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Using mobile broadband in Windows 8 will no longer require specific drivers and third-party software, says Microsoft's Billy Anders in a Building Windows 8 blog post today. This is thanks to the new Mobile Broadband Interface Model (MBIM) standard, which hardware makers are reportedly already beginning to adopt, and a generic driver in Windows 8 that can interface with any chip supporting that standard.

We've known for awhile now that mobile broadband chips would be treated as first-class devices in Windows 8 – the same as wi-fi, ethernet, Bluetooth, and USB 3.0, among others – but as usual Microsoft's blog post discusses the subject in exhaustive detail: because of their new first-class status, broadband antennas can be turned on and off in the same way that wi-fi and Bluetooth now are, and Airplane Mode can turn all of it off in one swoop, just like on a smartphone (see above). As on phones, Windows will automatically prioritize wi-fi networks when both wi-fi and cellular are available.

If your laptop or tablet has a SIM card installed, Windows will automatically detect which carrier it's associated with and download any available mobile broadband app from the Windows store, and carrier-unlocked laptops and tablets can choose between multiple cellular carriers if the hardware supports it (see above). As Brian noted in our first Windows 8 overview, the operating system also offers estimated data usage figures when connected to cellular networks, and the OS will adjust its default behaviors to save on data (for example, deferring automatic downloading and installing of Windows updates until wi-fi is available).

For people using wired or wi-fi connections that are also metered, Microsoft also gives you the option to see data usage figures for these networks. By selecting a "reduce data usage" option, Windows will use new built-in APIs to force network-aware Metro apps to use less data when possible (another example: using a low-bandwidth movie stream rather than a high bandwidth one). Network-aware Metro apps are required to use these APIs, and users can check how much bandwidth apps are using (both on metered and non-metered networks) in the Task Manager (above).

Lastly, Microsoft has made changes to the networking stack in Windows to allow for faster wi-fi connections when devices wake from sleep – information such as your preferred network list and other "hints" provided to your wi-fi adapter mean that wi-fi connections will be available "about a second" after the device wakes up.

That about covers all of the good stuff, but as always you can check the source post for more information. The Windows 8 beta is expected in February, with a final release targeted for sometime before the end of 2012.

Source: Building Windows 8 blog

Windows 8's new Storage Spaces functionality will easily allow users and system administrators to pool different physical drives together into one logical drive, writes Rajeev Nagar on the Building Windows 8 blog. This functionality, which is similar in some ways to the now-discontinued Windows Home Server Drive Extender, will allow drives of any capacity connected to a PC by USB, SATA, or SAS interfaces to be seen by the OS as one large drive.

Once you've created a storage pool using two or more drives, you can then set up one or more "spaces" that will be seen by the operating system as a logical drive which can be formatted, partitioned, and used just as a physical disk would be. To provide redundancy, you can either apply the "mirrored" attribute to your pool, which makes sure that a copy of every file in the pool is stored on at least two different physical drives, or the "parity" attribute, which uses some drive space to store redundancy information – in the event of drive failure, this information is used to rebuild your pool and enforce mirroring. Microsoft notes that while the two redundancy options are similar, the "parity" attribute is best used for large sequential files or less-frequently-accessed content, since it has a higher random I/O overhead. 

When creating a new Storage Space, you can specify a maximum size larger than the amount of available physical space – the system will prompt you when the storage pool needs more drives to work with. Microsoft calls this "thin provisioning," which means that drive capacity is only reserved as you store data to the drive rather than all at once. You can also expand the maximum size of the Storage Space at a later point if necessary. Creation of these spaces can be scripted using PowerShell.

For an in-depth look at how this technology works (and a FAQ which answers, among other questions, some inquiries about its similarities to and advantages over RAID), check out the full post using the link below.

Source: Building Windows 8 Blog

CHINESE PHONE MAKER ZTE’s Tania Windows Phone handset is available for pre-order in the UK.

The ZTE Tania is available to pre-order for a price of £249 with online retailer Clove and will tip up on 13 February. The firm originally showed the handset exclusively to The INQUIRER back in September when we were told it would be called the Spirit.

Back then we were told the device would tip up “very soon” in the fourth quarter, so it’s been delayed somewhat. We’re waiting to hear back from ZTE as to the cause of the delay.

It will be the firm’s first device to run Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system in what Wu Sa, director of mobile device operations at ZTE called a “strategic move”.

