There's a very famous adage that addresses the question posed in the title ("Why not a standalone camera?") very adeptly and quickly: "Because it's the only camera that's with you". However, true though this is, the question and answer have provoked Tim Salmon and I to indulge in some friendly Christmas debate - comments welcome if you come down on one side of the argument or the other!
Built into every Nokia Windows Phone is a small utility, 'Contacts Transfer', providing a very quick way for Symbian smartphone owners to get their core contacts over to a replacement Windows Phone. Here's a walkthrough of this usefull utility in action.
If you're anything like me, your Windows Phone came with a cheap set of outer-ear ear-buds. They sound tinny, are uncomfortable, leak tsk-tsk noises to the people around you and, if you're very, very lucky, might even have a call-pick-up and 'pause' control inline in one of the wires. All a bit bare bones, isn't it? Don't you deserve better? Absolutely. And I'm here to help, with a reminder that there's more to audio than the 3.5mm jack on your phone and your supplied cheap 'buds.
Last week I was Armenia. If you must know, it was for the Junior Eurovision Song Contest, but what's important for this site is what I thought of the Windows Phone I had with me (it was the Nokia Lumia 800, if you're keeping track). I've been using this handset for over a month now, so this isn't a full on review, more a personal list of things that still make me go "hmm".
One of the integral parts of the Windows Phone experience is the Zune Desktop. Being Microsoft, it's only available for Windows - but our Mac OS X readers can relax, they haven't been left out in the cold, Steve will look at the Mac's Windows Phone 7 Connector in the near future. Unfortunately, Linux users might need a bit more magic (or a dual booting computer) to get connectivity. Those issues aside, if you're new to Windows Phone, here's a quick look at what the Zune Desktop can do.
40,000 applications publicly developed for Windows Phone is an impressive number, but you know what we really need to know? Not if the big hitters of Spotify or Instagram are available, not if there is a strong spread of attractive games, but which application is the most expensive application for Windows Phone. Rafe took the All About Windows Phone credit card out of my wallet, and sent me into the Marketplace to find out.
Brand new here at AAWP Towers is the HTC Titan and what's fascinating me is the comparison to the previous, similar device from a year ago, the HD7 - what difference does a year make (other than the small size increase)? And are there any areas in which the design has gone backwards? Here's my first Titan piece - watch for a full review shortly.
Has the world gone raving mad? Have we all lost our sense of perspective? It seems that the madness of the Apple iOS App Store, where half a million applications jostle in a massive 'race to the bottom', price-wise has caused the rest of us in the mobile world to completely lose track of what an application or game is 'worth'. I saw a comment recently which declared that a full Symbian app was "overpriced" at £1 and another that a genre-defining, spare-time-consuming Windows Phone game was "hard to swallow" at £2.29. Really? Really?
It's one of the default live tiles, it's a recognisable brand name around the world, and it's one of the gems in the Windows Phone ecosystem. But still people have questions about XBox Live on their new smartphone, so let's have a look at what's on offer for the mobile gamer.
One of the presumed-known facts about Windows Phone is that to keep up to date with podcasts, you had to rely on Zune Desktop to do all the heavy lifting, i.e. the downloading all happened on a Windows PC and then you had to hook up and sync to get at your new podcasts. However, that's not entirely true, at least since the Mango update. With a caveat or two, you can now download all your podcasts directly on the phone - if you know how!
