Yesterday I compared all the features and functions of the newish Nokia 7 Plus with those of the Alcatel IDOL 4 Pro, the highest specced Windows 10 Mobile phone. And the 7 Plus came out on top, not surprisingly, given the relative age of the designs and the use of newer components and a newer OS. The imaging side of things was a win for the Nokia 7 Plus, so it clearly needed different opposition. Enter the Lumia 950 XL, still right up with the best in the world - can the 7 Plus's 2x telephoto lens help it defeat the classic Lumia?

• The Nokia 7 Plus's main camera is f/1.75 and 12MP with 'gyro' EIS, plus there's a 2x telephoto lens at f/2.6 and 13MP, with software to seamlessly move between them for stills (the telephoto isn't currently used in video mode). Both lenses are ZEISS-branded and have dual pixel autofocus. So, aside from the lack of OIS, all pretty high end. I was shooting in 16:9, so 8MP or so.
• The Lumia 950 XL also has a ZEISS lens, of course. The 950 XL was used in its oversampled 8MP mode, also at 16:9, to match and for ease of comparison. Don't worry, I'm not doing the Lumia a disservice - by using the oversampled mode (my default), all photos are purer and clearer, plus there's an element of lossless zoom, which it will need to compete with the 7 Plus's physical telephoto.
• All photos were taken handheld on full 'auto' on both phones, unless stated otherwise, and with the phones handheld. Mimicking real life users.

Let's pit the results against each other, using our Famed Interactive Comparator (FIC). All 1:1 crops are at 900x500 for comparison, but see the links for full versions.

Test 1: Sunny HDR landscape

A sunny day, shooting into the light, with plenty of detail in this plane shot and with HDR forced on, for both phones. I'm starting bright! Here is the scene, as shot by the Lumia 950 XL:

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and Nokia 7 Plus, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

In detail, at 1:1, there's not that much between the two shots, except that the Nokia 7 Plus's version is slightly artificial, with sharpening easily evident - though you do have to look very closely to see it, I'll admit. Plus, if you download the originals, you'll see that the Lumia 950 XL's HDR made a much better job of bringing some blue to the sky, while it's more blown out in the Nokia version. Ditto green to the foliage from the Lumia, while everything's a little too bleached from the Nokia.

Microsoft Lumia 950 XL: 10 pts; Nokia 7 Plus: 8 pts

Test 2: Greenery!

Getting greenery right is always one of the biggest challenges for any smartphone camera's algorithms. Here is the scene, as shot by the Lumia 950 XL:

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and Nokia 7 Plus, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

You know, it's hard to express my criticism about the 7 Plus over-sharpening everything too much without examples like this. As you compare the two crops, can you see again how the Lumia's photo looks slightly more 'real', while the Nokia's snap looks as if it's a good colour photocopy. Not that this will matter for social and casual photos, but if you like looking at genuine detail then the 950 XL's images are definitely superior.

Microsoft Lumia 950 XL: 10 pts; Nokia 7 Plus: 9 pts

Test 3: Macro time

Some water on a petal provided a focal point for this flower macro. Here is the scene, as shot by the Lumia 950 XL:

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and Nokia 7 Plus, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

There's really not much in these two shots - perhaps the Nokia's sharpening adds a little too much made up texture? A score draw overall - neither phone really captured the water detail fully, but they both did a damn good job.

Microsoft Lumia 950 XL: 9 pts; Nokia 7 Plus: 9 pts

Test 4: Sunset detail

With the sun still up, but with challenging detail in shade. Plus I'll be zooming as well in a moment. Here is the scene, as shot by the Lumia 950 XL:

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and Nokia 7 Plus, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

Look closely, for example at the bricks in the building, and you can see that the Lumia 950 XL captures these pretty accurately, while the Nokia 7 Plus's extra sharpening makes something of a mess of the finer detail. In Nokia's mind, 'sharp' = 'better', the idea being that at first glance it does look clearer. But it's also artificial and the subtler points in the image are missed.

Microsoft Lumia 950 XL: 9 pts; Nokia 7 Plus: 8 pts

I then shot the same scene with 2x zoom on both phones, with the Nokia using its dedicated lens and the 950 XL using part lossless PureView zoom, part digital zoom.

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and Nokia 7 Plus, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

The 2x lens in the Nokia leves the playing field, with more genuine detail so that even sharpening doesn't degrade the image beyond what the Lumia 950 XL delivers. I'm going to call this one a draw!

Microsoft Lumia 950 XL: 8 pts; Nokia 7 Plus: 8 pts

Test 5: Yet more zoom

As one of the Nokia 7 Plus's features is a telephoto lens, I think I need to do another zoom example, this time of a static plane near me. Here is the unzoomed scene, as shot by the Lumia 950 XL:

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and Nokia 7 Plus, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

Sharpening algorithms love artificial objects, with straight edges, etc. And both phone cameras do a great job on this plane landscape shot.

Microsoft Lumia 950 XL: 10 pts; Nokia 7 Plus: 10 pts

I then shot the same scene with 2x zoom on both phones, with the Nokia using its dedicated lens and the 950 XL using part lossless PureView zoom, part digital zoom.

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and Nokia 7 Plus, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

Finally a win for the Nokia, with the telephoto lens drawing out more genuine detail. Not perfectly, but pretty good for such a small camera. The Lumia 950 XL does pretty well, but you can just start to see digital artefacts creeping into edges and finer detail.

Microsoft Lumia 950 XL: 7 pts; Nokia 7 Plus: 9 pts

Test 6: Party time!

My archetypal party mock-up scene, deliberately trying to stay moving/dancing, and with flash forced on, on both phones. Here is the scene, as shot by the Nokia:

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and Nokia 7 Plus, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

Now this IS interesting. The Lumia's OIS means that the background is super clear, as you'd expect, but the main subject is typically slightly blurred - there's only so much you can without Xenon flash (FX: roll out the Lumia 1020!!) While the Nokia 7 Plus has managed to almost freeze me, but it's a little bit of a fluke, I think, since the background shows hand motion blur. Its shorter exposure time and higher ISO also gives it more of a chance, but the end result does have a lot of digital noise. Pros and cons for each image, though the Nokia has to take the win because the main subject was me, and it produced something which is almost passable.

Microsoft Lumia 950 XL: 7 pts; Nokia 7 Plus: 8 pts

Test 7: Night time

Dead of night, the ultimate low light test. Here is the scene, as shot by the Lumia 950 XL:

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and Nokia 7 Plus, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

The Lumia 950 XL has been winning this test shot for years and it wins again here with genuine detail under trying circumstances and with digital noise well under control. Meanwhile, the Nokia 7 Plus image is stablised well (the 'gyro' system?), despite not having traditional OIS, but its photo has far more digital noise and far less detail in the shadows. Close, but no cigar, etc.

Microsoft Lumia 950 XL: 9 pts; Nokia 7 Plus: 7 pts

Verdict

Adding up the points gives us a win for the Windows phone, as you'd expect for an imaging-centric smartphone (albeit from 2015) versus a good 2018 mid-range all-rounder:

• Lumia 950: 79/90
• Nokia 7 Plus: 76/90

I was surprised how close the Nokia 7 Plus got though. Still imaging is not supposed to be its killer feature (if anything that's battery life and perhaps video capture). As evidenced by the enthusiasm in the comments on AAWP in various features, the return of Nokia to real form here is something to note. From my detailed comparison (with the IDOL 4 Pro), we have:

• the name
• ZEISS optics
• Ozo audio capture
• 3.5mm jack
• USB Type C with Quick Charge 3.0
• a very decent speaker
• battery life to die for
• a screen that's LCD but as good as the Lumia's in many ways
• stock Android (One), so very fast updates

And now a camera that's not miles behind the Lumia 950 XL overall, making this Nokia 7 Plus a genuine contender for a jumping off point from W10M to Android. Most definitely worth a serious look, at 'only' £350 including VAT in the UK.

