Last November, I lambasted Microsoft for a lack of care in the coding of its Store updates, with various cosmetic and usability issues which have remained... until just now. Because all issues have been fixed with today's update for all Windows 10 Mobile phones. See below for screenshot proof!
Windows 10 Mobile and Cortana may not be quite as dead as some might think. We've still got a year of life and support left, and the last 24 hours saw the switching on of Cortana integration with newish 'wonder' app Microsoft To-Do (UWP), which itself has been getting updates every few weeks. The upshot is that you can now (e.g.) tell Cortana to add such and such a task "to your To-Do list".
Just a quick note to say, that at some point in the last few months, I think Microsoft finally fixed its issues with backed-up non-Lumia-shot photos, some details and links below. Sorry if this sounds nebulous, but all is working now, and it certainly wasn't in the middle of 2018. Yay!
It won't have escaped any regular readers notice that Microsoft's central Store application has been getting some updates over the last two months, culminating in one in the last 24 hours that (ahem) broke even more in the interface. Admittedly, the Store still works, but the sheer amount that's now almost unusable in the UI shows how little care and attention is being paid to the OS by much of Microsoft now.
Fresh on the back of the Maps platform overhaul, today sees a brand new version of Windows 10 Maps, a UWP app for all devices, including phone/mobile. Highlights in v5.1808 include lots of 'Fluent Design' (transparency) effects and colour coded traffic summaries, along with total delay estimates. Maps is a great example of an app and a service getting big updates under Windows 10 Mobile even though the OS itself is at a 'security updates only' status.
This third party UWP client for the secure messaging service Telegram has just had a sequence of weekly updates, since our last coverage here, a month ago. The full summarised changelog is listed below, but there's quite a bit that's new in the UI.
Reviewed last summer (2017) and then featured again just over a year ago, Awesome Tube lives up to its name in this major new update. It's a YouTube client for all Windows 10 devices, including phones, of course. And now for Xbox too!
Back in July 2017, I reviewed Flights Radar UWP, aiming to show all the aircraft in the sky around you, and then I covered a new version here, back in November 2017, with lots of improvements. Well, almost a year on, today sees another big upgrade, to v1.0.20, bringing Fluent Design, a Favourites list, a much bigger Cockpit view, and more. Why am I making this a News item? Because this is a (potentially) very high profile UWP app, competing with the likes of FlightRadar24 on other platforms. It's not perfect yet, but we have some special giveaway codes below to help soften the blow if you fancy being an intensive tester!
People think of Windows 10 Mobile being dead. Not yet. We're still looking at over a year of support in terms of monthly patches and fixes for Windows 10 Mobile 'Fall Creators Update'. And build 15254.530 (from .527) is fresh out today, so go grab it for all phones currently on the 'Fall Creators Update'. And with similar patches and fixes for other Windows 10 Mobile branches.
Twitter's push to take more and more control of its own service culminated a few weeks ago with the unwelcome closure of several APIs, partly reported on here. The changes have yet to be fully addressed by third party clients, but the news isn't good. Tweetium is the first client to respond, with an update that references the changes, but which also explicitly gets rid of push notifications, even for Direct Messages. Given that the official Twitter client on Windows 10 Mobile is a PWA which also can't deliver notifications, AAWP readers are somewhat screwed by Twitter here.
