The Microsoft Lumia rebranding continued this week with Microsoft continuing to rename all things Nokia and Windows Phone. The latest changes have happened over the weekend and include the Windows Phone and Nokia channels on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. This has all been in a larger effort to get the Microsoft Lumia or just Lumia out in the marketplace.
Overnight the MSN apps for Windows Phone were updated and you should see those notifications on your device now. What was updated? That’s a great question. It is a complete mystery as there are no release notes in the app notes for them. This isn’t the first time this has happened. If you remember back in October we got a similar update of mystery.
This is a great piece of news for Windows Phone owners. The site WMPoweruser has posted a Twitter conversation with Windows Phone insider Nawzil that indicates that all current Windows Phone devices will run Windows 10. This is great news for a lot of different reasons but should put everyone’s mind at rest over buying a Windows Phone today knowing that Windows 10 is due out in 2015.
A few weeks ago Fitbit updated their Windows Phone app and at the time indicated that a new and improved Windows 8.1 version was in the works. That update has now been released and it is impressive. Fitbit for Windows 8.1 is to a large extent a complete overhaul of the app’s user experience but equally as important, it finally brings proper background syncing of your Fitbit to your PC.
Windows Phone saw a small increase in market share in the United States for the quarter that ended in September 2014. The data, from comScore, indicates that Windows Phone saw a .2% increase in market penetration over the previous quarter which ended in June 2014. That means that the platform has a 3.6% market share and stands a solid third overall.
Yesterday Dropbox and Microsoft announced a new working agreement that will bring a lot of Dropbox integration to Microsoft devices and services. Amongst the announcements was that there would finally be an official Dropbox for Windows Phone app released in the coming months, ending years of lack of official support from the cloud storage company.
Dear Microsoft,
It’s Clinton, that former MVP that has returned to Windows Phone after three years in the iOS wilderness. I’m happy to be back thanks. I’ve enjoyed connected with old friends and being back on a platform that I love. It’s great to see how much it has grown up in the last three years and the amount of productivity I have now with my phone compared to a few years ago is in stark contrast.
There is one area though that the difference between iOS and Windows Phone remains and it is painful. That is Office for Windows Phone. My Microsoft friends, it is horrific. Not to the scale of Office for Mac horrific but pretty close. It is so limiting – so ultimately useless many times – that it is the single set of apps that I miss on my iPad. As I put in my Windows Phone app gap article a few days ago, generally I can find anything I need for Windows Phone these days and in fact Office for Windows Phone comes built into my Lumia 1320. But it is such a painful experience that even when I want do a quick edit to a Word document or PowerPoint, I end up lugging out the laptop. It shouldn’t be this way.
After disappearing over the weekend, the Nokia Camera app has returned to the Windows Phone Store under its new name. The Lumia Camera app for Windows Phone sports no new features (only bug fixes) but brings to a close one more app that was using the Nokia name in the store. Microsoft has been on a long process of renaming all of the “Nokia” apps to “Lumia” and the Nokia Camera app was one of the last remaining.
The update should have hit your Windows Phone already if you have the Nokia Camera app installed. If not you can go to the Store
Lumia Camera for Windows Phone
app on your Windows Phone then go to the More menu, Settings and then tap the “Check for Updates” button.
I’m personally a big fan of the Lumia Camera app as it gives you much more control of your photography than the built-in Windows Phone Camera app. I also find the Burst mode of the app to be great for capturing action shots or as I did this weekend, fireworks!
The Lumia Camera app is free and available now in the Windows Phone Store