The handset is similar looking to the Skate but with Windows Phone 7.5 Mango. It will have a 1GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, 4GB of internal storage, a 5MP camera and a 4.3in touchscreen with 800×480 resolution.

We had a play around with the phone when we saw it in September and we were impressed with the design and its good performance. The reasonable price tag could make it a budget phone winner in 2012. µ

FINNISH PHONE FIRM Nokia launched the Lumia 800 today but thoughts have already turned to follow-up devices and a Windows 8 tablet.

Whilst Nokia is busy hyping its launch of the Lumia 800 smartphone, news has come from France about the next versions of the device and a Windows 8 tablet.

Speaking about the Lumia 800, Paul Amsellem, head of Nokia in France told Les Echos, “It’s just the equivalent of the BMW 5 Series. We will soon have a full range with a Series 7 and Series 3.”

He also confirmed plans for a tablet on the next version of Microsoft’s operating system, saying, “And in June 2012, we will have a tablet running Windows 8.”

Likening the phone to a car isn’t common, but nevertheless he’s touting that various Lumia handsets will arrive that will be better than the Lumia 800. One of these could be the Nokia Champagne, which we heard about last week. That apparently will run Windows Phone 7.10 Tango.

Amsellem also spoke of the firm’s plans to boost its market share, saying, “More than 60 [per cent] of French people do not have smartphones and this is our target.” In France Nokia’s market share is less than 16 per cent now, compared to 25 per cent two years ago. µ

With every new Windows release, Microsoft promises to reduce the number of times we'll have to restart our computers. Things have gradually gotten better – today, many program installations, driver updates, and Windows updates can be installed without restarting. Even so, Microsoft has again identified this process as an area where Windows could use improvement, as Microsoft's Farzana Rahman discusses on the Building Windows 8 blog today.

The improvements in Windows 8 aren't going to stop automatic restarts from happening; rather, Microsoft's goal is to make sure that the restarts that do happen are unobtrusive and predictable. First, all restarts will usually happen just once a month, after Patch Tuesday (with rare exceptions made for critical out-of-band security updates). Next, when your PC requires a restart, you'll have a three-day window in which to do so manually – a message on the log-in screen will let you know whether your system needs to be restarted. At the end of this three-day period, your computer will attempt to restart manually, but will not if a user is logged in and applications are running. In this case, users will get a warning that their system will restart in 15 minutes (similar to Windows' current behavior) but without the option to cancel the restart.

The default behaviors are meant to reduce the likelihood of data loss and user annoyance, while still making sure that computers are updated promptly. Enterprise administrators, as usual, can choose to leave these default behaviors in place, or can choose to enforce their own update schedule via Group Policy.

There's one last tidbit that may or may not interest you: at the end of the post, Rahman reiterates that Microsoft will not update third-party software through Windows Update, partly because Microsoft doesn't trust third parties not to break things – Microsoft doesn't want to "reduce trust in the system" by adding that additional layer of complexity. However, Metro apps, which will be screened by Microsoft upon their submission to Windows 8's app store, will all be updated through the store's unified updater. 

If you'd like to read more, you can get this information (and the customary pile of user data that led to these decisions) over at the Building Windows 8 blog.

Source: Building Windows 8 Blog

FINNISH PHONE MAKER Nokia has unveiled plans to reel in developers as part of its effort to increase Windows Phone market share in collaboration with its partner, Microsoft.

Nokia’s head of apps and partnerships, Keith Varty told The INQUIRER in an interview, “Now we are working in conjunction with Microsoft, the game changes. The way we reach out to developers needs to change. Microsoft has a good reputation in the developer market and we want to add to that.”

Varty said that Nokia will offer developers help with marketing, as well as getting into new markets where Nokia is strong, such as China. He said the company is working on a programme along with Microsoft to help developers translate and market their apps.

Nokia will also run UK workshops, Varty said, following a kick-off event a few weeks ago. The firm is looking to train Symbian and Nokia developers on the platform too. Varty added that Nokia is still “in the early stages” with Microsoft and “a lot lies with them, as they do the SDKs,” while Nokia will be looking at adding its services such as mapping and Nokia Music to the Windows Phone 7.5 operating system (OS).

