Telegram is an increasingly popular Internet messaging service, one that's fully encrypted, has no limits or fees, one which encourages groups and communities, and one which has nothing to do with Google or Facebook. And, on Windows 10 Mobile, we did have an excellent client, Unigram UWP, last featured here. But the developer has moved on to PC-only builds on more recent branches of Windows, so developer 'abaculi' has taken the code from Unigram UWP and rebuilt it into a separate application, Unigram Mobile Messenger.
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!
Last covered here back in February, Twitter keeps on improving its Twitter PWA, most easily accessed on Windows 10 Mobile through the official UWP Store application, even if the code changes are all server-side. Still, Twitter gets smoother and more functional week by week - it's the flagship social network for W10M these days. Here's what's new, updated and fixed!
I've been following the progress of third party Instagram client Winsta UWP for Windows 10 Mobile for a couple of years now, but it's only with the most recent update, v2.6, that notifications have arrived, initially for letting you know that you have an Instagram direct message from someone. As ever, it's a fun ride on the Winsta UWP update track, with new versions at least once a week!
Last covered here back in November 2019, Twitter keeps on improving its Twitter PWA, most easily accessed on Windows 10 Mobile through the official UWP Store application, even if the code changes are all server-side. Still, Twitter gets smoother and more functional week by week - it's the flagship social network for W10M these days, I'd argue. Here's what's new, updated and fixed!
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!
With the caveat that it's not in the Store in 'packaged' form, the recoding by Google of their Drive cloud service as a PWA (Progressive Web Application) is notable, not least because it makes the service fully accessible to Microsoft's Windows 10 Mobile OS, at least via Monument Browser (what do you mean, you don't have this installed?!) See below for screenshots and thoughts.
After a month's reprieve(!), Windows 10 Mobile really does receive 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. 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 (January 2020) update in Settings. Make the most of it, it's the last time you'll ever be seeing those cogs*.
A week ago, we wrote about myTube!'s battle with changing YouTube API key limits, hopefully now under control. And I mentioned the continuing myTube! 4.0 rebuild, still in beta after six months (last covered here). Well, the same API key limits and also changes to YouTube authentication/logins have also affected the 4.0 beta, covered here. But as of yesterday everything seems to be fixed, plus there's enough communication from the developer (Ryken Studios) to warrant bringing everyone up to date - here's the state of the myTube! 'v4 Beta'!