One of the jewels in the Nokia Lumia 1020 camera experience was always the UI - the way a simple swipe left from the shutter icon would bring up 'pro' mode sliders, arranged for easy twiddling, all with one thumb. This made its way through into Windows 10 Camera, of course, on the likes of the Lumia 950. And now it's reborn.... in an Android phone. With the Nokia badge. Gulp. So how has the 'new' Nokia done?

The Lumia 1020 at its launch in 2013, with Rafe showing off the Pro Camera interface for the first time!

The Lumia 1020's 'Nokia Pro Camera' UI was innovative, it blew people's socks away in 2013 (along with the stellar shots from the hardware, of course) and it rolled out to all Nokia and then Microsoft handsets in the years that followed. It was also patented and although some companies got close to copying it, none ever dared do it explicitly. But Nokia's patent, which resolved to Microsoft and then got bought back, is now in the hands of the company with its original name, appropriately. And with the excellent hardware coming out of the 'new' Nokia (even if having to use off the shelf components) all of a sudden we really are getting a glimpse of how Nokia would have done had they gone Android rather than Windows Phone back in the day.

Which is tangential to AAWP, but still hopefully rather interesting. I've already pitched the Nokia 7 Plus against the Alcatel IDOL 4 Pro and against the Lumia 950 XL, but in this feature I wanted to focus in (pun intended) on the camera UI, after requests in the comments here. How good a job has the new Nokia done at implementing the camera UI we've grown to love over the years?

On both the Lumias and the Nokia 7 Plus, a left swipe from the big shutter control is enough to launch the full Pro mode, but you also get this hamburger shortcut on the Android phone, which brings up the usual top-of-screen controls without the 'rings':

Once in Pro mode, the UI should look familiar.  You can have the top controls and one 'ring' at a time or (as seen below) the full set of rings. Each has 'Auto' at the bottom and then you swipe up with your shooting thumb to set each parameter's level. Just as on the old Lumias, eh?

A few subtle changes - the highlight on the parameter being changed is now more of a 'glow' than a simple emboldening and brightening. And there's no 'warning' red border that appears under parameters which might cause a problem for the photo. On the Lumias, if you set crazy exposures and shutter speeds, the problem numbers are underlined in red, so that you know that you've experimented a tad too far. Here there's nothing (yet - the new Nokia are still developing this port):

There are some other caveats, albeit small ones:

• Exposure compensation now varies between -2 and +2 (it was -3 to +3 on the Lumias)
• ISO is now 100 to 3200 (it was 50 to 3200 on the Lumias)
• Shutter speed is 1/500 to 4s (it was 1/16000 to 4s on the Lumias)
• After using Pro mode and setting parameters, these are remembered from session to session (these were forgotten on the Lumias)

This last is interesting, since you can see pros and cons for each behaviour. On the one hand, having the pro parameters reset each time means that you never have to worry about inheriting some strange setting from the previous shoot. On the other, you might be shooting several photos over a few minutes with other apps used in between and might appreciate having your settings remembered.

Comments welcome. The Nokia 7 Plus certainly looks like being many people's choice for a jump off experiment into modern Android territory, yet with quite a bit that's familiar. Stick on all the Microsoft apps and services, enjoy this Pro Camera mode and you're hopefully almost home and dry!

I already commented, a week ago, on some of the unconfirmed rumours that Project Andromeda (/Surface Mobile etc.) has been pushed back, but it's worth going through the thought experiment of how such a new mobile form factor would work in terms of the finer points of interface and applications. Yes, we'd all love something shiny to play with, but would it work? I'm not so sure at this point.

Microsoft is, at this point, caught between a rock and a hard place and a sheer drop below. In other words, utterly stuck in terms of Andromeda, as I shall explain.

The project is to have a seamless folding phablet that can be used in various modes, including completely closed, 'phone' mode, 'laptop' mode and 'tablet' mode. The hardware seems do-able and prototypes have existed in Microsoft for some time. Inside there would have to be an ARM chipset (for power reasons) and the OS would have to be a Windows 10 variant, necessarily based on the current Desktop (and Core OS, internally) builds, since Windows 10 Mobile was left behind at least a year ago (see the PS below). It would be centred on UWP applications, all of which are still being developed, and which scale and work well on all screen sizes and work with touchscreens. Full telephony would allow for phone use, truly a single device for all purposes, as it were.

All sounds ideal, eh? But it's only when you start to really think about this as a product in the real world that issues start to rear their head. Issues that caused Microsoft to push the project 'back'.

For starters, thinking about Andromeda as a phone, there's no native currently-supported ARM version of many consumer favourite applications, I'm thinking Spotify, Snapchat, but I'm sure you can think of others that don't begin with 's'! You can argue that this is a business tool and that missing out the most popular consumer apps isn't an issue, but Slack (another 's'!) is most certainly business-centric and needs to be present. Plus, surely everyone wants to relax with a little music or social communications sometimes? It's just not good enough to launch a device in late 2018 with so many native applications and services missing in action.

OK, so the argument goes, then you rely on 'Windows 10 on ARM's Win32 emulation capabilities. So you just run the Win32 Desktop versions of Spotify or Slack, for example. Except that the user experience will be terrible. Slight delays while things load on the Desktop are fine. You or I might double-click Spotify on our desktop and accept that we'll be waiting ten seconds of so - time to sip a drink, and so on. But you can't have ten second waits on mobile - and with that emulation layer in place then the delays and slowdowns are going to be even longer. Mobile tech needs to be fast and smooth - that's what Android and iOS deliver and Windows 10 on ARM on Andromeda would need to compete - somehow.

Then there are the UI issues, even before we look at the dual screen and modes. Win32 applications are terrible in terms of finger-friendliness on touchscreens - boot up Windows Explorer on your Surface Pro and try to use it without the Type Cover and trackpad and you'll see what I mean. Classic Windows just isn't designed for finger control. Heck, it was clunky enough with a stylus, back in the day!

So we can eliminate Win32 applications, except as a last resort, leaving a genuine day to day 'app gap'. 

Then we come to the dual screen folding nature - applications will have to adapt to the various screen changes and modes. And I doubt even the best behaved UWP application from Windows 10 (including Mobile) will know what to do in each folded use case. Which means that a significant number of the best UWP apps from third party developers will have to be onboard, more or less from day one. And, given the shafting Microsoft has given developers over the last few years (shifting targets, poor Store, etc.), it's not clear how much effort the latter will put in.

I don't mean to sound defeatist. I can absolutely imagine holding a Surface Mobile right now, flipping it around, turning phablet into tablet into micro-laptop. It's a fabulous concept. But at the same time, from my experience with Windows 10 Mobile and with Windows 10 Desktop on the Surface Pro range, I can tell that there are major issues in terms of a rounded product with a decent ecosystem of support behind it. And those same issues are where reviewers will slap a new device down hard (I know, as I'm one such).

