On the phone music video games

"On the phone music video games"








The folks in Redmond are making a significant jump forward in the mobile arena, announcing that the upcoming version of Windows Phone, codenamed "Mango," will be heading to a device near you in time for the holidays. The Me hub lets you check in to Facebook Places, post messages, and see your notifications. This promotional value will remain in your Microsoft Account through June 1, 2015. But it does have Rhapsody support for a wide selection of newly DRM-free downloadable music, a really fun and easy to use touch interface and the usual slew of standard features found on nearly every phone except the iPhone: Bluetooth DUN for tethering, video recording, MMS and a removable battery. What will happen to my previously-purchased music, movies, and TV shows? That’s a pound cheaper than Spotify. What’s changing with the Zune Marketplace? You can playback video content that is downloaded to your Zune PC software prior to this date. It is a fair bit cheaper, though. It remains to be seen how Microsoft will handle cross-app Microsoft account sign-ins with Windows Phone 8. Tap the applications tab (the one with 4 dots in a grid) and you'll see a 3 x 3 grid of icons, slightly askew. Xbox Music is a Spotify-like music streaming service that costs ?8. And one of the best budget phones, regardless of platform. It doesn't have NFC, a compass or a high-end anti-reflective screen coating. Groups in Mango has the solution: make a group comprising those friends or family members you want to keep up with on Facebook. The number pad is large and easy to use, though it obviously lacks the tactile feedback of a hardware keypad. The Nokia Lumia 620 camera app does not offer a bundle of fun filters and effects off the bat, but Windows Phone 8 does let you use camera modules called Lenses. Though the Dare has a proprietary operating system and the usual closed to all but Verizon's selection of BREW apps, the interface is more flexible that we've seen on other Verizon handsets, and other feature phones for that matter. Like the Podcasts app, Xbox Music and Xbox Video both feature simple, two level UIs with an opening panoram and then pivot-based (app tabs) content UIs. If you have a large group, you may be discouraged when you try to look at the photos of the group all together since there's no way to filter them. Same content playback experiences. For more, read our Lumia 520 vs 620 comparison. To make matters worse, those less important updates are burying the ones you actually care to read. However, there's also a quick launch icon palette that tucks away on the right side of the home screen (the LG has something similar but it remains open in the center of the home screen at all times). It’s quite boxy-sounding, lacking both top-end clarity and the robust body of a bassier speaker. Added tasks to account sync in People settings. Unlike the LG Vu, you don't have to hit the enter or done key and extra time after switching to the QWERTY keyboard to enter text. Filter my contact list: don't want all of your Facebook friends or Windows Live contacts showing up in your list? There's three pivot screens in this hub. Colours are a tad under-saturated and in lower-light conditions, noise and chromatic aberration is prolific. Top-notch hardware design, plenty of power and a feature list that betters many Android phones at the price should make this the gateway drug for many who have been unconvinced by Windows Phone to date. Will I still be able to use Zune to enjoy music? Ok, maybe that one is not all that useful, but it is a laugh. Smart Shoot takes a series of photos in reasonably quick succession, letting you pick the one where your subject looks the best (shooting speed is a little slow for this to be truly effective) and Bing Vision is a QR and Barcode scanner. If you’re going to be doing much at all in the way of using apps or playing games, you’ll have to charge every day without a doubt. What about my Microsoft Points? Will I still be able to use Zune to enjoy movies, and TV shows? The onscreen playback controls in both apps are likewise identical to their predecessors. Usability is the key here, though, and the Lumia 620 makes photo-taking quick and enjoyable – the main thing for today’s social networking snappers. The tile shows each person's profile pictures, though we're unsure if there will be any dynamic updates here. There's also handwriting recognition, which is unusual for a non-smartphone. The only disappointment is that the haptics vibrate when you touch anywhere on the screen-- even if you miss tapping an icon or link. For additional information and details on upgrading to Xbox Music and Xbox Video, please visit xbox. T9 aficionados can use the number pad to compose text using predictive text on the number pad (there's also a multi-press option). We gave this one away in the previous sentence, but it's important enough to give it more attention. Xbox Music and Xbox Video are now Microsoft’s music and video stores. It's the difference maker in the People Hub now, which was largely unaffected by the update otherwise. It supports the full gamut of V Cast services-- downloadable music, video, games and other applications though Media Center (Get it Now's new name) and has 148 megs of internal memory and an SDHC microSD card slot to store larger music and video libraries. Hey, I can dream. Microsoft Points are going away and you will no longer be able to make purchases using points and this includes purchases through the Zune software on your PC. The Nokia Lumia 620 is a revelation, showing that budget Windows Phone mobiles don’t have to be riddled with compromises and lack any semblance of personality. The standard store fronts of each aren’t desperately interesting, selling albums for around the standard ?8, and relayed with the usual Windows Phone 8 gloss. Twitter integration will be tight as well, though we didn't get to try it out. Minor changes : Direct access to