The Windows Phone 7.5 app store has around 40,000 apps, we reckon, so Nokia and Microsoft still have some work to do before the OS catches up with Android and IOS. However, Varty said, “I don’t think we’d have any milestones but it’s not a numbers game. If we look at all the categories we have the apps in each of those. We want a mix of the popular stuff but we also want the long tail.”

Nokia and Microsoft are obviously hoping that Windows Phone will emulate the rise of Android that we’ve seen over the last year, so the pair are investing heavily. Varty said, “The investment we are making behind the platform, I’m sure we will tick that box {of growing share]. Our job is to potentially get the awareness out there.”

He added, “It’s our smartphone platform and very much our plan A and it very much hasn’t had the focus from others [manufacturers]. It’s kind of welcomed. If you talk to operators, developers and retail staff everyone really likes the platform.”

Microsoft and Nokia also want to integrate Xbox further with the Windows Phone OS. Varty said, “We want to tightly integrate more. The ambition would be to be able to stop a game on the Xbox and pick it up over the device.”

Nokia’s first Windows Phone 7.5 device, The Lumia 800 will be released on 16 November and it wouldn’t be far off to say that Nokia’s future depends on its success. When asked about sales targets for the device, Varty wasn’t inclined to say and used language we’d rather not repeat on this family web site. But it was said in fun, we think. µ

Up until now, if you wanted a Windows Phone, it'd implicitly come with a Qualcomm SoC inside. The Windows Phone platform started out with QSD8x50 (first generation Snapdragon), and has recently moved to MSM7x30 and MSM8x55 (second generation) SoCs, all single core. Today, ST-Ericsson has announced that it too is joining the fray with its dual core NovaThor SoCs inside future Nokia Windows Phone smartphones. We haven't seen much of NovaThor since its arrival, but its U5500, U8500 and U9500 SoCs bring dual core Cortex A9 CPUs and ARM Mali-400 GPUs alongside some onboard cellular connectivity. 

U9500 Block Diagram (Source: ST-E)

As we discussed previously, Nokia's initial Windows Phone lineup (consisting of the Lumia 800 and 710) is based on 1.4 GHz MSM8255 SoCs. This announcement from ST-E appears to be directed at the next iteration of Windows Phones up Nokia's sleeves. We look forward to Windows Phone heating (and speeding) way up with this move to dual core in the near future.

Source: ST-Ericsson

SMARTPHONE HOPEFUL Microsoft is trying to halve its Windows Phone device costs as it tries to drive up sales.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 operating system has, so far, been an embarrassment for the firm. Since launching it a year ago the company has publicly admitted that sales have been lower than expected, and now the firm is telling potential customers that the cost of making Windows Phone devices will fall by 50 per cent over the next year.

Andy Lees, head of Microsoft’s Windows Phone division told Bloomberg that devices running Windows Phone could be produced for less than 0, with Microsoft’s main focus being to increase the number of devices sold rather than gross profit margin.

Lees said, “We are supporting componentry that will allow us to go below 0,” which sounds great until you realise Apple’s Iphone 4S already costs less than 0 to make.

Interestingly, Microsoft’s desire to drive down prices will mean that it will make less money from handsets. The firm’s royalty structure means that it gets a percentage of the manufacturing cost of a handset rather than a fixed fee.

Microsoft has maintained a single chip vendor specification and Lees said that there is no plan to move away from Qualcomm for Windows Phone 7 or Windows Phone 7.5. There’s no word on whether this will change for Windows Phone 8.

While Microsoft might suffer a financial hit if manufacturing costs of Windows Phone handsets decrease, what the firm really needs is the ability to say it has sold tens of millions of devices. The problem is that smartphone makers might not be too impressed with a sub 0 target for putting together a Windows Phone device. µ

Ubuntu One, the cloud storage service available for Ubuntu versions 9.04 and higher, now has an official Windows client. Previously available as a beta, Ubuntu One for Windows gives XP, Vista, and 7 users a free 5GB of cloud storage space in which to keep their files.

Ubuntu One works a bit differently than, say, Dropbox, a competing cloud storage service: for example, if you'd like to sync your My Documents and My Pictures folders, Dropbox would require you to store them within your Dropbox folder, while the Ubuntu One client allows you to select folders anywhere on your hard drive for syncing. Once synced, your files can be accessed from Ubuntu, Windows, and Android devices, as well as through the Ubuntu One web site.

