Can Nokia and Microsoft be the comeback kids?

As Britain swelters in conditions Brits call "hot" and Australians call "wintry", TV screens have been tuned to the tennis: on Sunday, Andy Murray triumphed at Wimbledon. Last year's underdog was this year's hero, and we can't help thinking that several tech firms hope to make a very similar journey.
According to Gareth Beavis, Nokia is one of those firms: the Lumia 1020 "is going to be the device that not only reminds people how good Nokia used to be, but will also herald a real change in the company's fortunes."
It's going to "obliterate the competition on the imaging front" with its extraordinary PureView camera and "if in a year or so Nokia is announcing booming profits and Samsung, Apple and HTC are all looking nervously over their shoulders," the 1020 will be the phone responsible.

The Berry fights back?

Nokia isn't the only phone giant to be eclipsed by the rise of the iPhone and Android: BlackBerry's another former king reduced to underdog status. Could the BlackBerry 9720 be its comeback? Er, probably not: it'll be running BB7, not BB10, which seems rather odd.
Much more excitingly, the long-rumoured A10 flagship is imminent: as Chris Smith reports, it looks like a Samsung Galaxy S4 and apparently has "a focus on gaming".

The Q5 is just too expensive to be a satisfying budget alternative

In the meantime there's always the BlackBerry Q5, which John McCann says is easy to like but "difficult to love", not least because it's too pricey to be a true budget option: "We can't help but feel the only people likely to seriously consider a BlackBerry Q5 are those yearning for a Q10, but whose pockets are not deep enough to afford one."

One is the loveliest number

Remember when HTC ruled the Android roost? The superb HTC One was a real return to form, and it's getting a revamp. As Michael Rougeau reports, there will be an updated version of the flagship phone by the end of this year - and there's a sequel, codenamed M8, due in 2014.
The refresh might be more than cosmetic, too: we're hearing that it'll get a faster processor, which should make its already silky-smooth performance even better.

This is the slide that seems to give the Surface game away

It feels odd to call Microsoft an underdog, but....Read the rest of this post ------->

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