People settings within the hub: this is much faster than accessing the settings app. Call quality on your end is unremarkable, though. Each group hub can have a live tile on the Start menu. Nokia Lumia 620 – Value So-so call quality, mediocre battery life and app support that lags a way behind Android rivals aren’t enough to turn us off the Nokia Lumia 620. The Nokia Lumia 620 also, of course, offers a media player interface for your own music and video files. This new option in the People settings will let you choose which services to aggregate your contacts from. The "all" pivot screen, once just a list of all your contacts, now throws a group section on the top. First, it would be hard to replicate the iPhone's particular feature set and ease of use, second a phone need not be an iPhone clone to be good. The Xbox Music app has three panels in its opening panorama: Now Playing, Collection and Get Music, while Xbox Video has four: Spotlight, Collection, New TV and New Movies. Only the existing shortcomings app library shortcomings of Windows Phone 8 hold this phone back. We'd still recommend the Lumia 620 if you can afford the extra cash, but it too is a top budget option. It then prompts you to add either a new contact or new group, then choosing a name. We submit that you cannot. Reliable autofocus makes detailed close-ups possible Nokia Lumia 620 – Calling Quality and Battery Life A feature that could potentially go unappreciated by some is the noise cancellation that the Lumia 620 employs while you’re taking a call. Tap the face of the person you want to tag, and you'll be given the option to tag yourself, a Facebook contact, or just some random guy or gal that happened to wander into your precious memories. Nokia Lumia 620 – Camera The Nokia Lumia 620 has two cameras. It's smaller and easier to operate than last year's flagship LG Voyager. However, the currency you purchase and add to your account after the transition will not expire. Twitter and Facebook have blessed (or cursed, if your best friend discovered Mafia Wars and needs points) our lives for several years, and now these services (along with LinkedIn) are diving pretty deep into several aspects of the OS. This is a stripped-fown version of the Lumia 620. With optical image stabilization, Fire phone keeps the shutter open up to four times longer for stunning shots, even in low light conditions. Using the signal from the two microphones on the phone – one on the bottom edge and one up top – it attempts to remove ambient noise from the phone signal before it reaches whoever you’re calling. Now here's where it starts to get a little interesting: you may create a group in which not all members will have an email address or a phone number (they may just have one or the other). One of our favorite additions to the Windows Phone mold is group functionality. You can still use the Zune PC software to playback already downloaded songs and albums, re-download previously purchased music, and stream music with your Music Pass. Like Podcasts, Music and Video both support Share. We like the Dare best among Verizon's touch screen phones. The apps we see in Windows Phone 8. You will still be able to stream or download songs with your Zune Music Pass. Nokia Music gives you free access to a series of Mixes, which are effectively playlists of streamed tracks, filtered by genre, date, popularity and so on. This is a resistive touch screen, which means you can use an object like a stylus or a fingernail. One frustration we have when looking at our normal Facebook news feed is that there's no easy way to filter out entries by priority. Smart Shoot and Bing Vision come pre-installed. Zune Marketplace no longer supports rental and purchase of content, or browsing movies and TV shows. Streaming quality is fairly low, but it offers a musical distraction if you’re bored of your own tunes. The Xbox Music app and Xbox Video app can be found on Xbox One, Xbox 360, a Windows 8. Let's face it -- status updates from your family and best friends are much more important to you than having to see what your old high school buddy from 20 years ago is up to. It's broken down into two sections: you can choose to view all of the images pulled together into one album, or select an individual member to see only their albums. A couple of quick notes up front: Check out Windows Phone 8. However, nowadays there's one other contender to consider - the Lumia 520. At ?150, it is simply such good value, crammed into such a well-designed body, that you can’t help but love the little handset. The only smartphone with. The most popular music formats – MP3 and AAC – are supported, but FLAC is not, and anyone with a store of MKV videos will have to transcode them before they’ll play natively on the Nokia Lumia 620. Once you've created a group, you can access a special hub for it. Here's a walkthrough of the Dare's user interface along with GPS and gaming: Since the Dare lacks a hardware keypad or keyboard, it has on-screen alternatives. No more worrying about what to delete. If you previously purchased music, movies or TV shows through the Zune Marketplace it is available through the Xbox Music app or Xbox Video app and online at music. If you are on the original Zune Music Pass, you will also continue to be able to redeem your 10 monthly song credits through the Zune Marketplace. Pass through this screen, and you get the opportunity to start choosing members. A swipe to the right brings up the same "what's new" page present in the previous iteration of Me; repeat the same gesture and you'll find your Facebook notifications. It’s the other parts that are more eye-catching. It sheds virtually all the most serious compromises of its predecessor, the Nokia Lumia 610. You just get all of the pictures in one large tray. Enjoy unlimited streaming and downloads of tens of thousands of popular movies and TV episodes with Prime Instant Video, over one million songs and hundreds of playlists with the all-new Prime Music, over 