Microsoft Confirms LTE Windows Phones from Nokia

Android is available on a great deal of handsets that are offering support for 4G LTE networks, and Windows Phone will soon be loaded on some of these as well.

Microsoft has just confirmed this, suggesting that Nokia might be among the first handset vendors to release such devices, a recent article on PCMag states.

Apparently, all mobile phone makers who came out with Windows Phone devices have had access to the same LTE Mango update as Nokia, but none of them rushed to drop the news.

The Finnish giant, on the other hand, seems set to put Windows Phone on as many devices as possible in the shortest period of time, and has already eyed LTE-capable hardware for that.

Undoubtedly, it does need to bring to shelves competitive smartphones that can address user's needs, and we should be seeing a large number of these being launched starting with 2012.

At the moment, Windows Phone 7.5 Mango does not offer support for LTE, but a flavor of the OS that can run on 4G smartphones is already under development.

Greg Sullivan, Windows Phone senior product manager, said that manufacturers already have access to the LTE Mango update that Microsoft is preparing.

“I don't think there's any kind of head start [Nokia] gets, but I think Stephen [Elop} was more aggressive in terms of getting out there with the news,” Sullivan said, the aforementioned article mentions.

Moreover, Andy Lees, the president of Microsoft's Windows Phone division, reportedly stated that the Windows Phone 7.5 OS does come with support for CDMA networks, but that OEMs and carriers were those who decided on the availability of new devices.

The inclusion of LTE support for Windows Phone does not mean that existing devices will also benefit from enhanced data speeds, although Microsoft is certainly preparing new updates for them as well.

The same as before, Microsoft might be set to deliver new features packed inside a single major update, and might not release a series of smaller updates for its users.

“We can do anything from a bug fix to a feature addition … but if you want to maintain quality, doing lots and lots of minor things stops you from doing significant major things,” Andy Lees reportedly stated.