The general gist? A minor update somewhere this year, but the real update won't come until 2014. In the meantime, we'll have to... "Resuming..." ...settle for CardDAV/CalDAV support, some additional HTML5 support, and fixes for Xbox Music metadata. We were promised regular updates and an early access program for enthusiasts - but Microsoft failed to deliver, once more. For all intents and purposes, thanks... "Resuming..." ...to the switch to the Windows NT kernel, the Windows Phone we're using today has very little additional functionality to offer over what we were using on WP7 release day. I've been a Windows Phone user since WP7 release day, but Microsoft has lost me.

I was in the running for a new Android phone, and I was quite dead set on getting a Nexus 4 - however, there was another phone in the running: the OPPO Find 5, a smrtphone with lots of positive reviews, but from a small manufacturer. The point that made me choose the Find 5 over the Nexus 4? OPPO actively supports the ROM community by giving away free phones, and boasts support for CyanogenMod, Paranoid Android, and an AOSP ROM, and obviously, rooting is easy. OPPO also updates its own firmware/ROM twice per month with new features, which is a far cry from the big boys. If you're looking for a new Android phone, you might want to consider looking beyond the established players as well, and support a company who works closely with the community - something the big player still need to learn properly. Once the device arrives on my doorstep, I'll be sure to tell you all about it, and if it lives up to the hype. It is, after all, from a relatively unknown company, so I am taking a risk here. I am a little bit nervous. But hey, if none of us takes the risk, we'll be stuck with the big players forever.

"Mir, Ubuntu's in-progress replacement for the X Window System, is being used internally at Ubuntu developer Canonical and will be available to all users in the next version of the operating system. Mir was announced in March, with Canonical saying that a new display server is needed to power the Unity interface across desktops, phones, and tablets." Anyone here experience with Mir? Is it any good? any downsides?

In its struggle to find willing customers, Nokia just announced yet another flagship phone - the Nokia Lumia 1020. It's essentially a Lumia 920/925, but with the Nokia 808's PureView camera bolted on. Also, it's exclusive to AT&T in the US, for $299 with a two year contract, which is a steep price. So, who gets the honour to be the first to claim that this, yes this Lumia will turn Nokia around?

"Google's Chromebook was dismissed as a bare-bones laptop with limited appeal when it debuted two years ago. Now it's defying skeptics and gaining share as the rest of the personal-computer market shrinks. Chromebooks have in just the past eight months snagged 20 percent to 25 percent of the U.S. market for laptops that cost less than $300, according to NPD Group Inc. The devices, which have a full keyboard and get regular software updates from Google, are the fastest-growing part of the PC industry based on price, NPD said."

I have a Surface RT tablet. I bought it because I'm a Windows Phone user, and despite its major flaws, I still hate WP much less than I hate its competitors. As such, it made sense to me that I would like the Surface RT as well - I mean, my favourite UI on a tablet? Count me in! It should come as no surprise by now that Windows RT was a major disappointment, so now that the Windows 8.1 preview is here, did Microsoft address any of the major problems?

"The default timer resolution on Windows is 15.6 ms - a timer interrupt 64 times a second. When programs increase the timer frequency they increase power consumption and harm battery life. They also waste more compute power than I would ever have expected – they make your computer run slower! Because of these problems Microsoft has been telling developers to not increase the timer frequency for years. So how come almost every time I notice that my timer frequency has been raised it's been done by a Microsoft program?" Fascinating article.

"A war between two of the major conglomerates will always have casualties, and unfortunately for us, this time we are the casualties. We aren't yet at a state where it is impossible to use Google services on Microsoft platforms, but we are moving towards a stricter ecosystem world where we might see Googlers/Gmail users on one side and Bingers/Outlook users on the other. We can only hope for the sake of technologies future and for the sake of innovation that the two companies can learn to work together in an ever expanding world of data." We can hope so, but we're talking large companies, and large companies do not care about users. Never have, never will.

Robert Nyman, a Mozilla technical evangelist and editor of the Mozilla Hacks website, provides a perspective on the history and evolution of Firefox OS in this LinuxGizmos guest column. Nyman writes on the occasion of the first Firefox OS smartphone, the $90 ZTE Open, becoming available for sale in Madrid, Spain.

After the release of the desktop version of the new Opera - based on Chrome and the WebKit-fork Blink - it has now made its way to Android. It's available free of charge in the Play Store for both tablets and smartphones.

MidnightBSD 0.4-RELEASE hit FTP servers today and the new version includes a custom package management tool, "mport", that was developed with sqlite3 and libarchive. The packing list and all metadata is stored in SQL and a tool is provided to query the package database directly. This allows scripts and third party tools to easily integrate with the package system.

It took some back-and forth, since the original winner couldn't attend, but we finally selected a confirmed winner of a three-day pass to OSCON, July 22-26 in Portland, Oregon. It's Gregory Eric Sanderson. Congratulations, Gregory! If you didn't win but you still want to attend, you've got two options: represent OSNews as a writer, as described here, or buy a ticket using the code "OSN" to get 20% off. Update: Free Expo Hall Only pass to OSCON with code MPEXPO. Includes all parties, 5K, expo hall, sponsored sessions + more.

Qt 5.1 has been released. It brings several enhancements, Qt Quick Controls, Qt Sensors, a much better C++11, Wayland and OpenGL support, and the development of Android and iOS applications is very usable for a large number of use cases. In related news, the LXDE desktop prepares the change to Qt.

"HTC has just announced its unaudited results for the second quarter 2013, and they're not pretty. Despite launching a much-lauded flagship smartphone, the HTC One, the company made just NT$1.25 billion (roughly $41 million) after tax from NT$70.7 billion ($2.35 billion) revenue. In the same quarter last year, the company took in revenue of NT$91.04 billion ($3 billion) and made NT$7.40 billion ($246 million) profit." Make the best Android phone - and perhaps, the best phone period - and still not be out of hot water. And people still claim the smartphone market is not a one-to-one replica of the desktop market. Anywho, another victim of iceberg Apple and hurricane Samsung.