Lumia

Five 'Lumia' stories July 2014 - August 2016

XDA developer working on porting Android to the Windows Phone-powered Lumia 520 & 525 [Video]

Ben Schoon Aug 22 2016 - 4:44 pm PT

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Microsoft’s efforts to get Windows Phone off the ground have never been very successful, but there’s one thing it was very good at, cheap phones. When an Android phone costs $100 we are all impressed, but back in 2013 Microsoft and Nokia turned heads with the insanely cheap Lumia 520. That little phone later proved to be one of the most popular Windows Phone devices ever, and now a developer over on XDA has hacked Android onto it and its successor.

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Microsoft gives up on consumer phones, claims Windows Phones down but not out

Ben Lovejoy May 25 2016 - 4:31 am PT

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Ten months after Microsoft wrote-off its Nokia acquisition, the company has now announced that it is effectively out of the consumer phone business. It is cutting 1,850 jobs, and setting aside almost a billion dollars to cover the costs of exiting the business.

Microsoft on Wednesday announced plans to streamline the company’s smartphone hardware business, which will impact up to 1,850 jobs. As a result, the company will record an impairment and restructuring charge of approximately $950 million […]

“We are focusing our phone efforts where we have differentiation — with enterprises that value security, manageability and our Continuum capability, and consumers who value the same,” said Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft.

The company recently saw its market share fall below 1%. While Microsoft is – for now – insistent that it has a future in the corporate smartphone business, the reality seems doubtful …

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Android flagship phones given bend test, Moto X comes out on top

Mike Beasley Sep 24 2014 - 2:23 pm PT

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Earlier this week it was revealed that if you bend your iPhone 6 Plus, it will bend. This shocking news took the world by storm, but left some people wondering if other phones would also flex under pressure. To answer the question, YouTuber Unbox Therapy attempted to repeat his earlier experiment with iPhone 6, iPhone 5s, HTC One M8, newest Moto X, and Nokia Lumia.

After applying roughly the same force to each of these handsets, he discovered that the iPhone 6 Plus was in fact more flexible than the rest. The Moto X ended up coming out top of the pack, with next to no flexibility at all. The 4.7-inch iPhone 6 was also found to be much less “bendy” than the larger model, though it did get a very small curve with enough force.

You can check out the video of all five phones being tested below:

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12,500 of Microsoft’s 18k job losses will be in Nokia Devices and Services division; will abandon Android X

Ben Lovejoy Jul 17 2014 - 5:42 am PT

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If Nokia staff were hoping that the acquisition of the business by Microsoft would safeguard their jobs, their hopes were dashed today in a letter from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Nadella said that a major downsizing resulting in 18,000 lost jobs would focus on the Nokia Devices and Services division, where 12,500 jobs will go, most within six months.

The first step to building the right organization for our ambitions is to realign our workforce. With this in mind, we will begin to reduce the size of our overall workforce by up to 18,000 jobs in the next year. Of that total, our work toward synergies and strategic alignment on Nokia Devices and Services is expected to account for about 12,500 jobs, comprising both professional and factory workers. We are moving now to start reducing the first 13,000 positions, and the vast majority of employees whose jobs will be eliminated will be notified over the next six months.

The letter says that Microsoft will tackle the redundancies “in the most thoughtful and transparent way possible.” All employees losing their jobs will be offered severance pay, with job-transition help “in many locations.”
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Microsoft appears to be blocking Google as default search option on select Lumia devices

Mark Hearn Jul 15 2014 - 10:08 am PT

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Microsoft is reportedly blocking Google as a search engine option on some of Nokia’s new Lumia handsets. Windows Phone devices ship with Bing as their default search engine without an option to change platforms. Prior to Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia’s phone making division, the Finnish company provided users with an option to change a Lumia’s search engine via its web browser, but this appears to be gone from some devices.

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