If such a device had a unique selling point other than the sheer geek cool of something that transformed, a function or characteristic that couldn't be done by a simple smartphone/Surface combination today, then that would make some of the pain worthwhile. The Surface Mobile would get better and better with updates, with applications coming on-stream weekly, and so on. But there really isn't a functional USP that isn't met by existing hardware. Even the 'tablet' mode can be argued as covered by the new Surface Go, along with your existing phone and maybe a Desktop or Surface Pro or similar back in the office.

So then it comes down to uber-geeks who want an all-in-one device and are prepared to put up with frustrations and workarounds in the hope that the product will get more fully rounded in time. And that's not a massive market.

So Microsoft really is stuck here. They can't go ARM because they won't have enough apps, yet if they go Win32 for Andromeda, they lose out massively on battery life and also on compatibility with a multi-mode, multi-screen device. And even if they solve these dilemmas, they've still got to find a large enough target market.

PS. Of course, the purist in me says that the 'right' thing to do would be to have persevered with Windows 10 Mobile. This already scales perfectly to various screen sizes, is already 100% mobile/touch friendly, already works on ARM chipsets. And I'll say it for the umpteenth time - stopping work on W10M and stopping production of new first party handsets was a huge mistake. There were plenty of ways that Microsoft could have carried on in mobile without having to keep the whole ex-Nokia support network going (that was the costly bit). What might have been, eh?

This one's been rumbling around for a while, but I wanted to put it to bed... one way or another. In brief, Photos sometimes shows broken thumbnails for images on OneDrive and when you try to tap through anyway, you're told that the photo is unavailable and that you should 'check your Internet connection'. Which is quite clearly absolute tosh - but what's actually going on?

Let me start with a statement:

Windows 10 Photos and OneDrive work perfectly for Lumias running Windows 10 Mobile.

Perfectly. Which is why Microsoft still swears, to this day, that there's nothing wrong and that therefore there's nothing to fix. Yet when I boot up Photos on any of my Windows 10 Mobile phones, I see - for specific date ranges, screens like:

All very odd. And frustrating. I know that Photos itself can handle a wide range of image formats and sizes. And I see that OneDrive, on its own, with its built-in Photos view, shows the exact same image blocks perfectly:

OneDrive has its own cloud-based viewer/browser, of course. The images shown are among those not shown in the Photos application on the phone. Note the uploading device, though, and see the main text below.

But the two just aren't talking sometimes. 

As I investigated further, it became apparent that half the missing photos were taken on the Lumia 1020 under Windows Phone 8.1 and that the rest were taken on the Alcatel IDOL 4 Pro. Not that this should matter a jot - the 1020 has been uploading its photos to OneDrive (née SkyDrive) since launch, in 2013. And the IDOL 4 Pro is running the latest, greatest Fall Creators Update, the exact same branch and build as my Lumia flagships. In both cases, their photos should be accepted, loved, thumbnailed and then made available to Windows 10 Photos on every signed in device.

Yet they're not. At least not using Photos under Windows 10 Mobile. 

I have to emphasise again that if I'd just been using Windows 10 and if I'd just been using Microsoft's Lumias then all would be well. This is the scenario that Microsoft tests. But go even a tiny bit outside the reservation, outside the comfortable core, and things break. 

Which is exactly what one might expect to happen if care and attention was lacking. In an ideal world, this type of report (and believe me, I've reported it several times) would trigger detective work within the Windows team at Microsoft, someone would be assigned to work out why OneDrive wasn't talking properly to Photos for these particular images, and the issue would be fixed. An extra line of code, a bug fix to a thumbnailing routine to allow for 'different' characters in photo file names, that sort of thing.

Looking in OneDrive on the web, here's a Lumia 1020 Windows Phone 8.1-shot photo. All OK (albeit with the default 8.1 uploader's downsampling to 2MP), but does this show up under Windows 10 Photos? Nope. Nada.

Yet we're in that strange twilight world for Windows 10 Mobile, where it's still supported and critical OS bugs and vulnerabilities get fixed, often as a result of sharing core code with Windows 10 branches in the desktop. Yet no one at Microsoft really cares. Not enough to actually fix edge case issues such as the ones shown here.

Interestingly, on the Desktop, we also have Windows Photos, the UWP application. Yet the app got split a while back, as Microsoft started to shoehorn in extra features for the Desktop (not least better video editing and 3D!), meaning that the code is newer and is receiving attention all the time.

As a side note, even Windows 10 Photos on the desktop showed some broken thumbnails, but these turned out to be RAW (.DNG) files from when I was playing with Camera on my Lumia 950. I think I can forgive Photos for not knowing what to do with 25MB .DNG images. If you're done playing with these though, I'd advise you to select and delete them in Photos or OneDrive, in order to both save space and also avoid confusion with broken thumbnails from the other issues discussed here! 

So, what have we learned, other than that Microsoft doesn't really care anymore?

If you're using Photos in a multi-device set-up, especially if you use non-Microsoft hardware or older phones on WP8.1, then expect broken thumbnails. But don't take this as a sign that your images are gone. If the missing access in Photos is a problem then find and use/share them from the OneDrive Photos view instead.

Any comments?

Guest writer Julian Williams brings us some left-field thinking that uses an old favourite accessory and phone in a familiar - and yet slightly different - way, using Continuum from a Lumia 950 as a screen expanding feature that helps him stay in touch with live sport.

Julian writes:

"It may seem like the Microsoft Display Dock and Continuum have gone the way of VR headsets and 3D TVs. But maybe not quite - see what you think of my notes and photos below!

You’ve possibly got the BT Sport app on your phone - it’s part of your mobile deal from EE, for example. But it’s titchy. The phone screen that is. Ideally, it would be great to get the BT Sport app running on your TV or PC monitor – on a bigger screen.

Time, therefore, to dust down your Display Dock (HD-500) that you probably got free with your Lumia 950/950XL in that Microsoft fire sale a few years ago:

Here’s how to do it.

Required: A Microsoft display dock and its supplied cables and charger plus an HDMI cable for connecting to a TV (or an HDMI to VGA adapter or HDMI to DVI adapter for your PC monitor if said monitor doesn’t have an HDMI port).

(Note: Another option is to use a Microsoft wireless adapter for your Miracast-enabled Windows phone. That’s about £40. So if you don’t have a Display Dock, get one for £20 on eBay or £30 on Amazon UK – much cheaper! Plus it's better - the Display Dock runs at 60fps whilst the wireless dongle only runs at 30fps - or less. And you get all the charging/power benefits!)

First, untangle your Display Dock, USB Type C cable, spare USB charger and other cables from your man drawer. It’ll probably take a while. Then…

1:  Connect the Lumia 950/XL (or Alcatel IDOL 4 Pro or ELite x3) to the dock with the USB Type C cable, connect the dock to a power source using your USB Type C charger and connect the HDMI lead to the dock and the TV or monitor (using an adapter if there isn’t an HDMI socket available on the monitor):

2: The TV screen now looks like this. Hello desktop:

3: And the phone now looks like this. Hello mouse track pad! 

(Alternatively, you can connect a keyboard and mouse as well to the Dock – and you can then still use your phone for calls, texts etc without disrupting anything on the bigger screen)

4: Move the cursor to the Windows icon bottom left, select and up comes your phone’s Start screen:

5: Choose (in this case) the BT Sport app from here or do it via all apps:

6: From the onscreen BT Sport TV schedule, choose what you wish to watch:

7: And - hey presto! BT Sport on a TV or monitor, from your phone. At last, you can see the ball/boat/puck etc!

