Seeing that we've been able to gather a few years of experience with touchscreen keyboards, they've become relatively easy to use for most, especially for simple and short search queries. However, if you want to add a more creative and personal touch to your input, you will be able to take advantage of Handwrite, which Google just announced. It's a new feature of Google's mobile search website that's actually built into the search webpage itself, so you'll be able to try this out on any touch-enabled smartphone (or tablet, for that matter.)
Nokia's first batch of Lumia devices - in particular the 800 and 900 - yielded much positive press coverage, most notably including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who is a big fan of the Lumia range and Windows Phone in general. As tech fans eagerly await the new Windows Phone 8 handsets, most of the attention will be focusing on what the Finnish company plans to bring to the table, and according to a report over at Chinese website WPDang, Nokia is to showcase the first two Windows Phone 8 handsets at Nokia World - which falls on September 5th.
Of all the features that arrived when iOS 5 reached the end-user back in October of last year, iMessage has been arguably the most significant, and by now allowing messages to be sent and received in a faster, more secure manner across a variety of platforms, it has to go down as one of the best in the business. Granted, it has its occasional downtime, but it's not bad as is, and with the service also arriving to the Mac with OS X Mountain Lion, it will almost certainly become the sole mode of quick communication to many Apple enthusiasts.
Touch is a now the dominant method of input for mobile devices. Although touchscreen based devices have existed for a long time, they were popularized and made user friendly with the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 and iPad in 2010. In his original iPhone keynote, Steve Jobs categorically stated that if the device requires a stylus, you’re doing something wrong. And we tend to agree with him to some extent, emphasis on extent.
Following yesterday's official debut of Office 2013 (and the Customer Preview, which is now available for download as we reported yesterday), Microsoft has today followed up with a post that shares more information about Office 2013's role in the cloud as well as its future on the Windows Phone platform.
Windows Phone 7.x users were somewhat disappointed to learn that Windows Phone 8 would not be coming to the current batch of WP devices. Instead, Microsoft has laid out a somewhat watered-down iteration in Windows Phone 7.8, so naturally, anybody looking to jump on the Windows Phone 8 background will need to grab themselves a new device, which while a little bit gutting, is still rather exciting at the same time.
YouTube is the most frequented video streaming site on the web, and as such, most smartphone owners require a decent app for viewing the very latest and most entertaining content.
The always popular Encyclopedia Britannica is now available to keep in the palm of your hand, with the news that a Windows Phone version of the app is available for download and fully updated for the year 2012. Primarily living online so as to avoid filling your phone's internal storage, the app also features an offline viewing mode for those occasions when Wi-Fi or a 3G data connection just isn't as forthcoming as we would like.
Plugging a hole that has been around since its release in 2010, Twitter's Windows Phone app now sports push notifications, bringing it in-line with the iOS and Android versions of the app.
Microsoft recently announced Windows Phone 8 with a bunch of important new features that put it but in the three-horse mobile OS race. Features included support for multiple cores, HD displays, Near Field Communication (NFC), a shared core with Windows 8, use of Nokia’s mapping technology for turn-by-turn navigation, Skype integration and a much more customizable start-screen. We’ve discussed these features in detail here.
