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Microsoft’s Cortana To Hit iPhone And Android Platforms
Microsoft is on an adventure to play an even larger role when it comes to the world of mobile devices, smartphones specifically. It seems that Microsoft has announced that their once sacred Cortana, an app that ran only on Windows Phone devices, will be making its way to two major rivals – that is, the Android platform as well as the iOS platform.
The former will be picking up Cortana goodness before June this year is over, while iPhone owners will have to play the patience card all the more as Cortana is due to arrive only later this year. This particular move by Microsoft would be welcomed by many, I believe, although one does wonder whether such a cross-platform mobile strategy that is centered around the newly announced Phone Companion app for iOS and Android will actually kill off sales of Windows handsets, since Cortana is no longer exclusive to the platform? Only time will be able to tell.
It is quite a feeling to have a smartphone getting the latest operating system update up and running, that is for sure. After all, you can never quite tell just what kind of goodies that your handset would receive now, can you? Those who are rocking to a Windows Phone 8.1 device might be looking forward to spending Christmas with a Windows 10 Mobile update but it seems that such hopes will have to be shelved for the moment.
It seems that there will be no Windows 10 update arriving this month as originally speculated, and the time frame itself has been altered, being even more vague in nature – where it has been mentioned to be “early next year”, which could jolly well mean any time, even in April. Looks like patience needs to be had in boatloads here.
So, you are still rocking to the Xiaomi Mi 4 and are more than happy with the device, right? Well, how about enjoying an operating system upgrade when December 3rd rolls around? This is what will happen to the Xiaomi Mi 4, where it has been teased by Xiaomi’s Founder and President Lin Bin on Weibo, citing the December 3rd date. I suppose it is encouraging to take note that this bit arrives close to nine months after Microsoft and Xiaomi came to an agreement, where there would be support for the Windows 10 Technical Preview on the Mi 4 handset.
Just in case you were wondering, there is another device from Xiaomi which will rock to the Windows 10 OS, and that would be the recently announced Xiaomi Mi Pad 2 tablet, with that particular device arriving in a 64GB memory configuration alongside an asking price of $205 thereabouts.
Trivia lovers, here is something that might just pique your interest. After all, don’t you wish you had all sorts of information at your fingertips? Windows Phone lovers will be pleased to hear that there is a leak concerning information about the Windows Phone Store, and such information can be said to be ‘ancient”, as it dates back all the way to October 2011 with the introduction of Windows Phone 7.5.
So far, the most popular downloaded app happens to be Facebook with more than 112 million installations – no surprise there at all, I suppose. WhatsApp is behind Facebook considerably at 92 million downloads, while OneDrive has 62.5 million downloads. Located close to the bottom of the food chain would be PayPal that picked up a mere 1.6 million downloads all this while, and 2.5 million for Telegraph.
Third party apps as well as games have had their fair share of hits, too, like Tube HD that handles the playback of YouTube videos with more than 13 million downloads. Of course, these figures would pale in comparison to what Android and iOS platforms have garnered all this while.