_________

Thanks Julian! A timely reminder of how much Windows 10 Mobile and Continuum can do!

Ever since the Nokia 808 appeared in 2012, phrases like 'as good as a DSLR' have been bandied around. And, while sometimes true, on the whole phone cameras aren't ultimately in the same league. But I wanted to quantify this, based around the most recent Windows 10 Mobile flagship (albeit 2015), in the shape of the Lumia 950 XL*, pitted here against a DSLR, the Canon EOS 1200D**. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Lumia and DSLR each turned out to have huge strengths and weaknesses.

* Smartphone fans may be a little outraged that I'm not using a 2018 phone, but it's only very recently that an Android or iOS phone camera has surpassed the Lumia 950 XL, and then only by virtue of having extra telephoto lenses. So the Lumia 950 XL is a still a great benchmark phone camera. 

** The EOS 1200D is from a few years ago, admittedly (launched in 2014), but is still a great DSLR that I/we use regularly.

Yes, the mighty Lumia should struggle against the DSLR, but my prediction is that, most of the time, it won't be too far behind, and that the extra intelligence in the smartphone's image processing might even give a win here and there. Zooming will, again, be key though, with the basic DSLR offering some optical zoom and - in theory - the possibility to screw on whatever outrageous zoom accessory you care to buy!

As usual, I've gone out of my way to find shots that will challenge the best cameras, phone or standalone.

Notes:

• I've tried several resolutions. Both the EOS 1200D and Lumia 950 XL can shoot in oversampled 8MP or at the full 20MP or so. Pros and cons for each resolution - the former allows for greater image purity in low light and for some lossless digital zoom on the Lumia, while the latter obviously delivers more detail in most light conditions. I've mainly gone for the former, having found that the latter doesn't really change my conclusions.
• All photos were taken handheld on full 'auto' on both devices, unless stated otherwise. Mimicking real life users. Yes, I realise that the whole point of a DSLR is that you can fiddle with every setting under the sun, plus you can mount it on tripods, add extra lenses, and more. The full DSLR world. But here I just wanted a quick set of data points of the DSLR in full 'auto' mode.

Let's pit the results against each other, using our Famed Interactive Comparator (FIC). All 1:1 crops are at 900x500 for comparison, but see the links for full versions.

Test 1: Sunny day, steam train

An easy shot, and using 8MP on both (as a starting point), use your slider as usual on these web-resolution overviews:

This is a particularly good example of showing how phone cameras can often be better than DSLRs when it comes to a simple snap. The dynamic range from the Lumia 950 XL camera is very impressive, while the DSLR is clearly struggling. And no, the 950 XL didn't cheat with a 'Rich Capture' HDR shot, this is a single exposure - I checked. Of course, the Lumia does add a certain warmth and golden cast to proceedings, but its photo is clearly superior.

DSLR fans will say 'Ah, but you're supposed to use a tripod and take three bracketed exposures and then combine them later in Photoshop.' Which is all such a hassle that you can absolutely see why phone cameras rule the roost in 2018.

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and EOS 1200D, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

Detail is clearly sharper in the Lumia image, but it would be crazy to suggest that it had better optics than the DSLR. What you're seeing is the difference between a photo that's been tastefully 'enhanced' using phone GPU algorithms and much 'rawer' image that's crying out for such things later in a photo editor on a computer.

Test 2: Station shade

Another view of the station, this time centring it on a group of people and pets in the shade, use your slider as usual on these web-resolution overviews:

Again the Lumia has vastly better dynamic range, plus the DSLR also suffered from lens flare (from its much larger optics), but in fairness the exposure system is very different and the spot metering in the DSLR was working from the passenger waiting room and the subjects, whereas the Lumia was trying to expose for the whole scene and assuming its dynamic range would handle everything across the frame. 

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and EOS 1200D, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

The Lumia's handling of detail in this central subject is somewhat darker as a result, but both crops are fine and again you get a sense that the DSLR's image could do with a touch of modern auto-enhancement before the save to JPG. It's a different world going back to shooting with a 'dumb' camera, I tell you!

Test 3: Low light

Staying with 8MP for now, here's a low light test. The oversampling and/or pixel binning should produce decent results on each device. Use your slider as usual on these web-resolution overviews:

Notably, the DSLR warns on-screen that light is low and that a tripod should be used. But even handheld, and despite the Lumia 950 XL's legendary low light chops and OIS, the Canon DSLR manages a tremendously detailed low light photo, thanks to the far larger light-gathering optics and sensor.

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and EOS 1200D, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

Although Windows 10 Camera on the Lumia does a great job of keeping things as pure as possible, and despite some extra digital noise, there's genuine extra detail in the EOS 1200D shot. Very impressive. And did I mention that, despite terribly dark conditions (far darker than either photo makes out), focussing was still near instant on the DSLR, while being a second or so at best on the Lumia?

Test 4: Low light with floodlit detail

Also at 8MP, another low light test, this time with some floodlighting and light dynamics. Use your slider as usual on these web-resolution overviews:

It's not just in sunshine that the Lumia 950 XL's dynamic range comes to the fore - it does a much better job of handling the floodlighting here. And, unusually, it's the Lumia that has the more restrained colours, while the Canon manages a golden glow too far, etc.

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and EOS 1200D, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

It's tough to tell whether one shot has more actual detail than the other because the DSLR made such a mess of the exposure. It's hard to tell on the small external screen just how good or bad a shot is, but if I was after this shot for real with a DSLR then of course I'd have played with a few different exposure values and shutter speeds. That's what DSLRs are all about. 

Meanwhile the Lumia just nails the shot. First time.

Test 5: Zoom time

Time to introduce zoom, such a core component of the DSLR scene. Here I'm simply testing the default zoom lens that comes with the EOS 1200D, but it's enough.... Here's the zoomed scene from the 950 XL:

In case you want to grab the original zoomed images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and EOS 1200D, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

This is the clear difference between digital zoom (even if half of this is lossless on the Lumia 950 XL) and optical zoom, which is clearer and more natural. And of course, with a DSLR, if you want more zoom you just screw on another lens and off you go. 5x, 10x, even 20x if light is good enough, if you have a tripod, and so on....

Test 6: Absolute resolution versus zoom

As a final example of where optical zoom helps even a basic DSLR set-up break away from a great phone camera, here I'm shooting a mural from across a river. I've bumped up the resolution on both the DSLR and phone to the full 20MP in order to extract maximum detail. Here's the unzoomed scene from the 950 XL:

In case you want to grab the original (in the DSLR's case) zoomed images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and EOS 1200D, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

The Lumia 950 XL does amazingly well, I think, in terms of capturing extreme detail at a distance, but look what even this un-expanded DSLR can do. And it's ever thus with optical zoom on a DSLR, the size of the optics in both dimensions means that you can effectively get full resolution (in this case 20MP) yet with full zoom as well. 

Summary

Enough though. You'll notice that I haven't scored this feature in a traditional way - there's simply no point. The phone camera (of which the Lumia 950 XL is a terrific example) has its strengths, the DSLR has its likewise - contrary to what you might think, they're simply two different tools for different jobs.

