From the Editor’s desk: returning to normal, Lumia 928 specs and Kessler joining the party

It’s been awhile since I’ve had the chance to write a letter to our audience, keeping you posted on things and throwing whatever is not in and of itself newsworthy into a post. So today I figured I’d share a few tidbits on the site, some Windows Phone news and other happenings.

Returning to normal

Last week, some of you may have noticed I was absent for most of the news cycle. It was a good a break, in theory, though that was not the purpose. Instead, all of the EiC’s (editor in chiefs) of the Mobile Nations sites, including Kevin Michaluk of CrackBerry, as well as Phil Nickinson of Android Central, and Rene Ritchie of iMore, are joined by John P and Cali Lewis of Geek Beat got together in midtown Manhattan for “TM13”.

For the record, John P and Cali are good people, some of the nicest and most interesting techies I’ve had a chance to work with.

The process lasted nearly a week, involved us getting up at 6am every day and late nights. You may have even caught some of our behind-the-scenes photos on our Tumblr page, Breaksclusive (http://breaksclusive.com). It was fun, but exhausting.

Of course you’re probably wondering just what the hell is “TM13” and unfortunately, that I cannot share with you just yet. All I can say is it’s the next-level for our previously annual “Round Robin” where all of the EiCs would exchange devices for a week and then do mini-reviews of hardware and the opposing platform.  So think something along the lines of a more meta-analysis of mobile and you’ll have a clue.

The most exciting part of all of this was our stepping up of production levels. You’ll see it all in a few weeks, but having a crew around was very helpful, to say the least (see our new YouTube page intro above for instance).

And finally, shout out to the Windows Phone Central team who kept the site alive during my absence.

 

Verizon Lumia 928 specs?

We had this info dropped to us by a certain anonymous source. I can’t personally vouch for it but it sounds in-line with what we are expecting the Verizon Nokia Lumia 928 to feature. That is, nothing listed here is exactly crazy.

Probably the neatest part is the idea that Nokia, like HTC, is adding an amplifier for that rear speaker to really boost sound volume while maintaining clarity. Is it true? We’ll see in a few weeks, won’t we?

Improvements from 920:

• 10% less volume than 920 and 20g lighter
• New "infinity design = beautiful screen and provides a better in-hand feel"
• Xenon flash
• better audio performance, louder higher quality speaker with new amplifier
• Dolby headphone audio enhancements
• OLED display

Detailed Specifications

• dimensions: 5.24x2.71x0.44 inches
• weight: 5.7 ounces
• Global Ready
• 1.5GHz dual core Qualcomm MSM8960+WTR, 1GB Ram
• 4.5" WXGA HD OLED, 334ppi
• f/2.0, 26mm OIS camera
• distortion free audio recording up to 140db
• 8MP 4:3 or 7.2MP 16:9
• Xenon flash
• LED light for video
• 1080p video capture @30fps
• usual radios
• 2000mAh battery
• 32gb internal memory (no micro sd)

So there you go.

 

Kessler coming over from webOS Nation

With HP’s webOS winding down (though see this cool prototype just revealed), webOS Nation’s Derek Kessler will hopefully be picking up a few stories here and there on the site. I personally hooked him up with an HTC 8x and Lumia 920, so my fingers are crossed that he does something useful with them.

Derek’s been writing on mobile for quite some time and his articles are always well thought out and articulate. When he’s not doing his day job in the U.S. Army, I’m hoping we get to see some of his expertise spill over onto our pages here at Windows Phone Central.

 

Acer Iconia W510 and Samsung ATIV Tablet (500T) impressions

I owe you guys an impressions/mini-review post on the Acer Iconia W510—a well-priced ATOM-based Windows 8 Pro tablet, that also has an add-on keyboard dock. My keyboard just showed a few days ago and the combo is quite impressive (~19 hours battery life?).

Unfortunately between “TM13” last week and our George Ponder needing something light and portable on the go, I won’t be able to write up anything this week. But we’ll have George give it a spin and share some of his thoughts as this will be his first time with an ATOM based Windows 8 tablet.

As consolation, I’ll bang out a quick first impression of the Samsung ATIV Tablet (500T), which I just picked up yesterday at my local Microsoft Store. It too is an ATOM-based Windows 8 tablet, sporting similar specs to the Acer, but it has a larger display (11.6”), more onboard memory (64GB) and most interestingly, an S-Pen digitizer (Wacom) for taking notes. It’s like a Surface Pro, but way cheaper.

Truth be told, it’s kind of awesome. Not perfect, but you’ll see.

 

Lumia 520 and 720 reviews

Yes, those too are coming up hopefully this week, depending on how busy of a news cycle there is. Stay tuned though as the 720 is one of my favorite phones (though my new yellow Lumia 920 is still tops).