Microsoft has had its shares of difficulties in two big arenas of late – selling phones powered by their operating system and posting advertising videos that aren’t hated by the masses. They may have come up with a decent video that helps on both fronts by separating themselves from the fighting of the competition. The ad, slated to hit national television soon, pits the two sides of a wedding party against each other. On the bride’s side are people carrying the various Samsung mobile devices, while the groom’s family favors iPhone. Insults bounce back and forth and eventually lead to a melee. In…

April Fool’s Day is pretty annoying for the unprepared. The flood gates of false announcements, buyouts, and new products fill the feeds and often get people excited or discouraged until they remember the date. It gets bigger every year. Some companies such as Google play multiple tricks on people. Others do even worse – making announcements that aren’t so far fetched that they actually get some people to believe them for a time, embarrassing them when they spread the words to their friends. I’ve been a victim of that in the past. Never again. This year’s round includes some standard cleverness,…

The war between the iPhone and the various Android smartphones has been hot for half a decade now. The various battles between Apple and Samsung in particular have been fierce. In recent months, Samsung and its Galaxy S line of smartphones have been making strides towards edging out the worldwide leader, but a recent study by FixYa will have Apple fanboys rejoicing. As you can see, Apple has the highest reliability score overall by a mile. The score, in which the higher the number, the better, is calculated by “taking manufacturer problem impressions divided by sample problem impressions (impression…

Nokia has been sliding dangerously close to oblivion for some time now. The former king of mobile phones underestimated the rapid rise of smartphones and bet too high, too long on feature phones. Now, they’re scrambling to catch up but their flagship Lumia line of phones has not been doing well. In an effort to improve their footprint and expand the datasets available to power their new Here map application, Nokia is going to offer them to iOS users. After the disastrous launch of Apple maps on iOS 6, Nokia tried to cash in a bit by comparing their maps to the maps of the two current kings of smartphones,…

They can’t seem to catch a break. News has been bad for the former leader in handset sales worldwide and it’s only gotten worse recently. They announced today that the Lumia 900 Windows phone, their flagship, will be sold at 50% off only three months after its launch. With a 2-year AT&T agreement, the phone costs $49.99. This was expected to some extent after Microsoft announced that the current phones would not be able to run their upcoming Windows 8 software. It has consumers believing that there’s no reason to get any of the current Windows phones and they would be correct. This news comes on…

Samsung is knocking off the top players in mobile. First, they ousted Nokia to become the top mobile phone vendor in the world for Q1 of 2012. Then they pushed passed Apple to become the most prolific smartphone manufacturer. Overall, phone sales were down year-over-year by 1.5% but smartphone shipments are up 42.5%. “The race between Apple and Samsung remained tight during the quarter, even as both companies posted growth in key areas,” said Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC’s Mobile Phone Technology and Trends program. “Apple launched its popular iPhone 4S in additional key…

Every professional field has a set of hot buttons that allows those in it to be manipulated. For politicians, it’s money, power, and votes. In Hollywood, it’s exposure, inclusion, and awards. Everyone has hot buttons, even the allegedly-unfaltering news media. For them, there are really only three things that can manipulate them: exclusives, scoops, and leaks. Today, thegadgetbuff caught a video put out by Nokia for a short time ahead of a launch tomorrow of the Lumia 610NFC, the first Near Field Communication enabled Windows phone. This is news. It’s just not big news. What made the news bigger…

Chances are if you’re reading this article that you and most of the people you know have a smartphone. If you put them all in a room and asked them to put their smartphones on a table, you’ll likely see various Android devices mixed in with (depending on who you have as friends and family) approximately the same number of iPhones. What you probably won’t see are many (any?) Windows Phones. When it comes to speed, performance, and UI, many would agree that the Windows Phone is equal to or greater than its competitors. Microsoft put their money where their mouth was recently at their various stores and…

Microsoft and Nokia have one thing in common: they like to do things extraordinarily slow. It appears that their newfound relationship which makes Nokia the future hope for Windows Phone 7 is also going to take it slow. Any hope for a WP7-powered Nokia device this year is fading fast. The managing director at Nokia revealed that the company has a 12-month plan to integrate WP7 with Nokia devices. This would put a release date around the first quarter of 2012 if all things go according to plan. Only then will we learn if WP7 and Nokia was a wise decision. Until then, Nokia has around 20 Symbian-powered…

Let the money exchange flow both ways. That’s what is starting to transpire in the Nokia/Microsoft deal and there are a lot of zeros involved in the transactions. Microsoft is set to pay Nokia Oyj over $1 billion for the development and promotion of Windows-based phones. In exchange, Nokia pays Microsoft for each copy of Windows used in its phones. Stocks have fallen over 25% since the announcement of the agreement between the two companies less than a month ago. According to Colin Gillis, analyst at BHC Partners, “This gives Microsoft scale and allows Nokia to rip out costs. Microsoft is getting…