Finally, you'll have noticed that I went 'auto' for the simple data points above. It goes without saying that if you're a shutterbug then you're going to want to fiddle - creatively - to take better shots on both devices. The Lumia has the old Nokia Pro Camera interface for adjusting ISO, exposure, shutter speed, and so on, while the DSLR's interface, both physical and electronic, allows almost any parameter to be adjusted, for arty effects that are just about impossible to replicate on the phone,

Horses for courses, as they say. I enjoyed going back to a DSLR for a few days, but the sheer bulk and weight (and this is without addons) somewhat appalled me. My conclusion is that a great phone camera can now easily take much better snaps than a DSLR, but that when you need heavy zoom, proper flash or simply something arty then a DSLR will usually win out.

In short, leave the DSLR at home or in the glove box, for when you know you're going to need it - the rest of the time, a phone camera of the Lumia 950 XL's calibre* will be better than fine.

* In the Features section of this site, I've done numerous head to heads - in 2018 the iPhone X, Galaxy S9+ and Huawei P20 Pro shootouts will be of interest.

So, with my review of the very Windows 10 Mobile-friendly Fitbit Versa concluded a couple of days ago, I'm staying on a wearable theme with a look back (and forward) at the Microsoft Band 2, still a valid choice for Windows phone users - as long as you don't destroy it with your specific fitness regime. I've been using my Band 2 again and am appreciating it more than ever...

The story so far

• Microsoft launches the Band and a companion Microsoft Health service in October 2014.
• I review the Band in May 2015
• Microsoft launches the Band 2 in October 2015
• I review the Band 2 in November 2015
• The Band 2 gets music controls in December 2015
• The Band 2 gets an Explore upgrade in May 2016
• The Band 2 gets heart rate zone support in October 2016
• The Band 2 is dropped from sale and all plans for a Band 3 dropped later in October 2016

The Band saga only lasted two years in terms of ambitions and sales, then, and quite a while ago. Yet it remains the only official wearable/smartwatch from Microsoft for its own mobile platform and, as a result, the integration and reliability is significantly higher than for third party wearables, even the Fitbits. As an example of this, it's trivial to control your playing music on Windows 10 Mobile from your Band 2 - a double press on the action button and there are the controls you need. In contrast, you have to jump through a dozen hoops to enable the same on the Versa (so much so that I missed it completely in my otherwise full review!)

The Band 2 also had a full crop of sensors, including UV detection, something which is more important this year than in any other, I think. It was IP67 for water and dust resistance and I've taken it swimming (by accident) with no ill effects, though there's no real benefit since there's no detection of swimming strokes/lengths (as the Versa did). It was and is a tightly integrated Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile accessory with class-leading sensors at the time (GPS/heart rate/UV/barometer/skin temperature/galvanics) and which still look competitive today.

Why did Microsoft cancel the project?

Other than internal politics, which I won't go into here, three reasons:

1. Reliability. The original Band (with the batteries in the strap) and the Band 2 (with lots of wires in the strap, so thinner, but still needing to be more substantial than your typical watch strap) suffered from reliability issues. Here's a typical sample, with the strap tearing at the boundary of the under-strap arced support and the more flexible section. Time before this happens seems to be about six months of daily use. So about 180 workouts, typically with sweaty skin and probably a fair amount of rain and physical abuse. 
    
   My own Band 2 has only had about 100 exercise sessions over three years because I chop and change hardware a lot, and my hardware is still perfect. Maybe I don't sweat enough, maybe I'm more careful with my tech, maybe this will all come to bite me in another 100 or so sessions? Regardless, a fitness-centric wearable certainly shouldn't degrade and break when a user is doing exactly what the gadget is designed for, at least not in the first (say) two years. Six months is just not good enough, and Microsoft never really got to the bottom of the material problems.
    
2. Design. Following on from the first point, the idea of having the battery and sensors in the clasp and then running lots of wires through the strap portions has go down as an ambitious experiment. While Microsoft was trying this approach, every other maker of wearables was taking a more traditional approach to design, with all the electronics in the main watch/display. Yes, the latter had to be slightly smaller, thicker, and heavier, but the massive, overwhelming upside was that if the strap goes with wear and tear then you just attach a new strap, you don't have to replace the entire wearable.
    
3. Appearance. There's no getting away from it. Every time I wear the Band 2 in public, I get comments about me wearing it wrong (the display's on the 'inside' of the wrist) and about how it looks "like a prison bracelet". In today's style-conscious world, something that looks like it belongs on the set of Blade Runner doesn't cut it. Probably. I don't mind the look, but I haven't managed to convince anyone else!

In view of these reasons, it's clear that Microsoft needed to go back to the drawing board - and it's not impossible that they in fact do this. How about a 'Microsoft Watch'? But I wouldn't hold your breath - the wearables space is already congested and profit margins aren't huge. Even Apple had to scale back its Apple Watch plans and prices.

Does the Microsoft Band 2 still work?

Absolutely. The 'Microsoft Health' application was renamed to just the 'Microsoft Band' app in the Store a while back and this still installs fine, works fine, and shows no sign of stopping working. As long as:

• the Band 2 itself carries on working
• your Windows phone carries on working
• the Microsoft Health dashboard on the web and the server-side health data processing is kept online

then there's zero reason why the pairing should carry on for months (years?) to come.

I guess the Microsoft Band application might get also get pulled in the Store, but unless you factory reset your phone your existing installation will carry on as normal, the other factors permitting.

As proof that this is still working fine, I've been using my Band 2 intensively over the last few days, with it still tracking sleep (automatically, so you don't have to remember to start the 'activity' when you're tired), still tracking runs and walks, still surfacing texts, emails, weather warnings, still controlling music playback during exercise, and more. In short, while the hardware's still working and point 3 above notwithstanding, the Band 2 is still a great experience.

Just checking. Factory reset a Band 2 and install the Microsoft Band 2 application on a phone and - everything still works perfectly. Phew!

Two of the most useful fitness tracking functions for me personally - sleep tracking, showing periods of 'restful' (REM?) sleep and also, embarrasingly, that I got up to use the bathroom just before 2am. Ahem. Still... 92% efficiency? I can live with that! (right) The 'Explore' tracking. I also use the 'Run' mode for walking, but Explore uses less GPS and thus less battery, plus it's cool seeing my track on the map.

Of note is that the Band 2 also still works with modern Android or iOS handsets, with companion applications still readily available. I mention this should you be playing with other mobile OS with an eye on the future!

Where can I still buy a Microsoft Band 2?

Amazingly, there are still some on Amazon UK, though from various sources and you can't always get your choice of sizes. There are also loads on eBay UK, just take your pick, with prices typically in the £20 to £30 region. Either to get yourself a Band 2 for the first time, or to replace one with a broken strap.

Then there are your other local second hand and clearance outlets, it depends where you are in the world.

If you are new to the Band 2, then you'll need the companion application in the Micrsoft Store here.

Without doubt, THE most popular category of application for Windows Phone 8.1 was 'podcatchers', i.e. applications to auto-grab and play your favourite podcasts. I did so many features and updates for these for 8.1 that I've lost track. So this feature is for dedicated UWP applications, i.e. those expressly built for Windows 10 (Mobile/Continuum/laptops). This is a huge update to the original article from 18 months ago, with updated apps, updated features, and updated scores.

Because I've updated the original story, all your original comments are left intact. I'm sure you'll add to them!