For users with more storage needs, Canonical will bump your space up to 20GB for .99 a month or .99 a year. You can also add an Android and iOS-compatible MP3 streaming service (which also includes the 20GB storage upgrade) for .99 a month or .99 a year.

Source: Canonical

This afternoon (and yesterday) we had a chance to meet with a number of SoC vendors who have partnered with Microsoft for Windows 8. Each of them has their own individual reference tablet running Windows 8, and today we had a chance to survey the landscape and get photos of all the tablets. We started with ARM, then looked at x86 based tablets. Of course, the real goal with Windows 8 is to abstract as much of the difference between these two platforms away. 

Unfortunately, all of the ARM vendors were required to keep their tablets under glass and out of the way of physical contact per Microsoft instruction. Microsoft isn't ready to show off the ARM version of Windows 8 for a variety of reasons at this point (at least without a Microsoft rep. present), but we still got a chance to at least take a look at what there is now. Microsoft is encouraging tablet makers to target either a 10.1" or 11.6" form factor with 1366×768 resolution (ed: Metro will require 1024×768 as a minimum, so 1280×720 displays don't meet Microsoft's requirements).

Texas Instruments

First up is TI, whose development platform was demoed playing back the 1080p30 H.264 baseline video shown in the keynote fluidly in windows media player with a split-screen view. One tablet displayed the start menu, another displayed two split screen games. TI's development platform as shown right now is running on OMAP 4430, which again consists of two ARM Cortex A9s at 1.0 GHz and PowerVR SGX 540 graphics. Windows 8 won't launch on OMAP 4430, however, instead it'll launch on the more powerful OMAP 4470 platform with PowerVR SGX544 graphics and a 2D display compositor. The reason is partly due to SGX544 having full Direct3D 9.3 compliance, partly because it's an all around faster platform. I'm told that right now there's some Direct3D emulation going on as well for all the SoCs that don't support Direct3D 9.3. 

I also recorded a short video showing the TI Windows 8 tablet in action.

Qualcomm

My next stop was Qualcomm, whose current development tablet runs on an MSM8660 SoC, which consists of two scorpion cores and Adreno 220 graphics. Qualcomm took the tablet out of the glass box for us and showed a quick demonstration of the start menu scrolling back and forth, and the IE10 mobile view working and scrolling around. 

Unfortunately we weren't allowed to shoot video of the tablet while that demo was running, but we did grab some photos of the tablet without the glass box. Performance on the start menu looked to be above 30fps the whole time but not buttery smooth like the x86 tablets we've seen so far.

Just like TI, Qualcomm won't go to market with the SoC they're demonstrating Windows 8 working on today, instead they'll use the more powerful dual core Krait MSM8960 at first and quad core Krait APQ8064 later on. Dual core krait SoCs (eg 8960, 8270, 8260A) come with Adreno 225, quad core krait (APQ8064 and others) come with Adreno 320, both of which are Direct3D 9.3. 

NVIDIA

We've seen NVIDIA's Kal-El quad-core A9 based tablet a few times now, and found it out on the floor, also behind glass. Unlike the other vendors, NVIDIA hasn't said anything about going to market for Windows 8 with anything but Kal-El, and I don't see any reason why they should either.

The Kal-El development tablet was seated in a nice looking dock with what looks like one USB 3.0 port and a full size HDMI port.

AMD

Switching over to the x86 camp, we have AMD, who showed us two tablets running on Brazos – the Acer Iconia Tab W500 and MSI WindPad 110W, which use a C-50 and Z-01 APU, respectively. Displays on these are 1280×800 and support capacitive touch just like you'd expect for Windows 8.

Both the MSI WindPad and Iconia Tab felt snappy and responsive running the same Windows 8 Developer Preview build that we've used on the Samsung developer hardware. Subjectively, the WindPad's capacitive panel was more responsive and less prone to errant touch recognition than the Iconia, though both were more than useable with Windows 8. 

Intel

Last but not least is Intel's own development tablet, which is running an unnamed 32nm SoC. Intel was suspiciously silent about which particular SoC was inside this device, and you'll notice that it too is locked down in a plastic box, lumping it squarely in the next-gen SoC category for Microsoft.

It's possible this is Medfield, it's also possible this is some 2nd gen 32nm Atom SoC. Hopefully we'll find out more as Windows 8 starts getting closer to launch. 

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