Microsoft Windows Phone 8 to Add Support For Quad Cores And 1080p Displays Towards The Later Part of The Year

Although Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Phone 8 operating system has much in common with fully-fledged Windows 8, unlike the PC OS it remains an extremely closed platform that does not allow any considerable hardware customisation of smartphones on its base. As it appears, the current version of the WP8 does not support 1080p displays and quad-core app processor. Only later this year Windows Phone partners will be able to support features available on Google Android-based handsets now.

At present Windows Phone 8 operating system supports only 800*480 (WVGA), 1280*768 (WXGA), and 1280*720 (720p, HD720) resolutions. In order to support other resolutions and take advantage of modern system-on-chips, a special OS update by Microsoft is needed. The world’s largest software developer is currently working on the so-called general distribution release 3 (GDR3) for Windows Phone, which will bring support for 1920*1080 resolution along with Qualcomm Snadragon 600/800 processors with up to four general-purpose cores and new graphics adapters as well as other innovations.

Unfortunately, GDR3 will only be available late this year and will power devices that will actually belong to the next generation of Windows Phone smartphones, according to The Verge web-site. As a consequence, companies like Nokia Corp. will be unable to compete against emerging superphones from companies like Samsung Electronics or Huawei full large full-HD displays for at least two more quarters.

It is interesting to note that GDR3 is not directly related to Microsoft’s Blue updates to its operating systems and services and will be rolled-out separately.

Microsoft did not comment on the news-story. [Source]

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Mozilla Firefox 19 is Out With a Bunch of New Features! Download Links Here

Mozilla has just released Firefox 19 for users of the Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems, and among a plethora of new features comes an in-built PDF viewer. Since increasing its release schedule, Mozilla has stuck almost religiously to its six-week cycles, and although it’s rare – in software terms – to see a whole number update pertaining to only a few minor changes, it helps Mozilla keep up with Google’s rampant Chrome browser.

As well as the PDF viewer, which was perhaps long overdue given its presence in the majority of other Web-surfing clients, Firefox 19 brings startup performance improvements at user level. If you’re a developer, there are several significant alterations: the Remote Web Console is available for connecting to Firefox on Android or Firefox OS, for example. The Firefox OS reflects the mobile iterations of Ubuntu in that a predominantly desktop-based company is hitting the smartphone scene, and from what we’ve seen and heard so far, it looks promising indeed, so if you wish to attune yourself with Firefox OS at this early stage, you’ll want this new Firefox update.

There are a bunch of bug fixes also included in this release, such as the issue where starting Firefox with -private flag was wrongly claiming the user was not in Private Browsing mode.

At this point in time, the new version is live on the official Firefox site. However, if you’re on an older version of Firefox, 18 for example, then you should get the update over the air, in the background, and you’ll be up to speed in a matter of minutes.

If you don’t see the update yet, then don’t panic, Firefox 19 will appear on the official site over at Firefox.com once it has propagated worldwide, and if you prefer, you’ll be able to update using the in-app update feature, as mentioned earlier.

After playing around with the final build for a while, we have to say that Mozilla is definitely making a lot of improvements as time is progressing. We’re expecting bigger and stronger features to make their debut in the upcoming versions of Firefox.

Apart from the desktop version of Firefox, the Android version has also been updated, and now supports themes and the processor requirement has been lowered from 800 to 600MHz. The update can be grabbed from the Play Store. [RedmondPie]

Download Mozilla Firefox 19

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