Podcatching, as you'll probably know, is the act of grabbing podcasts directly, over the air, on your smartphone. Automatically, seamlessly and without needing a desktop or any direct manual intervention. And then sorting them, playing them back in sensible fashion, working around interruptions, and cleaning up afterwards. It's a tall order for an application, and here we have some likely contenders here for Windows 10 Mobile, all of which I've put through their paces. 

I don't need to evangelise the need for a good podcatcher to you, gentle reader. The very fact that you're reading on means that you're a podcast fan and that you too want a decent system for grabbing them on Windows 10. My testing here was all on the Fall Creators Update, i.e. branch 1709 of Windows 10 Mobile.

Now, obviously, I can't go into gory detail for each of the applications, every last setting and feature can't be explored. But I can set out some ground rules and see how well each of the applications do:

1. Manual Import of an existing set of podcasts (e.g. from an OPML or XML file, or from an online service such as gpodder.net or from a previous OneDrive backup) - having to add podcasts manually by searching or typing in URLs is a right pain when you've got 20 or 30!
2. Manual Export or back up your podcast selections to the Cloud (including OneDrive)
3. Sync your podcast subscriptions and playlists with other Windows 10 devices with the same application installed
4. Include search functions for new podcasts that you've been told about, or for simply browsing for likely candidates. The test search strings here are for the AAWP podcast (of course), plus my own Phones Show Chat, a totally separate entity with different RSS/directory history, and my fairly new Projector Room.
5. Auto-check for new programmes in each feed and auto-download them in the background.
6. Play podcasts, of course, remembering where you'd got to in each.
7. List new programmes, across all your feeds, in chronological order, or at least isolating new content that you haven't heard yet.
8. Include clean-up options to remove listened-to podcasts and reclaim space on the phone, preferably as quickly and automatically as possible.
9. Able to run in dark or light themes, according to AMOLED-screened power efficiency and taste/preference - note that this doesn't have to be an explicit setting in the application, so long as the app picks up the chosen Windows 'theme'.
10. Ability to skip past adverts with 'nudge' controls, both in the main UI and in the OS's pop-up audio handler (as opposed to moving between podcasts as if they were music tracks)
11. Support Continuum displays (on compatible devices), plus Windows 10 Desktop as well as Mobile. This is all usually a given for a UWP app, but worth checking.

____________________________

Grover Pro (v1.6.4.1000)

(last covered here)

** Although there's an automated system for removing played episodes and a setting for the number of episodes of each podcast to keep, plus ways of manually deleting old files, there's no over-arching 'clean up and reclaim space' system, curiously.

Deliberately styled after Groove Music (hence the adaptation of the name), Grover Pro is perhaps the podcatcher that's been the most reliable in my testing, consistently pulling down podcasts in the background so that they're all ready for listening. With regular updates and fixes, it's hard to see what else could be improved.

Unusually, there are three ways into new podcasts - 'Playlist' (with new shows being auto-added if you set it up this way), 'Unplayed' and 'Downloaded', lists which are often almost identical, obviously, though if you're used to listening to podcasts in bits and bobs then I guess the distinction might become important. Still, you'll find a way to make this work for you, even if the barrage of views is a little confusing at first.

There's a podcast 'Store' which you can browse and add from, as needed, and the whole thing works beautifully in landscape mode and on a Continuum display (or Windows 10 laptop or tablet). 'Fluent Design' visual effects help Grover Pro look beautiful, especially on phone AMOLED displays.

Overall rating: 88%

Gallery of screenshots - Grover Pro:

One of the various 'what's new' views and (right) the 'Now Playing' pane, with the variable speed control slider popped up...

Here in landscape mode, showing the built in podcast 'Store' and a well thought out interface whatever the orientation or resolution.

____________________________

BringCast (v4.0.43.0)

(last covered here)

Although nothing to do with me personally, I'm declaring a slight interest in BringCast here because I've submitted a fair amount of feedback over the last few years - in particular at least one of the themes and the 'All episodes by date' filter, presenting shows in reverse chronological order - exactly as I like them. In addition, there's a 'Playlist' system, if you prefer, perhaps for grouping new shows from a few favourite podcasts.

Each podcast subscription can be tweaked and set-up individually if required, customising for auto-download and the number of shows to keep stored, plus there's an overall 'Delete' function in Settings that shows the amount of MB currently used by all podcasts and offers the chance to reclaim space quickly with one tap - very useful.

The interface is deliberately 'big' in places, even 'garish', but consider this part of the application's charm - or head for one of the other options here if it puts you off!

Of note is that BringCast has a subscription model, where 'pro' features require a regular in-app-purchase, topping out at £6.70 for a year - this also won't be to everyone's taste, though I've done quite a few IAPs in BringCast over the years and in fact I'm happy to have paid for all the applications on this feature - it's how developers get paid and earn a living. But I realise that the simpler 'pay once for all time' model is preferred by most people. Still, less than £7 a year seems reasonable for full use of an application you'd use multiple times a day.

We haven't had an update for a while, mind you, so I do wonder whether development is still active.

Overall rating: 79%

Gallery of screenshots - BringCast:

Playback in progress in BringCast, with a nice and large finger-friendly playback position control, and similarly large skip controls; (right) the hamburger/navigation menu - and all nicely themed.

Delving into Settings, it's apparent that there's an awful lot that's customisable in BringCast, though the defaults are also sensible, especially for those who only want big downloads on Wi-fi...

____________________________

MyPodcasts (v1.5)

(last covered here)

* Some of the sync features require buying the 'Podcast Sync' IAP

Originally conceived as OneCast, the podcatcher with zero menus and zero settings, MyPodcasts has - ironically - been reimagined by Daniel Lam as the podcatcher with the largest number of settings in this group! 

'Smartlists' can be configured to present new episodes from the podcasts in those lists in any order you want, making this a very flexible way to find out what's new in a number of different modes, e.g. 'Security', 'Tech', 'Lifestyle', or whatever you decide. There's auto-clean-up of episodes listened to the end, but there are also multiple ways to delete everything downloaded in Settings, albeit buried right at the end of a long long list of toggles.

Podcast playback is hugely configurable, with a big range of speeds and possible skip increments (e.g. to get past adverts).

When plugged into a Continuum display or when used on a Windows 10 laptop, MyPodcasts uses the space fully, though without any dramatic optimisations for the larger screen.

Despite being one of the newer applications here, and despite several updates in the last year, MyPodcasts remains glitchy here, with occasional unexplained lag in the UI, frozen operation, and more. Daniel's been great in the past at releasing updates, so I hope he hasn't lost interest in Windows 10 now.

Overall rating: 74%

Gallery of screenshots - MyPodcasts:

The unique visual style of MyPodcasts include these Fluent Design-esque pane creations; (right) the main playback screen, with a wide range of timers and speed options.

The full hamburger menu - there's a Patreon option for supporting the project, but it seems unused and we haven't had an update for six months, so I do wonder whether the project is still active; (right) looking at one of my Smartlists, here sorted in reverse time order.

Just one tenth of the huge scrolling pane of toggles and options!

____________________________

Podcast+ Pro (v6.0.7.0)

(last covered here)

* From the 'Downloaded' view and also via auto-delete on a per-podcast basis

The UI here is based around a three tab/pivot concept - feeds (which you can sort in various ways, though not according to date of last episode, annoyingly), 'now playing' (as it sounds, though notable because it has super-large control buttons, for in-car use), and 'playlists' (these auto-populate according to various sensible rules, though you can fiddle more if you like).

