As usual, there will be reduced postings here over Christmas, as you'd expect - so spend time with your own friends and family rather than refreshing AAWP's front page, please. But what of 2019?
People
You'll have spotted over the years that our original 'team of four' has dwindled, along with Microsoft's first party mobile ambitions. David Gilson emigrated for a while, but is back in the UK now and doing freelance writing from Hull, you can find him here. Ewan Spence still lives in Edinburgh, but writes these days for Forbes and you can find his home page here. While Rafe Blandford has been working full time at Digitas LBI for a couple of years and you can find his tweets here. He also maintains the server, bankrolls the site and content, so many thanks to him for all this.
Leaving yours truly as the main writer, with just the occasional contributions from others (get in touch if you have a review or editorial burning to be published?) Rafe has been a regular on the AAWP podcast, of course, but his free time outside of his main job has been extremely limited in 2018, which is mainly why there hasn't been a podcast for a few months. Sorry about that, I'll try and get us back on track (monthly?) in 2019.
Content
So what about content next year? New Windows-running phone hardware was thin on the ground in 2017 (the IDOL 4 Pro was the star) and non-existent in 2018 (the much-rumoured and much-patented Surface Phone/Mobile/Andromeda was delayed at the last minute by Microsoft and for arguably good reasons). But there are still readers using Lumias and IDOL 4 Pros (and similar) as their main phone, plus (probably) far more now using these as 'backup' phones, either SIM-less or with a second SIM, and following along with content through genuine interest.
Because there are still new UWP applications, new updates, new PWAs that work fine under Edge. Even if modern use cases like mobile payments and IoT aren't possible. Plus Windows 10 Mobile is still getting monthly OS updates (December's here), albeit mainly to address security vulnerabilities in the wider Windows 10 platform.
Add in the different ways that smartphones on Android and iOS can run the same Microsoft applications and services, the way they can integrate with the Windows-running hardware you already own. Add in new Surface devices like the Go and Go LTE - not phones per se, but filling many of the same productivity-on-the-go needs. Add in suggestions for Android smartphones, in particular, to directly replace what we've had from Nokia and then Microsoft.
Finally, throw in workarounds and hacks, ways to bring older Lumias up to speed for 2019 - they may not be the fastest phones on the planet anymore, but there are some classic devices and it's a lot of fun to still be able to use them in some fashion in 2019.
In short, you should still be able to dip into AAWP for interesting content well into 2019, finances permitting. The budget isn't allowing for quite as much weekly content as we had a year ago, but Rafe and I are loathe to see AAWP disappear, not least because there are a lot of features that people refer to on a regular basis. As ever, I'm going to aim for a balance of new app recommendations, 'how to's, reviews, news, camera comparisons, and so on...
So stay tuned and keep AAWP in your 'favourites' rotation, keep our RSS feed in your reading system, follow AAWP on Twitter. We'll still be around in some capacity next year!
Thank you
Thanks must go to all our readers for their continuing page views and interaction with the Disqus comments threads. AAWP has always felt as much a community as a blog, so keep up the involvement in 2019, please. Thanks also for article suggestions and questions, many of which have sparked 'FAQ-style' articles or tutorials. Again, keep them coming! There's AAWP's official contact form, or you can email me directly.
Thanks to Rafe, as ever, for keeping the wheels in motion behind the scenes (no site crashes for three months!!), and to Joe Blumenow for maintaining the excellent AAWP Universal application for all Windows 10 phones and computers.
PS. Thanks also to a few people who have tipped me by PayPal to say thanks for the work on AAWP and AAS. All tips most welcome!