We have to start with Sport though - that's the MSN Sport application that's effectively a built-in on Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile. Not least because an update last week added a whole new section decicated to the 'Rio 2016 Olympics', to be found on the hamburger menu. The Sport application is customised to some degree to your language and region, though you can add and subtract specific sports in Settings (e.g. take away the football news, in my case!)
But the Rio 2016 Olympics section is notable - the stories themselves are gathered from the usual accredited mainstream sources, of course. Here's a brief gallery of the sort of stories and information to hand in (MSN) Sport on your Windows 10 Mobile phone:
Prominent on the hamburger menu, the Rio 2016 Olympics support! (right) 'Top stories' are the illustrated headlines that you (probably) need...
Expanding into the headlines, consistently illustrated and each showing the source. Tap on any panel and you're into the main story (right), note that as a UWP app (of course) you can get rid of the virtual Windows controls to gain more screen real estate for reading.
The other two tabs/pivots are shown here - for the medal table (obviously, zeroed out at this stage, and note the drop down if you want to see the medal table from any previous Olympic Games), and (right) for the schedule, broken down by day and time across all disciplines.
My only complaints here would be that the Sport application's search facility can't look inside these special panes, for example here (left) trying to find the timing of the heptathlon; (right) you can pick disciplines by sport, but sadly the pick list lumps all the athletics events together.
Just in case you'd been living under a rock for the last four years and your Windows 10 Mobile hasn't ended up with Sport installed, you can find it here in the Store. There's a colourful live tile too, with a top story from the front page. Recommended.
- @Olympics
- @OlympicFlame
- @Rio2016 (mainly in the native Portuguese)
- @Rio2016_en (i.e. English only, thankfully)
Twitter's Moments tab is growing on me - it's a useful glimpse into the world of news, filtered through what's being said about each story, all in one place - and here focussing on the Olympics.
Then there's all the direct streaming TV coverage. This will vary a lot, depending on where you are in the world and your own local broadcasters, but in the UK there's the good 'ol BBC, with full live and catch-up video coverage (including Olympics Playlist, a daily catch-up summary) in exhaustive detail available via the 'iPlayer' application (last featured on AAWP here) - yes, it's a Windows Phone 8.1 application, but it still works just fine on Windows 10 Mobile.
And the jump off point for latest news, also from the BBC, is bbc.co.uk in your Edge browser, as shown above, with a dedicated Olympics section that's worth adding to your favourites. This also links back through to streaming video content, including that on iPlayer.
Finally, I cannot resist putting in a plug for one of my favourite phone games that just became super-relevant: Angry Birds Rio! This is still in the Windows Phone/Windows 10 Store, is a free download and will give you oodles of fun and atmosphere, even if there's no actual human sport involved(!) Go on, you know you want to....
Hmm.... not quite as population-dense as the real Rio, but hey....
There are two complete games here for free (well, freemium, at least) - the Rio original level packs here are the best and most colourful, in my opinion, while the Rio 2 packs are loosely tied in with the second 'Rio' movie.
The gameplay's still Angry Birds, though with the goal here of releasing captive birds and other animals. Note the power-ups at the top, if you want to use these after the initial trials then that's where the freemium comes in....!
Hopefully this round-up has proved interesting and helpful to anyone wanting to get into the Rio action over the next sixteen days. Comments welcome!