And it all works on the whole. Podcast+ Pro isn't the prettiest podcatcher here, but it's bold and functional and hey, that works pretty well on AMOLED screens, as on the test 950 here.

There's no background agent for auto-checking and grabbing new podcast episodes, but there is background support for carrying on downloading podcasts once the initial startup check has identified what to download. So there's a wait while audio becomes available sometimes, but it never gets in the way of you switching away to another app on the phone.

There are extensive settings and filters, with a sleep timer, auto-play of the next episode in the playlist, and so on. The settings are different from the main menu and from within a podcast listing - this makes sense, logically, if you think about it, the latter are more specific and context sensitive.

On a Continuum display or on a laptop, Podcast+ Pro does a good job too. It's a solid podcatcher.

Overall rating: 73%

Gallery of screenshots - Podcast+ Pro:

Big bold fonts, but all super clear, and I liked the download summary pane at the top; (right) browsing episodes within a podcast listing.

Huge controls, perhaps designed for in car use; (right) the sleep timer is hidden in the '...' pop-up menu...

The 'dynamic' playlists work really well and are the first port of call when you have a lot of podcasts subscribed; (right) the auto-downloading works well once the app has been opened and the feeds update - here are some of the salient settings...

______________________

Podcast Lounge 2 (v1.2.66 - beta)

(last covered here)

* Sync to other signed in devices is in the beta version here. It'll come to the production version shortly (September 2018?)

Through the history of podcatchers under Windows on phones there has been one giant - Igneous Software's Podcast Lounge, everyone's favourite under WP8.1. But it took until the last 12 months for a Windows 10 UWP version to appear, which is why we have the likes of Grover Pro above, stepping in and taking over the crown. Temporarily. We're still in something of a transition phase, with Podcast Lounge available in both production and beta tracks, so you can help test the latest features, or sit back and enjoy something even more stable.

Although vestiges of the old 8.1 application survive in the UI here and there, this is mostly a rewrite. And very slick, with comprehensive startup/tutorial sequence for new users, plenty of help, a directory/collection system which is second to none, plus rock solid auto-downloading and a responsive UI.

There's little to complain about with Podcast Lounge 2, working well on both phone and laptop. If I had to pick a flaw, it's the usual wait of a couple of seconds when compiling smart playlists on the phone - I've chatted with the developer about this, and the time can only be reduced at the expense of losing reliability in terms of handling a wide range of podcast RSS and XML feed formats.

Podcast Lounge 2 may still not be 100% baked, but at 95% functionality it does more than most other podcatchers at 100%.

Overall rating: 83%

Gallery of screenshots - Podcast Lounge 2:

Everyone's favourite home view, with subscribed/favourite podcasts sorted by 'new' episodes here and basic stats in small/blue; (right) browsing through the extensive podcast 'collections' - you'll never be short of recommendations!

Setting up a new 'Smart playlist' and (right) browsing my auto-playlists so far.

There are so many settings to tweak, they're split into these nine headings, with as many in each section; (right) the newest set is concerning cross-device sync, which is extensive, but stops short of remembering playback position between signed in computers (I wonder if this could be done too?) You're informed (by a 'toast') when a sync is done from another device with more recent parameters.

______________________

Podcasted (v1.3)

(last covered here)

* You have to kick this off manually in Settings every time

** If an episode is fuly listened to then it will get auto-deleted if you choose the right setting, but I couldn't see a way to do a mass clean-up, to save space.

*** This doesn't happen in the background, but does get kicked off if needed while  Podcasted is in the foreground.

Probably the quirkiest interface in this round-up, developer 'Jimmy'(!) aims for a minimalist UI, with no dedicated 'Now playing' screen, no hamburger menu, only one home view, a minimal set of err... settings. And he almost pulls it off. 

Podcasted is quick and easy to navigate, always presenting a good set of relevant controls, but in the minimalist ambitions, some of the subtleties and finer control of the other podcatchers is seen to be missing, for example working out what's new from the last week across 30 different shows.

If you want an ultra-simple yet competent way into a small number of podcasts then this is still perhaps the application to go for. Just don't expect the Earth!

Overall rating: 80%

Gallery of screenshots - Podcasted:

Favourite podcasts (those you've starred) appear at the top of the main Listen list, followed by popular suggestions and recommendations. In each case, tap through to see episodes and then they auto-download when tapped on, as needed.

The playback controls are tiny and stay at the bottom of the screen, while space is somewhat wasted above - definitely a few UI tweaks needed still... (right) the Settings pane has several tabs, offering OneDrive import and export of your favourites, cleaning up when listened (though I suspect you'd have to go right to the end of each show to qualify)...

______________________

Verdict

Six UWP applications then, all aimed at keeping you up to date with your podcast listening on Windows 10 Mobile and on tablets and laptops. Grover Pro was the early standout - it's understated and lacking in 'wow', but it's super reliable and perfectly styled after the built-in Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile applications - it just fits in.

Podcast Lounge 2 is the other heavyweight, quirky in places but with a familiarity from the days of Windows Phone 8.1 and incredible attention to detail in terms of 'just working'. Yet it's still under development to a degree - I suspect that this will eventually overtake Grover Pro in my ratings, but it's still got another month of coding needed before it's 100% 'done'.

That one of the highest scorers above should still be 'under development' even as the Windows 10 Mobile world starts to wind down isn't quite as anachronistic as it sounds. ALL the podcatchers here are not only compatible with Continuum displays, they also work fine on all Windows 10 tablets, hybrids, laptops, desktops - and probably Hololens and Xbox too. Plus any future Windows 10-running portable folding device [cough]. So they all get a life beyond current Lumias (etc.) still in circulation.

Comments welcome on my scorings/ratings. Which podcatcher do YOU rely on each day under Windows 10?

PS. Yes, most of the Windows Phone 8.1 podcatchers still work fine, even under Redstone 2, but they're on borrowed time in terms of APIs, support, styling and even compatibility (no doubt), so best switch to a UWP now.

Reader Michael Cunningham had an interesting question - with a simple and obvious answer, though with the usual Windows 10 Mobile transient uncertainties (a fancy way of saying 'glitches') to complicate things. Essentially he had filled his phone/microSD card with photos and videos, but didn't want to delete them from the phone in case they also got zapped from OneDrive, i.e. he lost his backups. Happily, it's easy enough to proceed.

It's a common enough scenario - whichever disk you have Camera set to save its photos and videos to gets full-ish and you're constantly trying to delete things to make room.

There are a number of solutions/options, starting with the easiest!

1. Buy a microSD card!

One common scenario is that a user buys a phone and fills up its internal disk, not realising that you can expand storage with a microSD card. In which case:

1. Buy a card (suggest 128GB, as below)
2. Turn the phone off
3. Insert the card into the phone and wait a few minutes for it to settle down
4. Go into the Settings application
5. Go into System/Storage and change 'New photos and videos will be saved to' to 'SD card' or similar. Back out.
6. Take a test photo and check it works.
7. Use the File Explorer application to select everything in your (full) 'Pictures/Camera roll' folder (selection mode and then '.../select all')
8. Use the 'Move to' control to move everything into the 'Pictures/Camera roll' folder on your new microSD.

2. Buy a LARGER microSD card.

Memory card space is insanely cheap these days. Michael has a card, it was 64GB, but a top quality 128GB card is now only £33.

