More than 100,000 apps have now been published in the Windows Phone Marketplace and new content is currently being added at the rate of 313 apps per day. At the time of writing, 100,145 apps have been published. Of these, 26,493 were added in the last three months and 9,391 were added in the last month. These apps come from just over 23,825 different publishers.
Microsoft has released Photosynth, an app for creating advanced panoramas, for Windows Phones. Using information from the phone's on board sensors (camera, accelerometer, compass and gyroscope) it can create "sphere" panoramas (i.e. a complete "3D" visualisation of everything around you). The panoramas can be viewed on the phone, shared to social networks (Facebook and Twitter), or uploaded to the Photosynth website.
When Microsoft and Nokia announced their partnership in February of last year, executives made it clear that the partnership would extend beyond smartphones into other business areas, such as location and mapping. The latest fruits of this collaboration are now apparent, with the addition of traffic information and geocoding algorithms, from the Nokia Where Platform, to Microsoft's Bing Maps.
The first big update to the AAWP (All About Windows Phone) app, version 1.1, is now available from the Windows Phone Marketplace. The updated version adds support for a dark theme, improves comment integration, has a few minor styling improvements and includes a number of behind the scenes performance improvements and bug fixes.
More than 90,000 apps have now been published in the Windows Phone Marketplace and new content is currently being added at the rate of 250 apps per day. At the time of writing, 92,383 apps have been published. Of these, 24,371 were added in the last three months and 7,409 were added in the last month. These apps come from just over 22,000 different publishers.
Nokia's ebook initiative for Windows Phone, Nokia Reading is apparently rolling out, starting now, in six countries, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain and the UK. The aim is to provide ebooks and other literary content in 'your own language' on Lumia smartphones. 'Nokia Reading' will start appearing in the Nokia Collection section of the Windows Phone Marketplace 'over the course of the next few weeks'.
Nokia City Lens, an app that helps you find and connect to the places around you, is now available from Nokia Beta Labs. Combining augmented reality, map and list views it provides an overview of places of interest (shops, restaurants, hotels, museums and more) around your current location. In addition the application deep links with Nokia Maps to provide detailed information, reviews and walking directions for any location listed in City Lens.
More than 80,000 apps have now been published in the Windows Phone Marketplace and new content is currently being added at the rate of 340 apps per day. At the time of writing, 82,234 apps have been published. Of these, 29,135 were added in the first quarter of 2012 and 10,228 were added in the last month. These apps come from 20,327 different publishers.
The roll out of the third software update for the Nokia Lumia 800 has now commenced. The update, firmware revision number 1600.2487.8107.12070, delivers significantly improved battery life, improves audio quality and fixes a number of bugs. As is standard for Windows Phone, updates have to be done via Zune Desktop on the PC or the Windows Phone Connector on the Mac.
Microsoft held an event in Beijing today to formally mark the arrival of Windows Phone in China. Windows Phone was shown running a Chinese-language interface, with support for both simplified and traditional Chinese and it was announced there are now more than 2,000 Chinese language apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace.
