Guest writer Matthew Weflen steps in my traditional shoes in this camera phone head to head - Lumia 950 against another recent Android competitor, the Sony Xperia XA1, a mid-ranger but with Sony's flagship camera module. How will this stand up to the mighty Lumia 950?
Following on from AAWP's rather handy guide to the very best general applications and best camera/media apps for Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 10 Mobile, here's an updated (end May 2017) version of our similar crowd-sourced guide the very best one percent of games on the platform. Enjoy!
As usual with my benchmarking features, I'm focussing here on real world timings, not on artificial software-based utilities. My observations at the end of 2016 were that the early builds of Redstone 2 were showing performance gains compared to the existing Anniversary Update (Redstone) on the same (or similar) hardware. What about the latest, release version of the former, i.e. the Creators Update? Is it still faster?
Now, don't get too excited - this isn't some low level hack, and regular AAWP readers probably know everything that's detailed below. But for anyone catching up to the ever-more-convoluted story of Windows Phone, Windows 10 Mobile, the Insiders programme, the Lumia 930/Icon and 1520, and - above all - Microsoft's idiosyncratic policies, then here indeed is how to get your Lumia 930 or 1520 onto the Creators Update.
It's easy to look back from a world in which Windows-based phone hardware sales have dropped to millions rather than billions, and to point the finger at what went wrong. In fact, that's just what I'm doing here. Five of the biggest mistakes from my own perspective, at least, from devices to employees to misplaced spending.
A year ago I pitched the Huawei P9 against the camera phone world champion (in terms of image quality), the Lumia 950. A year on, the P10 adds extra resolution and OIS to the mix in trying to challenge the Lumia - but is it enough? With a bunch of interesting lighting challenges I test the phone cameras out...
After many editorials and features, there still seems to be much confusion about exactly where each Windows Phone will end up - officially. So I thought I'd produce an upgrade grid, for easy bookmarking. And note that I'm ignoring hacks like fiddling with phone registries - we're keeping things 100% legitimate here.
1Shot was always the camera application for Windows Phone that got you closer to the sensor in your phone camera than any other application - what you see on screen is what you get, with no post processing, no lossy digital zoom, no effects. Uniquely, this also means that it's the perfect app to deliver truly lossless zoom on Windows 10 Mobile, with only a slight adjustment to your own mindset about resolution.
Guest writer 'Edward' takes AAWP (even further) into geek territory here, with a guide to converting commercial 3D movie content into a file that can be played on a high spec Windows 10 Mobile phone (e.g. Lumia 950) and enjoyed through any VR viewer/holder - it's (potentially) a 3D cinema in your living room!
Ah, the best laid plans. Regular articles have had to be put to one side after a deluge of reaction and over-reaction to various happenings in the world of Windows Phone 8 and Windows 10 Mobile over the weekend. The Easter weekend. When hardly anyone's at work at Microsoft to respond or fix things. It's their own fault, really, for releasing new builds and a confusing statement mere minutes before disappearing off to family Easter events. Anyway, below I attempt to summarise the dozens of stories and thousands of comments from around the Internet from the last three days, along with my own take on it all.
