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'McLaren' and 3D Touch
Referencing
@evleaks they note that "The fall flagship, then, will be a device codenamed McLaren. Shipping in time for the holidays, McLaren should see wide release, with AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile all reportedly signed up to carry it."
McLaren is evidently the new nickname for what was previously called
Goldfinger, or a carrier variance.
Indeed I have heard that the next flagship will not be an AT&T exclusive as well, with McLaren/Goldfinger launching in November. Releasing a Windows Phone 'hero' device on all major carriers is something many of you have been asking for, and it now seems like you'll get your wish.
Some of the model names include RM964, RM965, RM1001, RM1002, though the exact configuration of the hardware for this device is currently not known.
The specifications of McLaren/Goldfinger though are less important than what it does, which is 3D Touch.The Verge's Tom Warren
revealed the existence of this technology back in November. While Samsung tried with the Galaxy S4 to use the front-facing camera
as a motion detector, it was obviously a hack and a gimmick. The notion of real non-touching gesture support requires dedicated, specific hardware.
How the 'McLaren' achieves this is unclear, though you can surmise that Microsoft is leveraging what they've learned from their Kinect project for Xbox. Some of the features include APIs for gestures, side interactions and even heat maps.
Crazy stuff.
Believe it or not, some of these APIs for developers are in the current SDK, they're just not visible. What this mean though is developers will have access to this 3D Touch technology for their apps. It also means that Microsoft will have a small batch of third-party apps supporting this 3D Touch technology on launch day.
So, is 3D Touch a gimmick? It will depend on how often it's adopted by developers and how well it works. So far, it's the hardware behind the technology that is slowing down development. Presumably there's some proprietary work done here by Microsoft, as I've heard prototypes of this phone – sans 3D Touch – have been floating around since December.
What can you do with 3D Touch?
One of the coolest uses of this 3D Touch that I've heard about is called 'Mix View.'
I don't want to post images, though you can think of it this way: Imagine a Tile on your Start screen, as your finger hovers above the Tile, it wiggles a bit, giving you a visual indication that you're giving focus to the element. When pressing down in the air (without touching the Tile) it "explodes" into many smaller Tiles, up to eight with varying sizes, and each revealing custom content from that app. For example, a contact's Tile could display their phone number, last email, a text message, photos, etc. App developers can configure it to reveal anything so our Windows Phone Central app could display maybe top two or three headlines.
It's a fascinating expansion of the Live Tile concept, allowing more than the limited two-sided Tile that we have today.
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According to @evleaks, the ever reliable source on anything in the pipelines (Nokia or not), two of the devices he previously mentioned “goldfinger” and “moneypenny” could be Nokia’s first WP 8.1/Blue devices. Blue update is set to be the large overhaul for WP bringing a number of features, including possibly a notification center, quick toggles and separate volume controls; but none of these have been confirmed yet.
