With the huge success of Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020) on the desktop PC, it's only natural that attention has been given to improving mobile flight sims, i.e. those you can enjoy on the smartphone, without the headache of scheduling hours on a huge desktop set-up, with yokes, multiple monitors, and more. And with ever-more powerful mobile chipsets, enabling desktop-class graphics. Why not just enjoy a quick flight from your local airport in photorealistic glory, round the coastline, and back, all on your phone with nothing but your hands to tilt the device? Here's news from mobile favourite Infinite Flight...
A year ago, Netflix stopped working on all Windows-powered phones - the fear was that this was a conscious decision by Netflix to axe streams to specific platforms. In fact, it turns out that something was just 'broken'. And clearly the broken bit affected enough customers on enough legacy platforms that Netflix's engineers tracked down the bug and fixed it - Netflix works again on Windows 10 Mobile!*
Something's happened to Edge. No, not the modern Chromium-based Edge that's been in the Windows 10 for the last couple of years (including preview time). I'm talking Edge 'legacy', the browser that shipped with Windows 10 when it first appeared and which Windows 10 Mobile still has to use (sadly). Firstly, it's now officially 'End of Life' and out of support, and secondly, its scripting engine is hitting issues on many popular sites, see below for some examples on my Lumia 950 XL. Missing images, mainly, but these do sometimes impact page navigation.
Microsoft has announced that the '3D Objects' folder (created and shown for everyone, by default) is going to be removed from sight in Windows 10, going forward. While a minor change in itself, there's an interesting (and perhaps unsurprising) story here that bears a little unpacking, and - yes, includes Mobile...
It's turning into a bit of a scribbling week - after my look at what you can do with an ultra-mobile PC like the Surface Go and the Surface Pen a few days ago, we now have the debut of a new Microsoft Garage tool, Journal - useable with touch and a finger, but even better with a stylus/pen. Summary: Journal is off to a slightly rough start, but the page-based approach is intuitive and it has potential.
Admittedly not applying anymore to Windows 10 Mobile, but Windows 10 Camera (for example, for the Surface Go, which is evidently a mobile device of sorts) today acquired a bunch of extra useful modes for the professional. The new modes are 'powered by Office Lens', coinciding rather neatly with the demise of the latter as a standalone application. Admittedly you don't get all the OCR-in-the-cloud functionaity, but you do get the auto-crop and auto-contrast optimisations. See the examples below.
For anything which can run full-on Windows 10, a significant new UI and services element just hit the Dev Channel (my Surface Pro is on this, hence the screenshots below). See also the quote from Microsoft about this - adding weather and more to the taskbar is a nice touch providing one has the screen real estate.
A day later than planned, but Microsoft has now thrown the server-side switch on Office Lens as a separate app on both Windows 10 Mobile and Windows 10 Desktop. From now on, it's a service inside the likes of Office (for all platforms). Which makes sense in a way and it's nice to have it integrated, but I for one will miss it as a general purpose OCR and archival tool. See below for links, quotes and screenshots.
Back in November, I reported on the imminent myTube 4.0 launch, along with claiming your free upgrade if you've ever bought v3.x. Hopefully this was helpful. We now have the big day, with the 4.0 launch (and a hot fix or two), see below for some links and screenshots. In summary, it's a terrific YouTube client, arguably better than those on other platforms, including the facility to save videos for local use and even create GIFs. Grab it now, it's a premium experience for Windows 10 Mobile users!
For the last 20 years of smartphone cameras, from the earliest Symbian handsets (Nokia Nseries, mainly, then the 808 PureView) through the Lumias (1020, 950, mainly), and with iPhones and Android handsets also providing highlights here and there, users have had two main options in terms of phone imaging, both compromised. That changes this week, do please read on.
