At the Mobile World Congress show Microsoft has finally unveiled some details regarding the next update to the Windows Phone operating system, known around the Web as Tango. It looks like Tango is going to all Windows Phone users. The Nokia Lumia 610 will be the new low end model running the updated OS and will offer Live Tiles, People Hub, IE9 and access to more than 95% of the apps in the Marketplace.
Mozilla announced its browser-based operating system 'Boot to Gecko' running on a Telefonica prototype hardware at a press conference at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, Spain. With the 'Boot to Gecko' project the company is trying to bring a developer-oriented mobile device with OS that runs HTML5, JavaScript and CSS directly on device hardware without the need for an intermediate OS layer to market.
Earlier this week Nokia announced that their high-end phone, the Lumia 900 runs a newer build of Widows Phone called Mango Commercial Release 2. According to an article in the official Nokia corporate blog this new operating system is not the next Tango 1 OS which is supposed to be on devices that will launch in the first half of this year, but just a name for the Windows Phone build 8107.
After the many rumors about Google's Android being virtualized and productized as such on smartphones and tablets in 2012, people become more and more impatient to see their mobile operating systems with a fix for the update problem. Many experts say the solution to this issue is Android Virtualization and expect Google to introduce its productized form in 2012.
Apple released a new updated version iOS 5.0.1 which allows iPhone 4 owners to legally get Siri. Thanks to the platform's unencrypted RAM disks in the iOS 5.0.1 people with enough technical knowledge would be able to write a script and extract from the software all the files needed to bring the virtual personal assistant to the iPhone 4.
Apple released second beta version of iOS 5.1 which includes several new features and fixes, but it's not clear if the problem with the low battery life of the devices is fixed. The iOS 5.1 beta is available only for registered developers who aren't involved with the battery drain issue so BGR still hope that the bug might be fixed.
Mozilla showed a sneak preview of the eventual new look for Firefox for Android. The design will be slightly changed as the browser window tab management will be moved to the right side of the location bar and the location bar itself will get rounded corners. The important changes will be to the the current XML User Interface Language which will be replaced by native Android code.
GetJar CEO Iljas Laurs noted that Android isn't already as open a platform as Google says because the company is restricting what kinds of Android apps are developed and the technologies used for their creation. He commented that the 30 percent cut of the revenue generated from apps paid out to Google seems to be a tax on developers.
According to the results from a study by the research firm Strategy Analytics HTML5-compatible mobile phones will reach sales of 1 billion in 2013. At the moment their number is 336 million which includes HTML5-enabled Android devices and iPhone 4S. But lately companies like Apple, Adobe, Google, and Microsoft focus their work on developing HTML5 innovations supported on almost all major mobile platforms.
According to the recent statement of the Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt Android is already ahead of the iPhone but there are 6 Android issues that the company doesn't want to discuss. Some of them are the lack of Android updates, the hardware failures and the security problems with its application and the bloatware installed by the handset manufacturers.
