Navigating your Camera Roll (in the Photos hub) is simple, surely? You just flick up and down until you see the thumbnail(s) you want. Ah, but what about when, like me, your Windows Phone is the best part of a year old and you have well over a thousand photos (and videos) stored in the system? That's a lot of 'flicking' backwards and forwards. Surely there has to be a better way? There is, and it's built-in.
Picking devices from the Android world that are aligned similarly to the Nokia Lumia 1020 is tricky - whereas the 1020 is unashamedly camera-centric, you have to go to the ridiculously sized Galaxy S4 Zoom to find something competitive in the Android world. Well, until now. Possibly. You see Sony has just released the Xperia Z1 Compact, slightly smaller than the 1020 and yet with the same high end 1/2.3" 20MP oversampling sensor as the much larger Xperia Z1 - and, hopefully, more recent image processing algorithms. I'll come to actual camera performance in a separate feature, but for now here's a blow by blow comparison of the two devices.
The world as it was back in 2006 or so. Symbian ruled the still fledgling smartphone world with over 50% market share. Windows Mobile had itself a niche, and Blackberry was still growing into an accepted smartphone platform. And all three allowed third party applications to multitask, to do what they liked in the background. This, it seems was one of the core tenets of what made a smartphone ‘smart’. Yet today, iOS and Windows Phone present a different and - much as it pains me to admit it - a better model for the 99% of humanity that has no interest in learning about RAM, GHz and background task management.
It's easy to forget how much functionality is built into the operating system in our smartphones - a prime example, demonstrated here, is scanning and applying OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to a page of text. No extra apps or expertise needed.
With the ever moving goalposts in the mobile world, it seems that the Samsung Galaxy Note range has been accepted as a bona fide 'phone', while anything bigger is a 'phablet'. Yes, everyone hates the term, but nothing better has come along in the meantime, so.... The Nokia Lumia 1520 and OPPO N1 here, both of which I've been reviewing recently, are definitely too big to be classed as pure phones - even by the Note brigade. Part phone, part tablet, do they offer the best of both worlds? And can I pick a winner?
You're right to do a double take - the Sony QX-10 isn't a phone. It's a camera accessory for a phone, the idea being that you clip it onto the back of an Android or iOS smartphone and use its better optics instead of the device's integral camera. In this case, for the purposes of comparison, a Galaxy Nexus running Android 4.4.2. Is it a kludge? Yep. Is it capable of results that rival those from the Lumia 1020? Absolutely. Which would I rather have in my pocket? No. Contest. Whatsoever.
Windows 8.1 is being 'rejigged' to look more like Windows 7 than Windows 8, as Microsoft appears to be backing down in its push to the Metro/Tablet interface across its desktop OS. It's an interesting move, and one that reminds me of the media's calls to carry on with Windows Mobile instead of switching to Windows Phone several years ago. While the switch back to the Windows 7 look feels right, I started to think... should Microsoft have stayed with Windows Mobile?
Windows Phone's virtual keyboard, with auto correct as you type, is pretty good, it even 'learns' new words that you use a lot, but you may be wondering how you can add your own custom words to the built-in dictionary in one fell swoop. I demonstrate how in the text below.
Windows Phone 8's Internet Explorer generally does a very good job of rendering web pages, but, unlike most desktop browsers, it is not very extensible, with no way to install add-ons. One partial solution to this limitation is to use bookmarklets to add basic navigation shortcuts (forward, top of the page) and simple tools (translate page) via Internet Explorer's favourites (bookmarks) feature.
Podcatchers aren't the only app genre on Windows Phone that has seen a lot of competition - sound recording utilities is another genre that's worth taking a slice across. What follows isn't necessarily (yet) definitive, but I've tried to pick all the most likely candidates - so start with these. Whether you want to record your band, your voice or your baby, there's something for you below.
