With the Kin duo now gone for good, and the WinMo 6.5 market share bordering on insignificance, Microsoft have all their eggs in one WP7 basket. As it seems though they will do everything they can to make sure they stay on the smartphone market. Today they revealed more information about theWindows Phone 7 synchronization and remote access capabilities and those certainly look impressive.

Much like the just announced BlackBerry Protect, Windows Phone 7 will get you the full suite of services you'll need in case your phone gets stolen or lost. You get remote wipe so you can protect your valuable private information, plus you can locate your device wirelessly and hopefully get it back. A remotely activated ringer is also available to help you find the phone if you have misplaced it. Maybe Windows Phone 7 isn't quite as useful when you lose your phone as the recently announced BlackBerry Protect, but it still does a pretty great job at it.

Besides it will offer another valuable feature that should give it an edge against its competitors. Windows Phone 7 will support offer synchronization between all your Microsoft devices (those being your Windows PC, your Xbox and, of course, your smartphone). You can transfer everything from contacts to OneNote entries and images, allowing you to continue where you left off each time you alternate those gadgets. Cool right?

Microsoft are joining the high-end smartphone market with competition at its highest, but they sure as hell won't give up without a fight.

Nokia's looking to ride the mojo of any negative fallout from today's Apple press conference, slipping out a rather fascinating statement this afternoon. The gist of it is that Espoo's keen on letting everyone know how much blood, sweat, and tears they've poured into perfecting their antenna design strategy over the years, going so far as to say that they "prioritize" it over the physical design of the phone if they need to in order to optimize its call performance Follow the break for the full statement. 

"Antenna design is a complex subject and has been a core competence at Nokia for decades, across hundreds of phone models. Nokia was the pioneer in internal antennas; the Nokia 8810, launched in 1998, was the first commercial phone with this feature.

Nokia has invested thousands of man hours in studying human behavior, including how people hold their phones for calls, music playing, web browsing and so on. As you would expect from a company focused on connecting people, we prioritize antenna performance over physical design if they are ever in conflict.

In general, antenna performance of a mobile device/phone may be affected with a tight grip, depending on how the device is held. That's why Nokia designs our phones to ensure acceptable performance in all real life cases, for example when the phone is held in either hand. Nokia has invested thousands of man hours in studying how people hold their phones and allows for this in designs, for example by having antennas both at the top and bottom of the phone and by careful selection of materials and their use in the mechanical design."

It's not surprising that after Apple finished explaining the iPhone 4 antenna issues to the press today, the company wanted to go one step further and say "yes, actually, we do test the hell out of these phones before we release them to the public." Though Steve Jobs went over the lengthy and intensive kinds of radio evaluation that goes on at Apple's headquarters, it didn't seem to be enough for the folks in Cupertino. And that, we suspect, is why we were invited (along with a small group of other journalists) to take a brief tour of Apple's Infinite Loop labs. Though we weren't allowed to shoot video or take pictures, we can tell you about what we did -- and what we didn't -- see and hear behind closed doors. 

After Jobs wrapped the nearly hour and a half presentation, we were pulled aside by Apple PR and ushered through the center of the Infinite Loop campus -- a new experience for us, since we'd never been deeper than one of the company's small theaters. Once all the attendees had been gathered (folks like Jason Snell from Macworld, Daring Fireball's John Gruber, and a smattering of mainstream journalists from places such as Wired, USA Today and the New York Times), we were led further into the campus (and eventually across a street) into a separate building. After a series of double doors and long, anonymous hallways, we entered a large, warehouse-like lab cluttered with test equipment amid large tables covered in mysterious black cloth (and no, we couldn't look under the cloth). Awaiting us was Phil Schiller, Greg Joswiak, Bob Mansfield, and engineer Ruben Caballero. The latter employee has become a somewhat controversial figure over the last few days, as he was alleged to have known about and communicated concerns over the new antenna design (according to a Bloomberg article which Jobs lambasted as a "crock" during today's press conference). Oh, and there was also an assortment of PR folks, lest the nosey journalists get out of line and require a tasing.

Symbian^4 is clearly going to be a bit of a departure from the versions that came before it. The Symbian Foundation has posted the first handful of home screen UI shots on its developer wiki recently showing redesigned widgets, app categories and search, pop-up menus, and a standard-issue numeric touchscreen keypad -- and unlikeNokia's concept videos from before, these are from a real emulator running real code. Nokia's expecting to use Symbian^4 in at least some of its devices by early 2011 and knowing how these guys like to go big with global roll-outs spanning tens or hundreds of millions of devices.

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Apple just finished off its press conference dedicated on the iPhone 4 reception issues leaving us quite puzzled, to say the least. At one point Steve Jobs was saying that every phone has a weak spot, then he claimed everybody makes mistakes but Apple is quick to fix theirs so that's why they have loyal users. Apple wants its users happy and since everyone cries for free cases, they will give away free cases. But not because they've messed up, but only because "they loves their users".

How about that? Apparently the problem with the iPhone 4 antenna had been blown way out of proportion by the "bad press". The iPhone 4 reputation obviously has been ruined by its incorrect signal representation (now fixed in today's 4.0.1 update) and the easily accessible weak spot.

"There is no perfect phone." - says Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs. This may very well be true, but we never heard of another phone dropping calls when held in the most natural of ways.

  
The iPhone 4 antenna issues were the press conference main topic

Afterwards they treated us to several slides, suggesting that only a minor portion of users were troubled by the iPhone 4 flawed antenna design.

 
According to Apple, the iPhone 4 issues are only troubling a small percentage of its users

Okay, let’s explain how this works – when it’s a design issue, it means that EVERY user will have it. Of course those lucky enough to live in an area with very strong signal will be less affected by it, but that’s a whole different story.

Obviously only about 0.5 percent of all customers complained directly to Apple about reception issues. But how about that everyone who opened a tech site for the past two weeks (or knew a guy who did) was perfectly aware what was going on and knew that this call will do them no good.

At least Apple decided to do the decent thing and give a free case to every iPhone 4 user. Plus they are willing to waive the restocking fee for everyone who wants to return the handset in the next 30 days. Just bear in mind that it’s not the Bumpers that Apple is giving away but some other type of cases by another manufacturer. User will even have some kind of choice.

Every iPhone 4 user is eligible to receive a free case or a full refund

Steve Jobs also mentioned the other big issue with the iPhone 4 – its faulty proximity sensor. He promises they are already working on a fix for that and it will be coming with a future software update. Not much of a consolation really, as proximity sensor problems, unlike antenna issues have been troubling even people in areas with great coverage.

 
The proximity sensor is the next thing they are going to fix on the iPhone 4

Now you can bet that being treated like fools and being told that there is no problem when it’s pretty clear that a problem exists is not our favorite thing. Still we cannot see Apple doing much better than this – you didn’t really expect them to recall all phones and replace them at an indefinite time in the future when they come up with a better design, did you?

So that’s about it for now, we’ll keep you posted when we get more info about those promised cases. And of course we will continue hoping that Apple come up with a solution and fix the problem in some future batch of handsets.

P.S. Steve Jobs confirmed they're right on track with the next wave of iPhone availability scheduled for the 30 July. 17 more countries will get the iPhone 4 then. Plus the white iPhone 4 is expected to ship in the end of July too.