Angry Birds Star Wars has been updated today with the final 20 levels of the Hoth episode.

You’ll get 20 new addictive levels, two bonus ones you’ll need to unlock, and a boss fight. Read more »

If you are an Android or an iOS user, you’ll be familiar with the Speaktoit’s Assistant for sure. It’s a third-party assistant like Apple’s Siri and Google Now and does an excellent job.

It’s a really nice alternative (sometimes even better) than the default voice assistants and I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that the app is now available on Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 as well. Read more »

WhatsApp, one of the most popular instant-messaging services, breaches international privacy laws over phone numbers according to the Canadian and Dutch data protection authorities.

The application forces you to provide access to your entire address book and this policy has been criticized time and time again. Read more »

Nokia unveiled its Music+ service, which builds on the free Nokia Music by adding an optional monthly subscription of around €3.99/$3.99. Nokia Music+ will roll out over the next couple of weeks.

Nokia Music+ adds unlimited skips, downloads, lyrics and the option to listen to your music on a PC via a web-app. Read more »

Nokia has updated the map data, which is used on its navigation apps – such as Nokia Maps and Nokia Drive for Windows Phone, as well as the here.com web service.

The update includes three new regions, more detailed coverage in some of the previously supported areas as well as new or amended roads in various countries worldwide. Read more »

Microsoft had an interesting final quarter for 2012 – the three months period that saw the launches of both Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. As a result, the company is reporting record revenues but also a slight decline in operating income.

Sales of Windows saw a 24% increase from the year ago quarter, but the Windows 8 launch is behind the Windows 7 launch, which boosted sales by 76%. Even Vista brought a 65% jump in sales, though in terms of monetary value the Windows 8 launch brought in more cash (Vista replaced 5 year old XP, while Windows 7 is still relatively recent). Read more »

Now that our review of the Nokia Lumia 510 is over, we are ready to share the details on the smartphone’s battery test. It’s the first smartphone to run on Windows Phone 7.8 and is probably the one with least powerful hardware, so we were interested how it would do.

The Lumia 510 shares many specs with the Lumia 610 we met with last summer, but comes with a 0.3-inch bigger display (that’s a more space to light up) and 4GB less of storage. Read more »

Microsoft has released the Windows Phone SDK update for Windows Phone 7.8. It brings two new emulator images with WP7.8 running on a 512MB device and WP7.8 running on a 256MB RAM smartphone.

More importantly, the launch of the 7.8 SDK, suggests that the update itself is going to start seeding to users around the global very soon. Read more »

The wildly popular Where’s My Water and Where’s My Perry games are free on the Windows Phone Store today in a single day promo offer.

Usually, the two WP8 games (WP7 smartphones need no apply) cost $0.99, but today only they are available to download for free. Read more »

Last week we reported that the mobile web version of Google Maps service was no longer accessible through the Internet Explorer browser on Windows Phone devices. Although the service wasn’t officially supported because Internet Explorer does not run on the WebKit engine that the site is optimized for, it did used to work somehow until Google pulled the plug, citing incompatibility reasons.

Now, one week and lots of outrage later, the Google Maps website is once again accessible through Internet Explorer on Windows Phone. Admittedly, it won’t run as flawlessly as it does on iOS or Android devices because it’s still optimized for WebKit but at least you can use it now. Read more »

It seems several Windows Phone 8 users trying to use the web version of the Google Maps service through the browser on their phones are being denied access, with the browser now redirecting to Google’s homepage.

Although Google Maps was never technically supported on the Internet Explorer browser on WP8 (because it is optimized for use only on browsers running on the WebKit engine) it used to work to some extent before. Now, however, it doesn’t work at all. Read more »

Skype has launched a modest update for its Windows Phone 8 app bringing its version number to 2.1.0.241.

The update is more about improving stability and bringing the performance up a notch, than adding new features, but there’s still a lot to cheer about. Read more »

Microsoft’s Windows Phone Store has steadily been making progress, at least as far as the number of applications are concerned. 2012, in particular, seems to have been a good year, with over 75,000 new applications been added to the store, roughly doubling the overall number.

Back during the launch of Windows Phone 8, Microsoft had said that they had over 120,000 apps on the Windows Phone Store, although no further update was provided on that number this time. What we do know is that customers are now downloading an average of 54 applications to their device, which is over half of what iOS users do. Read more »

Good news for loyal Windows Phone users, as both versions of the platform have received updates today.

The Windows Phone 8 default Maps app got an update, while Nokia has just released Bluetooth Share app for Windows Phone 7.8. Read more »

A couple of months back at the Build conference, Microsoft told its employees that each and every one of them would receive a free Lumia 920 smartphone, a Surface tablet and a Windows 8 PC. According to a spicy rumor, however, the Lumia 920 part of the giveaway might not happen just yet, as Nokia is struggling to keep up with the consumer demand for the device.

As a result, Microsoft Germany has halted the employee-intended Lumia 920s and returned them back to Nokia to help fulfill customers’ orders. Read more »