For the last six months (at least) the Wileyfox Pro (WFP, for short!) has been the only Windows 10 Mobile smartphone that's still available to buy 'new' in an official capacity. It's still available today, in March 2019, amazingly, with a dozen or so kept in stock at any given time by Wileyfox, it seems. I was impressed by quite a few aspects of the WFP when I reviewed it, despite the budget specs - but the big question is how well does it perform with a year of Windows 10 Mobile branch and Microsoft core UWP application updates under its belt? I investigate...
My initial analysis of photo samples from the new Nokia 9 PureView and the classic Lumia 950 received a mountain of comments, not least because of the terrible performance of the '9' in very low light, at night. A common objection was 'Well, who would shoot photos at night?' and, leaving aside that many people do, for arty reasons(!), AAWP collaborator Mark Swidler and I have done another short photo set, this time with more common light levels: sunny and then dusk. So no complaints about bias against the newcomer this time, please.
It's no secret that phone imaging features online (not least at AAS and AAWP) are hugely popular. And for good reason, we all take loads of photos on our phones and we want them to be the best that they can be. But just how far do we take our definitions of 'best' here? And when we start involving manual/Pro settings adjustment, tripods, RAW files and Adobe Lightroom, haven't we gone a bit too far? Between casual snaps for Instagram and "just take a DSLR instead" there has to be a happy prosumer medium, surely?
The Nokia 9 PureView launched a few weeks back and I've written optimistically about it in my feature 'The importance of zoom, and continuing the PureView brand'. It's not PureView in the traditional sense though, and heck, it's not the same Nokia that launched the original 808 and 1020, so maybe I was getting my imaging hopes up too much? AAWP regular and Nokia/Lumia old-hand Mark Swidler has leapt in with photo samples and comparisons against the trusty 2015 Lumia 950 PureView.
Last week, I showed how to take an older (pre-2014) Lumia to (almost) the latest Windows 10 Mobile, gaining more working apps and services but hitting some pretty savage caveats, not least the phone's camera being largely inoperative and maps which don't display properly. None of this is too surprising, since these older phones (think Lumia 820, 920 and - yes - even 1020) have never been officially supported under W10M. But, if you did try the newer OS out over the last four years, here are the steps to get back to Windows Phone 8.1 and safety - if not actual current support...
MWC 2019 has wrapped, but not without echoes of MWC 2012, where Nokia took the wraps off something it had been working on for five years, the 808 PureView, much to everyone's astonishment, not least that it ran Symbian, considered 'old' even in 2012. The big reveal was the use of a 41MP sensor, of course - and here I want to reminisce about the aims of 'PureView' and the resurgence of the brand and also the technology. Not necessarily in the same phones!
This may seem a bit niche, but hey, it happened to me. Especially if you have more than one Lumia, you'll almost certainly have played with the Insiders Programme, active from 2014 to 2017, especially in getting an old Windows Phone 8.1 Lumia up to 'Windows 10 Mobile'. Except that the programme is long defunct and the latter may well be stuck on an old and unsupported branch of Windows 10 Mobile. Here's how I fixed it, though note the HUGE caveat at the end!
Back in early 2010 I was part of a panel of people giving feedback on different aspects of phone functions, software and hardware, run on behalf of Nokia. The latter section was about handling a variety of unmarked (non-running) prototypes and saying what we thought about the physicality. Two, in particular, caught my eye, with QWERTY keyboards and slide'n'tilt displays. One went on to become the Nokia E7, running Symbian, the other (larger, which I preferred) went on to become the Nokia N950, running MeeGo. And now, in 2019, inspired directly by these designs, we have a new Communicator, shown off at MWC.
Last updated in mid-January, this is the end-February update to the AAWP directory of curated UWP applications, those with native Windows 10 UI and which support different orientations, Continuum and even use on laptop or tablet. [1 app removed, 9 new entries] Thanks for the crowd input, keep the comments and recommendations coming!
AAWP reader Brady Nielsen contributes material to the Anatomy of a Lumia photo series here, with no less than nine photos, with comments. Though he bent the rules slightly, as I once did, by using photos from a HP Elite x3! All good snaps and hopefully we can all learn from his comments below.
