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SOFTWARE HOUSE Microsoft has announced it is giving away tickets to its Mobile World Congress (MWC) party in Barcelona.

The phone and tablet focused trade show kicks off next week and Microsoft wants its fans to join the party there, literally.

Microsoft said, “If you’re headed to the show, we’re handing out 50 passes to our party as a thank you to our biggest Windows Phone fans.”

Unfortunately the prize is just tickets to the party, not a trip to the show with flights, hotel, backstage passes, free phones or anything of that nature.

Hopefuls have until tomorrow to enter and will win tickets by rampantly declaring their love for Windows Phone by way of a comment on the blog. Winners will be chosen on Wednesday.

Microsoft said winners will be able to mingle with “Windows Phone big wigs” as well as “pepper us with questions, and try out our phones.”

Some entries so far are a little over the top, such as marti.peig who said, “I was planning to lose my Windows Phone virginity during the Mobile World Congress Fiesta…. please, help me!”

Another more sensible reply was from mafp86 who said, “I’m going to MWC and I can’t wait to see the new Nokia’s phones with WP! I have to say, I’ve been an iPhone and BB user for the last 6 years….but maybe is time for a change! I really like the way Microsoft is doing things with WP7. It would be so great to come to your party! ”

Phone makers announcing devices running Windows Phone at MWC will include Nokia with its Lumia phones and LG with its Miracle. µ

We've known that Microsoft has been planning an ARM-compatible version of Windows since well before we knew anything else about Windows 8, but the particulars have often been obscured both by unclear signals from Microsoft itself and subsequent coverage of those unclear signals by journalists. Steven Sinofsky has taken to the Building Windows blog today to clear up some of this ambiguity, and in doing so has drawn a clearer line between the version of Windows that will run on ARM, and the version of Windows that will run on x86 processors.

Up until now, we've operated under the assumption that a new version of Windows called Windows 8 would be released this year, and that it would run on both x86 (32-bit and 64-bit – throughout this article I'll use x86 to refer to both architectures) and ARM processors – Sinofsky's post makes it clear that the ARM version of Windows, officially referred to as Windows on ARM (WOA), is considered to be a separate product from Windows 8, the same way that products like Windows Server and Windows Embedded share a foundation with but are distinct from Windows 7. Windows on ARM has a "high degree of commonality" and "very signigicant shared code" with Windows 8 – much of the user's interaction with the OS will be the same on either platform, and much of the underlying technology we've seen in our Windows 8 coverage so far will be present in both versions, but they're distinct products that will be treated differently by Microsoft.

This post is quite lengthy and represents what is likely to be our best look at WOA for at least a little while – we'll get to see some of its features in the Windows 8 Consumer Preview when it is released at the end of the month, but for now Windows on ARM is only being tested internally, and on customized hardware that will be sent to some developers and hardware partners at about the same time. It will be a little while before we see anything remotely similar to shipping hardware.

The Windows Desktop, Office, and x86 Apps

One of the biggest recurring questions I've seen about Windows on ARM is whether the standard Windows desktop would be available for use on those devices as it will be on Windows 8 machines – the answer is yes, it definitely will be. The desktop can be invoked from the Start screen, and once there users can perform standard Windows Explorer operations, launch the desktop version of Internet Explorer, and other tasks either via touch (for which Explorer has apparently been optimized) or via keyboard and mouse input. The desktop will only consume resources when it is launched, meaning that there are no performance or battery life implications for users who stick with the Metro interface for everything – the desktop is there if you want it, but one of Microsoft's stated goals with the Metro interface is to make it so that you don't need to use the desktop as a fallback.

Microsoft will also be bundling versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote with Windows on ARM systems. These Office apps will be a part of the new Office 15 family of products (suggesting, but not guaranteeing, that we may see a full x86 version of that suite before the end of the year as well), but will be touch-optimized versions of the applications rather than ports of the standard suite. The Windows on ARM products will "maintain fidelity" with their x86 counterparts (meaning that a file created in Word or Powerpoint on an x86 machine will look the same on an ARM machine), but will otherwise be redesigned to fit the platform – an early version of Excel is shown above.

That said, Microsoft is firm in its insistence that it will not support running, emulating, or porting existing x86 apps on the Windows on ARM desktop – apps can only be downloaded and installed through the Windows Store, and only apps written to target the new WinRT APIs can be distributed through the sotre (however, the store will be able to distribute and update both ARM and x86 versions of apps in the event that the app uses any code native to either architecture). Microsoft suggests that current Windows developers should be able to take significant bits of their existing code and wrap them in a Metro layer, but acknowledges that bringing over existing apps will require a bit of work – WinRT is clearly the wave of the future where Windows is concerned, but it'll be up to individual developers to decide how, when, and if to bring their programs over.

Supported Devices and Release Date

Windows on ARM is being written to run on ARM SoCs from NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments, and it will only be available on devices designed to run it – you won't be able to buy a license for Windows on ARM and install it on an existing tablet, or a tablet designed to run Android. Microsoft is working with partners to deliver compatible hardware, and the company's goal is to start shipping devices running Windows on ARM at the same time as x86 devices running Windows 8 (currently slated for late this year).

