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- WINDOWS PHONE LIVE TILES ANDROID
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- WINDOWS PHONE LIVE TILES WINDOWS 8
If Microsoft can get this working on a large scale, the Wallet app will be really cool. More intriguing to me is the promise of NFC for making quick payments with Microsoft’s new Wallet app (a feature that wasn’t enabled on the phone I was using).
Windows Phone 8 also includes near-field-communications support, so phone makers such as Nokia can include an NFC chip and users can then tap two NFC-capable phones together to transfer photos, Web pages, and more. Little fingers can move tiles around and resize them, giving them a sense of control over the phone, but they can’t delete the apps. It’s easy to set up and add apps, and kids (or adults who don’t know your phone’s password) can get to it by swiping left on the phone’s lock screen. Pages looked good and rendered quickly.Īnother smart addition is the Kids Corner, which you can use to share specific apps, videos, music, and games with kids (and presumably keep them out of your work e-mail and away from unwelcome content).
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Windows 8 includes Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 10 browser, which, as expected, was quite zippy in my tests.
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Since there’s no notification center, it’s important that the live tiles give consistent, up-to-the-minute info, and I found that with the tiles and the alert data that popped up on the Lumia’s lock screen, I didn’t really miss that corral of alerts you get on the iPhone or Android smartphones. The tiles updated often, showing me things like an ever-changing array of friends on the “People” tile and images stored on the camera on the “Photos” tile. If you want to see a long list of all your applications, just swipe left on the main screen. The Live Tiles can take the form of a big square, a quarter-size square, or a large rectangle (the tiny ones didn’t seem to show live info). It was fun and easy to customize the main screen of my Windows Phone 8 device with a slew of “Live Tiles.” These are basically the Windows Phone version of widgets, though they’re more dynamic than the ones bundled with, say, Windows Vista, and you can fit a ton of them on a single screen. So I’m going to bet they can do it, even if it may take some time.Īs with previous versions of Windows Phone, I really liked the look of Windows Phone 8, which I tested on a Nokia Lumia 920 (the phone itself isn’t under the microscope here, but suffice it to say it’s a good device though a little on the chunky side).
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But Microsoft is an old hand when it comes to wooing developers, and Windows 8-its operating system for desktops and tablets-is designed to make it easier for developers to create software components that work on both mobile and conventional computers.
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If Microsoft wants to be taken seriously by consumers and app developers, it will have to make serious strides with its Windows Phone Store, which for now includes just a fraction of the apps available for Android and iOS. It’s snappy, easy to navigate and customize, and good-looking to boot-all traits that will help the company as it tries to surpass Research in Motion’s ailing BlackBerry and Nokia’s dying Symbian platforms.īut-and of course, there has to be a “but”-the operating system still faces an uphill battle to become a strong third-place player in the smartphone market, and the weakness of its app store won’t help. It had just 2 percent of the global smartphone market in the third quarter, according to data from IDC, compared with 75 percent for Android smartphones and 15 percent for the iPhone.įortunately for Microsoft, Windows Phone 8 is a strong effort. Microsoft approached its recent launch of Windows Phone 8 as a member of this brotherhood of stragglers. Live tiles: The screen of a Windows Phone 8 device shows panels that highlight new e-mails, calendar reminders, and alerts from apps.