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October 14, 2013 04:00 pm GMT

Microsoft Announces Update 3 For Windows Phone 8 With Larger Screens, More Live Tiles, Coming This Year

2013-10-13_20h32_31Today Microsoft announced its third update to Windows Phone 8. This is the set of new features and upgrades that will carry the smartphone platform through the holiday sales cycle. Included among the new set of code is support for faster processors, larger screens, higher resolution displays, better Internet sharing, and a set of quality of life changes that will be welcome to current handsets owners. Late last week, Windows Phone celebrated its third birthday as a public smartphone platform. To kick off the third update to its current iteration (Windows Phone 8) now is fitting. Don’t call it Windows Phone 8.1, though, as its official name is simply ‘Windows Phone 8 Update 3.’ Also included in the update are accessibility upgrades, and a new developer program that will get the fresh firmware into the hands of developers more quickly than in previous releases. Let’s take this all in turn, starting with the hardware support upgrades. Tablet That Phone, Bro Windows Phone 8 Update 3 contains a number of firmware updates that allow for Windows Phone to fit onto small tablets successfully. If you merely scaled Windows Phone 8 Update 2 to 5, and 6 inch screens, the experience would be as lukewarm as BlackBerry on a touchscreen. To combat that – and to unlock new hardware SKUs that will likely command higher margins than the all-popular Lumia 520 – Microsoft added support for the Qualcomm 8974 quad-core chip, support for 1080p screens, and adapted the core Windows Phone Start Screen software to better suit larger displays. We’ll put aside the Start Screen changes for now, but the skinny on the new Qualcomm chip and better screen resolutions is simple: Windows Phone is going phablet. The new lay of the land: Windows 8.1 down to 7 inch displays, and Windows Phone 8 Update 3 up to 6 inch displays. Microsoft has therefore decided that the tipping point between Windows and Windows Phone is the space between 6 and 7 inch displays. Kicker: Those Lumia 2520 devices you’ve been seeing bouncing around. Are they Windows RT, or Windows Phone 8 Update 3-based? We’ll find out soon enough, but Microsoft has certainly opened a new categroy of Windows Phone 8 devices – the big ass phones. Or phablets, if you prefer. Or tab-phones. Or phoney-tabs? I’m not sure. I haven’t had a chance to touch one of the larger Windows Phone 8

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