Windows Phone 7.5 Refresh to bring Internet sharing to Lumia 710, 800

With the launch of their Nokia Lumia handsets late last year, the brand had partnered with Microsoft and launched a couple of handsets namely the Lumia 800 and the Lumia 710. The handsets have done fairly well in the market and since then Nokia have unveiled two more handsets under the Lumia banner which are the Lumia 900 and 610 that are yet to reach our shores. The Lumia 610 is expected to land here by the end of this quarter. A feature the Lumia 610 will have when it launches is Internet sharing capability, something that is lacking on the Lumia 710 and Lumia 800. However, reports by Nokiapoweruser states that this feature will now become available to these handsets with the Windows Phone 7.5 Refresh update.

Internet Sharing (Image credit: WP7.nl)

We had reported earlier that Microsoft would be releasing this Tango firmware update aka Windows Phone 7.5 Refresh by June and it would be designed for low end handsets that are using 256MB RAM and slower processors. Certain features from Mango won’t work on Refresh due to the hardware limitations but Microsoft says that the experience should be the same, in the sense, the interface is going to be just as slick and fluid, which is one of the highlights of Windows Phone.

More from News & Analysis

What is the US HIRE Bill and why is India’s $250-billion IT sector worried? Is the internet dead? What's this theory that OpenAI's Sam Altman says might be true?

The report by Nokiapoweruser states that this Tango firmware update is available on NaviFirm for Lumia 710 an 800 with many countries receiving it. They state, “In one of the very interesting revelations, 1600.3030.8773.12120 update’s brief changelog is out and is bringing much awaited tethering or internet sharing ability  to Lumia 710 and 800C for now. Other changes are Nokia News, Sportstracker and Creative studio apps as standard on the device.” This update via NaviFirm is a pre-release of the Windows Phone 7.5 Refresh but NaviFirm receives the firmware data directly from the support servers of Nokia.

With these updates to the Windows Phone operating system, Microsoft is certainly improving on their technology which has received some considerable flack in comparison to the likes of Google’s Android operating system. However, being a budding OS, one can only expect it to grow from here on.

Let us know your reactions to the Lumia handsets getting Internet sharing in the comments below.