolfram Alpha+: Comprehensive Search Engine & Scientific Calculator For WP7

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Wolfram Alpha has always been popular, but in recent times, it has been more in the news owing to Siri’s dependency on the service. For those who don’t know much about Wolfram Alpha, it is a service that can be useful if you are looking for some piece of information, but don’t want to sort through a lot of search results. Wolfram Alpha is intelligent enough to come up with all the necessary information related to your query, and you can even perform complex calculation using the service’s calculator. Wolfram Alpha+, although not an official Windows Phone 7 client for Wolfram Alpha, comes with all the features offered by the web version of the service. You can perform calculations, simplify mathematical equations and ask Wolfram Alpha+ anything you want. Read More

YouRang Lets You Save Any YouTube Video As A Ringtone For Your WP7

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Gone are the days when it was a headache trying to set up a custom ringtone on your Windows Phone 7 device. With the release of Mango, Microsoft made it really easy to download and use ringtones on WP7. However, you still have to look for a good ringtone on any of the available apps, and there is no guarantee that your favorite ringtone will be listed anywhere. YouRang solves this problem by automatically converting any YouTube video’s soundtrack to a ringtone! You don’t need to connect your phone to your computer or go through a lot of complicated steps; YouRang does all the work as soon as you specify a video’s name and choose the part of it that you want to use as a ringtone. More after the break. Read More

Nokia Trailers: View Movie Trailers, Cinema Details & More On Lumia WP7

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The ultimate goal for Microsoft and Nokia is to make Windows Phone 7 a real match for iOS. While that scenario might not be on the horizon just yet, the Lumia series is doing pretty well in the market, and Nokia is making the user experience even better by coming up with more and more Lumia-exclusive apps. The latest among such is Nokia Trailers, an app that looks pretty similar to the iTunes Trailers app from Apple (reviewed here). Nokia Trailers can be used to view high-quality trailers from newly released or upcoming Hollywood movies, and lets you maintain a complete record of all the movies you have watched (or wish to watch). Nokia Trailers will provide you with reviews of movies along with a list of all the theaters near your current location. So, if you are a Nokia Lumia owner and like watching movies, head past the break for details of Nokia Trailers. Read More

Wikitude: Discover Places & People Near You In Augmented Reality [WP7]

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Augmented reality is quite a promising field of app development for all smartphone platforms. There is, undoubtedly, a lot of room for improvement when it comes to Windows Phone 7 apps that deal with AR, but recently, some pretty good AR browsers have started making their way into the WP7 Marketplace. We covered Nokia’s City Lens (review) a while back, but that is not the first, or even the best, augmented realty browser out there for Mango phones. That honor falls to Wikitude, an app that has been around in the Marketplace for quite some time, but has become even more awesome thanks to a few really good updates. It is not focused on just letting users discover interesting places near them; you can even use it to find people that have recently tweeted in your vicinity. Read on for a complete list of features offered by this comprehensive Mango app. Read More

eBuddy XMS: A Simplistic Cross-Platform Messenger For WP7

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eBuddy is a popular service for accessing multiple chat clients without having to install any application for them. Now, imagine a messenger app released by such a service, won’t it be cool? eBuddy XMS is everything you would expect from an official eBuddy app. With this app, Windows Phone 7 users can text anyone conveniently, and for free. eBuddy XMS might not come with too many bells and whistles attached, but it is a perfect option if you are looking for something that acts as a replacement for the Messaging hub in WP7, and that, too, in a more efficient way. eBuddy scans your Facebook friends and the People hub to import all the contacts that are already on eBuddy, and you can interact with them after signing up through your phone number. Read More

AppVegas For WP7 Makes App Discovery Fun & Easy

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The Windows Phone 7 Marketplace has finally started to grow at a reasonable pace, and is fast approaching the 100,000 mark. It is not always easy finding good apps when there are so many of them in an environment, and that is why there are a lot of app discovery tools available for WP7, like the previously covered App Flow (review). However, App Flow is not the only good app discovery tool out there for Mango users, and the newest sensation in this genre is AppVegas. Using this app, you can check out all the latest additions to the Marketplace with complete ease. You can browse through the app on the basis of categories, while it is also possible to define search perimeters of your own to find the perfect app. Details past the break. Read More

Captionitis: A Community Where Users Write Funny Captions For A New Image Each Day [WP7]

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Not every app in the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace has to be related to productivity and usefulness. In fact, users love apps that are related to humor, or are there just for entertainment. Captionitis is one such app, present in the Marketplace to provide some lighthearted fun. You might call the app just another time-waster, but we have to admit that the concept is quite amusing and fresh. The Captionitis staff selects one image each day, and all users of the app are free to add their captions to the photo. Even the photos are chosen from among those submitted by users. At the end of each day, one caption is chosen as the winner, based on the number of votes it receives from the Captionitis community. So what's in it for you, other than laughs? Captionitis has a badge and rating system of its own, giving the app a game-like feel so that you can brag among your friends who are on Captionitis as well. Read More

Photosynth Comes To WP7; Lets You Create & View Amazing 360 Degree Panoramas

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Photosynth, the immensely popular photo app for iPhone, is an official Microsoft release, and that’s why its absence from the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace has been a source of constant annoyance for Mango users, especially given to the fact that the official client for the photo-stitching service has been around in the iOS App Store for a long time. Finally, the guys over in Redmond have paid attention to their own mobile platform, and Photosynth is now available in the WP7 Marketplace! The app can be used to view the gorgeous 360-degree panorama images that characterize Photosynth, and not only that; you can use the app to create your own panoramas, too! Of course, there are a few shortcomings and limitations when you compare the WP7 client with the iOS one, but overall, the app is everything users have always wished for. Read on for details and screenshots. Read More

ARTistic: A Photo-Sharing Platform For Serious Photographers [WP7]

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A new photo-sharing service on any platform is no big news these days, as there are already many such apps on iOS, Android and even Windows Phone 7. The concept has become so commonplace that several subcategories and niches of photo-related social networks have come into being. ARTistic is a WP7 app that explores a new genre of photo sharing, as it is focused entirely on images that have been shot by serious photographers. If you are looking for photos of food or those in-front-of-the-mirror portraits, ARTistic is certainly not your type of app. You can download any image to your device using ARTistic, and use it as a wallpaper for your Mango phone. Read on to know more about this ARTistic photo-sharing app. Read More

Mehdoh Is Arguably The Best Free Twitter & Instagram Client For WP7

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Facebook might be the most popular social network in the world, but when it comes to Windows Phone 7, developers seem to favor Twitter more than Facebook. The best thing about most of the Twitter clients available for the Mango platform is the quality of these apps. Most of them are good enough to give the official Twitter app a run for its money, and some even surpass it. Mehdoh is one such app, which comes with some pretty distinguishing features. The app has been around in the Marketplace for a long time, but its latest update might have made it the most comprehensive Twitter app out there. Not only can you use Mehdoh to tweet, the app will also let you link your Instagram account with it! Doesn’t that sound amazing? Read on for more. Read More

Tune Your Mood: Music Tracks For All Occasions & Emotions [WP7]

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While Tune Your Mood might not be the first Windows Phone 7 app of its kind, it certainly is one of the most comprehensive ones in the Marketplace. The app can be used for two purposes. You can use it as a music discovery app when you have really run out of songs to listen to, and it can also be helpful if you want to stream music related to a particular mood. Tune Your Mood has playlists that are categorized with respect to different events and moods, rather than the music genre or artists name. You just have to share your feelings with the app, and it will come up with the perfect playlist for you. Read on to know all about this fantastic music streaming app. Read More