As 2015 draws to a close, Microsoft’s latest operating system is reaching a new milestone in terms of device installations. Windows 10 has now been installed over 200 million times. That’s up from 14 million in the first day since it became available, 50 million in less than three weeks after that, and 110 million at the beginning of October.

200 million is certainly an impressive number, and even more so when you consider that it’s been reached in only five months. So we’ve got an average of 40 million installs of Windows 10 per month.

Then again, this evolution is hardly surprising given how Microsoft has been pushing users of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 to update to Windows 10 (which, let’s not forget, is a free process). Microsoft’s goal is to reach 1 billion installs in three years, and that could very well happen, at least based on these first five months of availability.

Source |…

from GSMArena.com – Latest articles http://ift.tt/1NUiDvM
via IFTTT

Microsoft’s upcoming upper-midrange smartphone, the Lumia 850, has been leaking quite a lot lately. So far we’ve seen it portrayed in leaked press renders, and we even had a couple live images to look at.

This time around we’re treated to some shots depicting the Lumia 850 inside some protective cases. And while these pictures obviously don’t show us the entirety of the phone, they do seem to confirm the design of the Lumia 850 in those leaked renders.

Microsoft Lumia 850

The handset will allegedly feature a metal frame, and according to a spec leak from back in July, it will also sport a 5-inch 1,280×768 touchscreen, a 10 MP main camera with Zeiss optics and LED flash, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 410 SoC powering things, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of expandable storage, and a 2,650 mAh battery. It will obviously run Windows 10 Mobile.

If these shots of it inside the cases are accurate, then you should expect one of the Lumia 850’s colors to be blue. While it was initially thought to arrive in 2015, it’s now very likely that this smartphone will only get official next…

from GSMArena.com – Latest articles http://ift.tt/1Ora1fs
via IFTTT

It seems that the next arena for wearables will be rings. Patents reveal Samsung’s ideas about what a smart ring can do. Essentially, it can be used as a controller for smartphones, tablets, smart TVs and even smart home devices.

The main method of operation is rotation – rotating the ring left or right can trigger predefined functions and if you have a screen on hand (e.g. your smartphone), the ring can be used to navigate more complex menus offering more functions.

Samsung sees the ring changing channels, turning off the lights and raising the blinds, even some unique (but unspecified) functionality for social networks like Facebook. The Samsung Gear S2 has a rotating bezel, the smart ring will have functionality based on that.

Other tech companies have smart ring patents too, but they are all very different. Microsoft is thinking of a ring that recognizes gestures (e.g. sliding your finger over some surface) instead of rotation. Google sees the ring as a controller for Glass (what the Wiimote is to the Wii). Apple just wants a smaller…

from GSMArena.com – Latest articles http://ift.tt/22wCWZT
via IFTTT