500,000 books to borrow for free with the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, and FREE Two-Day Shipping on millions of items. Battery life too is another slightly sore point. Will this impact my ability to use my Zune Music Pass? You can pin each group (and contact) to your Start menu. In the first one, "group," you'll find a set of live tiles (much akin to the Start menu), with each one representing a member of your group. Underneath the live tiles will be options to text or email your group. We love Twitter correspondence, so you can imagine our excitement upon hearing Mango will have bring more integration with the social networking service. The page shown upon entering the hub will display your latest status update, profile picture (also seen on the live tile), and three options: post a message, check in, and set chat status. It's just as slick and smooth and the rest of the Windows Phone 8 software, but codec support is pretty limited. Mango allows you to add tags when viewing Facebook photos or albums. There are bundles off third-party lenses you can grab too, from useless fluff (the majority) to interesting extras. Current Windows Phones don't put much emphasis on this particular tile -- it's basically your Facebook Wall and little else -- but Mango is cranking up the Facebook integration a notch. After playing with groups for a couple days, we discovered a hidden gem that may not be completely obvious when you first start using the feature. Useful additional lenses you can download include Nokia exclusives like Panorama and the fun “picture animator” Cinematograph, which captures video and stills simultaneously to let you produce a vid where the majority of the scene stays completely still. Obviously you won't see any groups by default, because you'll need to put those in yourself. There’s a 5-megapixel sensor on the rear, supported by a single-LED flash, and a basic VGA user-facing camera for video calling. Any Microsoft Points remaining after this change takes place will be retired, and we’ll add to your Microsoft account an amount of your local currency equal to or greater than the value of your Microsoft Points. You can drag these around to rearrange the icon layout, though you can't remove or add anything here. LG's new big-screen slate phone is a pleasure to use, though of course it's no iPhone. Fire phone comes loaded with a suite of built-in apps and tools, with all the apps you want from the Amazon Appstore. Mango brings that functionality -- along with automatic face detection -- straight to your device, with the ability to add tags to your images as well as your friends'. So far, localized haptics (where the phone vibrates only when you touch a valid target) are rare, so the Dare isn't alone. Sure you can't download a 3 piece band program to make your own music or use it as a WiFi remote to control iTunes, nor does it play feature length movies and rentals downloaded from the brain-dead easy Apple iTunes store. Neither is going to trouble any high-end smartphone on image quality, but a lack of serious shutter lag and acceptable focusing speed mean the Nokia Lumia 620’s camera usability is far better than many Android phones at the price. The Nokia Lumia 620 uses a 1300mAh battery, and in our experience it needed a charge before the day was out with moderate-to-heavy use. From Microsoft, you’re offered the Xbox Music and the Windows Phone music store, from Nokia the Nokia Music portal. Low-cost smartphones often suffer from shutter lag so severe than their cameras are painful to use. We'll extend your current Prime membership for a full year at no additional cost. You can add and remove apps on the quick launcher, and you can drag them from there to the home screen itself. Sadly, we weren't able to take advantage of the feature on this build -- the functionality still resides on an internal server and couldn't be ported onto our seed devices yet -- but we'll see it come into play just as much as Facebook does, embedded within the Me, People, and Pictures Hubs. Finally, the "pictures" pivot is exactly how it sounds -- you'll have the opportunity to see photos related to everyone in the group. First, the live tile has been given more meaning now, offering up status updates, IMs, check-ins, comments, and other notifications directly on the tile, lending more credence to the company's "glance and go" mantra. Already a Prime member? It works OK but we're betting that most folks will opt for the on-screen keyboards. Pin that group to your start menu, and you can bypass all of the junk updates you don't care about. In this case, you'll be informed that not every person in the group will be receiving the text or email -- instead, it will just say "x of x members. Also, each one of those live tiles from the group hub (or any individual contact off the People hub, for that matter) can be pinned to Start, but a new pivot screen has been added to each person's information hub that highlights that person's photo albums. Microsoft gave the Me hub more purpose in Mango. It's easy to add these in just by hitting the "new" button on the bottom toolbar. As its competitors have raised the bar of expectations to a much higher level, Microsoft followed suit by adding at least 500 features to its mobile investment, which the company hopes will plug all of the gaping holes the first two versions left open. For movies and TV shows you will no longer be able to use the Zune PC software to download or stream previously purchased video starting as early as April 3, 2014. Sure, you can view photo albums and even upload pictures to Facebook direct from NoDo, but can you add tags to them? Image quality is acceptable at the price, with solid focusing and decent detail for a lower-cost 5-megapixel model, but otherwise unremarkable. The touch screen is responsive and has haptic feedback (you'll feel a little vibration when you touch the screen). Plus, get free, unlimited cloud storage for all photos taken with Fire phone.