Long time AAS readers will remember the Nokia N93, a unique multi-form factor smartphone with a barrel camera that included a genuine continuous 1-3x zoom lens system. It worked superbly, at least in good light, with the caveat that the reduced aperture when zoomed meant that evening and night shots suffered. Partly because of this, Nokia (and then the world) moved to computational photography and smart cropping into large, high megapixel sensors in order to try and zoom without the same degree of aperture loss, cuminating in 2012's Nokia 808 and 2013's Lumia 1020. But now comes news that a continuous zoom lens system may be making a come back, 14 years on from the N93...
The story so far: HERE Maps (née Nokia Maps, then Navteq) provided all the map data for the mapping and car navigation in Windows Phone for years*. Windows 10 brought a first party mapping client from Microsoft, but using all the HERE map data under the hood, on Desktop and Mobile. But over the last few years Microsoft has been getting cosier with TomTom, a rival map (and traffic data) supplier, and has now announced that future map updates will come from TomTom. Details below, plus I muse on how this affects Windows 10 Mobile and 'Windows 10 Maps' on our phones.
The trouble with launching a flagship smartphone a full year before availability (in this case, for reasons of encouraging developers to write for a new form factor) is that the specs can end up being a bit... underwhelming. And while I'm certainly not a benchmark obsessive, there are some spec points which - if true - will be very disappointing. Specifically, in term of imaging, battery, and Google Pay compatibility.
With even the latest Windows 10 Mobile versions now out of official support, it really is time to think about the colour of the grass 'on the other side'. I've been using iOS and Android, alternately, for the last year, and thought it was noteworthy that the last major Microsoft/Windows service (arguably) is now dark on Android. Why dark? Pioneered on Windows Phone back in the day, dark themes save power and save your eyesight when needed!
Playing YouTube videos in a third party application has never been trivial, even back at the dawn of Windows Phone. Microsoft tried it and got shut down hard by Google. So for the last four years (at least) it's been down to small third party developers reverse engineering YouTube's streams, dodging API changes, and ripping parts of HTML5 pages, as needed. Every few months, YouTube changes something and breaks the clients and then we await fixes. And here credit to Chococode, whose Awesome Tube client has adapted quickly each time. Even if feature development is now officially stopped for Windows 10 Mobile - we still get the fixes!
Office is a staple on Windows phones, of course, and a reason why Lumias have been much loved over the years. But it's worth noting that not only has Microsoft developed the individual Office components into successful standalone applications on other platforms, but as of this week has made available an 'all in one' super-app with all of Office's 'mobile' functionality, plus a number of really useful extras. All behind a single icon!
Windows 10 Mobile receives today its very last OS/security update, marking the end of Microsoft's official support, though of course phones aren't going to suddenly stop working when 2019 ends. Under the hood here there are kernel and security fixes, for all phones currently running the '1709' branch (potentially most of you, see the upgrade/hack links below). Grab this last (December 2019) update in Settings.
I was curious to see the video embedded below appear on YouTube in the last few days - the ability to trim and do other basic operations to videos has always existed in Windows 10 Photos, but I genuinely wasn't aware that a standalone 'Video editor' application now existed. In Windows 10 on the Desktop anyway.
Windows 10 Mobile is now into its last three months of Microsoft's official support, though of course phones aren't going to suddenly stop working when 2019 ends. Under the hood here there are kernel and security fixes, for all phones currently running the '1709' branch (potentially most of you, see the links below). Grab this October 2019 update in Settings.
Windows 10 Mobile is now into its last three months of Microsoft's official support, though of course phones aren't going to suddenly stop working when 2019 ends. Under the hood here there are kernel and security fixes, for all phones currently running the '1709' branch (potentially most of you, see the links below). Grab this September 2019 update in Settings.