Guest writer Arpolend Sevostyanov is back with a little hack - exploring Windows 10's Paint 3D on Mobile (it's supposed to only be available for the Desktop!) All rather geeky fun, anyway, see what you think.
We're in an odd period for Windows on phones. Microsoft bought Nokia, made a couple of cracking releases and then stopped selling them, despite demand from enthusiasts. Meanwhile other licensees have come and gone, with the Alcatel IDOL 4 Pro here the currently sold 'flagship'. And I've been living (again) with the IDOL 4 Pro 24/7 for a couple of weeks with my main SIM - so how is it set-up? These articles are always popular, so here's my current Start Screen Set-up, as at December 2017.
The problem with the tech world is, from an operating system provider's point of view, that the goalposts keep moving. These perambulating pieces of wood killed Symbian, killed Blackberry, have almost killed Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile, and, one day, may even kill iOS as we know it today. With hindsight, it's all too clear, but at the time OS coders were making sensible choices.
I'm cheating in several ways for this latest in the series of images and the story behind them. Not only am I not using a Lumia (it's an Alcatel IDOL 4 Pro), but the headline image wasn't even a photo. Ahem. But the story of this glowing tower clock is still worth telling...
No disrespect to WC's Zac Bowden, I suspect it was just a poor choice of phrase, but I heard him say on the last Windows Central podcast that "Windows 10 Mobile is End Of Life" (EOL). In the interest of clarifying the situation, I thought I'd set the record straight. And yes, anyone who has been following AAWP for the last year will already guess what I'm about to say/repeat/restate (though there's a new pretty chart to admire!) - Windows 10 Mobile is far from 'EOL', despite the utter lack of new phones in High Street shops.
I've done video capture tutorials before on AAWP, not least of all here and here. And I'm going to lift some tips from those in what follows. However, the assumption in previous articles is that we're dealing with an imaging flagship - so Lumia 1020, Lumia 950, and so on. However, in the modern age (2017) we're often now dealing with Windows 10 Mobile hardware that's more powerful in terms of chipset and RAM but less capable on the imaging side. Which got me thinking? How good is video capture on the Alcatel IDOL 4 Pro (and, by extension, the HP Elite x3)? Let's find out - warts and all!
Following my musings on a dark reading mode in Edge on Android, I suspect the title here would be a FAQ if indeed enough people knew it was possible in order to ask how to enable it! After writing a few million words on AAWP over the last five years even I didn't know about (or remember) this feature, so I thought a 'how to' tutorial was in order.
The OnePlus 5T is the latest kid on the block in terms of smartphone hardware - with 16MP and 20MP sensors, used in different ways. It's the perfect starting point for a smartphone user who has decided to jump to Android in every other way than imaging. So can the camera get close to the mighty Lumia 950 XL? I find out below...
Utterly subjective, of course. We're all different, but hopefully this top 12 will give you a starting point if you're too pushed for time to browse through AAWP's comprehensive directories of general applications and camera/media apps. Admittedly, those lists include software for both Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 10 Mobile, while the list below is UWP all the way, i.e. dedicated applications for Windows 10 (across all form factors).
Now... this is an unashamed update of an article from six months ago - yet the information is still very relevant indeed after the production updates for many devices to Fall Creators Update (FCU) and to Creators Update (CU) for older phones. If the updates haven't gone smoothly (and I've heard of PIM sync issues, audio volume and camera problems, all characteristic of system file conflicts under the hood) then maybe a November 2017 'refresh' is what's needed?
