Monday Brief: iTunes 11, an official launch window for Windows Phone 7.8, BBJam Asia, and more!

This week: iTunes 11, an official launch window for Windows Phone 7.8, BBJam Asia, and more!
This is the Mobile Nations Monday Brief!
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Greetings mobile delegates, I'm Ashley Esqueda, and you're tuned into the Mobile Nations
Monday Brief. Crackberry was all a-buzz last week, as BlackBerry Jam Asia was in full swing.
RIM brought a smorgasbord of changes to the BBDev program, including updates to tools,
rewards, revenue, and hardware. The BlackBerry 10 SDK is getting an update with some requested
features, and will be launching in full on December 11th. Next, RIM opened up the "Built
for BlackBerry" certification lab, which is a required cert for the BlackBerry 10K
Developer Commitment, and they also added a new Dev Alpha Device: the Dev Alpha C, which
is the newest piece of development hardware and touts the quintessential physical keyboard
you Crackberry addicts know and love. Last, and this is my favorite, RIM announced that
current BB10 developers can apply for eligibility to swap their Dev Alpha unit for a real, working,
limited edition BlackBerry 10 device after launch! It's a pretty cool way to say thanks
to the dev community that's been working so hard to make sure App World is populated
with great content. There's a lot more to BBJam Asia, so head over to Crackberry dot
com for all the info.
iMore was talking about the launch of iTunes 11 last week. Nobody was really sure if Apple was
going to make their November 2011 launch window, but they squeaked in at the last minute and
released the update. Obviously, the big change is the look of iTunes. It's been morphed
into a much more visual interface, with menus and clutter tucked away more neatly. That's
not to say it hasn't had its issues; many users complained of random error messages
and strange bugs in this new build, but hopefully Apple will patch those things up quickly and
without incident. Others are torn between the old, familiar feel of iTunes 10 and the
new, iOS-like design of 11. Either way, Apple's moving forward with this version, so if you're
an iTunes user by choice... or only because you have to, it's probably best to update
and get used to the new.
When webOS Nation is surprised by an HP move, it's usually bad news, but this past week,
Derek and the gang were pleasantly surprised by a generous offering from HP and its GBU
spinoff company Gram. It seems as if they're happy with the crazy good work the webOS Ports
team is doing on Open webOS, and to reward all their hard work, HP/Gram has donated five
heavyweight servers to them. It's a $64,000 gift, and one that the webOS Ports team can
definitely use in their quest to get the open source OS onto other devices. It's not the
in-house hardware production webOS fans really want, but it's a huge gesture by HP, showing
they're supportive of the hard work the Ports team has been doing. It's also nice
to see webOS has a CEO that doesn't totally hate them. Thanks, Meg!
Windows Phone Central knows a lot of you who bought Windows Phone devices earlier this
year weren't too thrilled with the news that they wouldn't be upgradable to Windows
Phone 8. While that's still true, Windows Phone owners who've been waiting for the
7.8 update finally have a release window to look forward to. Microsoft's Corporate Vice
President for Windows Phone, Terry Myerson, has officially gone on the record to state
the update will hit in early 2013. We know, it's not exactly as soon as you were hoping
for, but the update will bring windows phone 7 devices as close as possible to Windows
Phone 8. That means the updated start screen, the lock screen, new accent colors, and more
will hit devices in the new year. Let's just hope it's not TOO much into the new
year, otherwise we're going to have some very annoyed Lumia 900 and Titan 2 owners
on our hands...
Android Central spent some time this last week on their podcast talking about the Nexus
4 -- specifically, it's lack of LTE... or is it? If you haven't heard, the hardware
exists inside the Nexus 4 to grab an LTE signal on a few bands, it's just not enabled or
licensed by the FCC. At least, it's disabled unless you have band 4 LTE service, available
in Canada, and you enter in some simple information to toggle the signal option. An-and-tech's
Brian Klug sat down with Phil and the android central crew to discuss the quirk, and it's
a pretty interesting conversation if you're really into the nuts and bolts of the newest
Nexus phone. We're still not sure if Google will disable the ability to toggle the signal
on, but we're guessing they will at some point. Until then, you can jump on Android
central dot com for more information and to listen to the podcast!
That's it for your Mobile Nations Monday Brief. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel
at youtube.com/mobilenations, check out our dazzling and informative podcasts at mobilenations.com/shows,
and you can follow me on Twitter @ashleyesqueda. Nations, you have been briefed!