In addition to SoC type, Microsoft will have a set of broad guidelines for Windows on ARM tablets that are similar to those for current Windows phones (the "chassis specification," in Microsoft parlance) – likely a set of supported screen resolutions and a list of required hardware devices designed to provide a middle ground between the uniformity of the iPad and the diversity-to-the-point-of-insanity of Android tablets. On Windows phones, these requirements are in place to give consumers some choice while also limiting developer headaches and ensuring a standardized look and feel across different devices from different manufacturers – the requirements for Windows on ARM will have the same aims, and we'll talk a little bit more about some of the hardware that will be common to WOA devices later on in this post.

In treating Windows on ARM as a separate product, Microsoft has left itself some wiggle room to let its release date slip without holding up Windows 8 (wiggle room is very important to the post-Vista Windows team, and they generally don't give hard dates unless they expect to be able to hit them). Microsoft obviously wants to ship before the end of the year because, let's face it, they don't want to give Apple, Google, Amazon, and the rest another holiday season all to themselves, but at this point in the game a botched or half-baked release in time for Christmas could actually be worse for Microsoft's market and mindshare than a well-executed release a few months later. Expect a concurrent release with Windows 8, but know that Microsoft hasn't yet completely committed to it.

When it is shipped, Windows on ARM should come as a single edition of Windows from a feature standpoint (though the company notes that no final decisions regarding new Windows product editions have been finalized) – Microsoft promises to "adjust the features … such that [WOA] is competitive in the marketplace and offers a compelling value proposition to customers of all types." That doesn't tell us much, but I think we should expect the consumer-oriented features that you'd find in a Home Premium version of Windows along with business-minded features (like domain joining and device encryption) thrown in to increase WOA's appeal to enterprises. Whether the decision to ship a single Windows on ARM SKU will have any effect on the x86 version's army of different editions remains to be seen.

Drivers, Updates, and Hardware

So, since Windows on ARM will only be available on devices designed specifically for it, Microsoft can actually keep track of what hardware WOA devices are guaranteed to be using. This means that all software, from OS patches to device firmware to specific drivers, can and will be distributed using Windows Update. Apple has achieved something similar in OS X – Macs are many and subtly varied, especially when you take multiple model years into consideration, but ultimately there is a finite set of hardware in the field, and Apple can keep every Mac in use up-to-date with drivers, firmware, and OS updates through Software Update, rather than the broad array of different first and third-party updaters required to patch those separate elements on an x86 Windows box (and I promise that I'm just comparing the two to give you a frame of reference, not because I consider one system to be inherently superior to the other).

To reduce the number of drivers it will have to keep up to date, Microsoft is relying heavily on "class drivers" to support hardware in both WOA and Windows 8 – for those of you just tuning in, a class driver is designed to support all hardware manufactured to certain standards, rather than targeting specific devices. They're why you can freely plug in different USB keyboards and flash drives to a Windows computer and have them recognized by the machine without needing to pop in a driver disk first.

A lot of the work Microsoft is putting into class drivers is also applicable to Windows 8 – we've already looked at new class drivers for USB 3.0 controllers, mobile broadband chips, and motion sensors, and we should also see class drivers for printers, Bluetooth, Embedded MultiMediaCard (eMMC) storage, and drivers for different busses and input devices (like the Windows, power, and volume buttons).

Where Microsoft can't create class drivers, it's trying to enforce some common specifications – WOA devices will all have DirectX-capable GPUs and drivers, which will power Metro apps, the Windows UI, and GPU acceleration in Internet Explorer among other things. This baseline has enabled Microsoft to improve on the fallback software GPU driver to enable a nicer-looking display on devices without a specific driver (and also for system diagnostic and information screens). This new soft GPU driver will also be available in Windows 8, where it will replace the standard VGA driver that has been a part of Windows for just about as long as Windows has been around.

WOA systems will also require UEFI firmware and Trusted Platform Module (TPM) software across the board to support its secure boot and data encyption features, both of which will also be available to Windows 8 devices with the correct hardware (TPMs have been used to encrypt hard drives with BitLocker since Windows Vista and UEFI is slowly replacing BIOS in OEM PCs, but Windows 8 should push the adoption of both in a wider range of computers).

Conclusions

To see what Microsoft is trying to do with Windows on ARM, the most applicable template to examine is the one the company followed with Windows Phone 7. In both cases, Microsoft is entering an established market where competitors have established footholds through very different strategies (in each case, Apple and its tighty-controlled iOS on one end, Google with its infinitely malleable Android on the other, and a few other competitors fighting for scraps in between) and has tried to forge a middle path. Windows Phone 7 has been a bit of a slow starter because of Microsoft's low profile in the smartphone field and because of some lackluster handsets, but the platform has some very vocal fans – if the company can achieve a similar balance in Windows on ARM and get it to market on competitive hardware by the end of the year, that (combined with Android's relative weakness in the tablet market so far) might just be enough to establish Windows as a major player in the tablet space.

As usual with these Building Windows post summaries, I've relayed and distilled the most pertinent information for Windows users and enthusiasts here. If you'd like to read the full post, which also includes some details about how Microsoft is testing Windows on ARM in its labs and some of the more technical details involved in "porting" Windows from x86 to ARM, it is linked below for your convenience.

Source: Building Windows 8 blog

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