In which case:

1. Buy the new card
2. Turn the phone off
3. Put the old card into a USB reader/adapter and copy its contents to a folder on your PC
4. Put the new card into the adapter, copy all your files onto it, as-is.
5. When you're sure all the files are written, safely 'eject' the card from the PC and put it in your phone.
6. Put the new card into the phone
7. Turn on the phone and give it a few minutes to settle down. Check the new free space and check in Photos that everything's there.
8. Keep your old card somewhere safe as a backup.

3. Judiciously delete less important photos and videos, without affecting the OneDrive backup.

This is where it gets very slightly more complicated. In principle, it's easy enough to delete specific media from your phone without affecting OneDrive content. But there's an uncertainty factor - what's shown in Photos doesn't always match up instantly with what's actually on OneDrive. Sometimes it's that the auto-backup of photos doesn't happen at all (rare), sometimes it's delayed by a few minutes or hours (occasionally happens), sometimes the uploading is still happening (if you've shot lots of photos or a big video or two recently). The first is obviously the scenario that no one wants and I've found that if your Photos and OneDrive applications (or on the web) ever get out of step then restarting the phone and then going into Photos/OneDrive again normally kicks things back off. All not a huge deal, especially if you're mainly looking to zap photos or videos from the distant past, but something to be aware of.

The other thing to watch for is to check that your videos had indeed been backed up. In the OneDrive application, under 'Settings/Camera upload', the default is to have 'Include videos' turned on, but you may have turned this off in the past. In which case now is the time to hook up to a PC, ideally, and copy off/back up any of your video clips that might otherwise be missed from your OneDrive backups. I guess that if the toggle is off and you turn it on then hopefully the software will get round to backing up videos from your past, but a) don't count on it, and b) it'll take forever. So best go down the local copy route, with a cable, or by plugging (e.g.) a microSD into your PC, as detailed above.

But, assuming that all is well and fully auto-backed up, then you can start deleting media from the Photos application, either item by item or by hitting the 'Select' tool and tagging items with a tick. In either case, you should see this dialog pop up:

As the text suggests, if you UNTICK the check box then the items are deleted from local storage (your phone and its microSD card) but not from your OneDrive backup. Which is what you probably want in the case of this 'clear space' exercise.

It's actually nice that Windows 10 Mobile and Photos pop this dialog up every time, I think, since if it was a setting in the background then we'd all forget it was there and the deletes might not be what we actually wanted. This way, you get a visual reminder to check or uncheck the relevant box. Every time.

____________

Don't get depressed that everything above looks complicated - I've just been trying to cover all eventualities. We try to go the extra mile at AAWP!

PS. It goes without saying that if you're relying on a OneDrive backup for so many photos and videos then you'll be off the free tier. So you'll be paying per year or per month for extra storage, or you'll be an Office 365 subscriber. 

Almost a year ago, guest writer Matthew Weflen pitched the classic Lumia 950 camera against the (then) Sony flagship, the XZ Premium, with the fight being very close but with the Lumia ultimately winning out. Ten months later he has the brand new Sony XZ2 Premium in hand, the company's highest end Android phone for 2018. Time for his latest imaging shootout!

(If anyone's wondering about that Windows-esque launcher on Matthew's XZ2 Premium, it's SquareHome 2...)

Matthew Weflen writes:

Astute AAWP readers may recall my previous guest shootouts, the Lumia 950 vs the Sony Xperia XA1 and vs the Sony Xperia XZ Premium. I liked the performance and build quality of both phones, and so was very interested in trying the XZ Premium’s successor, the XZ2 Premium.

Released in July 2018, the XZ2 Premium is powered by Qualcomm’s newest Snapdragon 845 SoC and 6gb of RAM. The camera module is also Sony’s flagship standard, the “Motion Eye.” This moniker probably refers to the camera’s ability to take 960 FPS slow motion video at 1080pas well as its fancy moving laser focus adjustments during burst shooting. It is a “stacked memory” chip, with RAM sandwiched in between the CMOS and control circuitry layers for faster processing (which is what allows the aforementioned motion features). The sensor is 19 megapixels sized at 1/2.3”, and has an f/1.8 aperture 25mm lens. New for this model is a second camera, a 12 MP monochrome shooter weighing in at f/1.6 aperture and 1/2.3”. Sony says this combo will lead to very good low-light performance (the second lens is not dedicated to zoom), and allows for crazy high ISO shooting, up to 51,200.

It will again do battle with the Lumia 950’s 20-megapixel sensor, sized at 1/2.4”, with a f/1.9 aperture 26mm lens. The Lumia 950 has physical Optical Image Stabilization, while the XZ2 Premium does not, opting again for Qualcomm’s digital “EIS” solution instead.

So let’s start snapping and pit the results against each other, using the Famed Optical Comparator. All shots were taken on auto settings at full resolution, and cropped to 900x500 for close up “pixel peeping” comparisons.

Test 1: Outdoor building in sunlight

Let’s start with some easy stuff, which every smartphone shooter worth its salt should ace: an outdoor shot of building and foliage. Here is the whole scene, as presented by the Lumia 950:

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 and Sony XZ2 Premium, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

The 950 presents a smoother and warmer shot overall. The XZ2 Premium’s shot is cooler and more noisy. As far as detail goes, the shots seem pretty even. The 950’s smoothing algorithm makes things smoosh together a bit, while the XZ2P’s noise gives an impression of more detail. At non-pixel-peeping distances, both shots are quite pleasing overall. Overall, I tend to like the 950 shot just a bit better, as the XZ2P has an edge-enhanced look.

Microsoft Lumia 950: 9 pts; Sony XZ2 Premium: 8 pts

Test 2: Outdoor flower macro

I decided to get closer to a day lit subject, a quite lovely flower. Here is the whole scene, as presented by the Lumia 950:

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 and Sony XZ2 Premium, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

Both shots are quite nice, with a pleasing Bokeh effect on the leaves in the background, vibrant color, and very good detail. Here’ the XZ2 Premium’s noise turns out to be a good thing, as it allows the striations of color in the petals to be more easily picked out. The 950 is smoother, which works better on the pollen vesicles. Both shots consistently wowed everyone I showed them to. As such, overall, this is a wash to me. 

Microsoft Lumia 950: 10 pts; Sony XZ2 Premium: 10 pts

Test 3: Daylight kids

Enlisting the very enthusiastic participation of my children, I decided to test one of the true staples of smartphone shots – the brightly lit picture of kids. Here is the whole scene, as presented by the Lumia 950:

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 and Sony XZ2 Premium, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

Looking at both shots in total, both are nice, but the 950 is better both from a distance and when pixel-peeping. The smoothing algorithm does not wipe away any detail, instead presenting a very life-like feel. The foliage, the concrete, the bus stop, and the kids all look naturalistic. The XZ2 Premium matches the 950 pretty well on detail, but the noise gives the shot a bit of a crunchy feel when zooming in. This one goes to the 950 for me. 

Microsoft Lumia 950: 9 pts; Sony XZ2 Premium: 7 pts

Test 4: Overcast city

This is a scene overlooking the Chicago River downtown. Here is the whole scene, as presented by the Lumia 950:

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 and Sony XZ2 Premium, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

The “noise vs. smoothing” narrative plays out again here to some degree. When viewed in total, both shots are pleasing. The 950 exhibits better dynamic range, while the XZ2P finds colours in the image that the 950 doesn’t (for instance, in some windows, on the rusty metal bits down by the water). But the noise in the XZ2P image on closer inspection is off-putting compared to the 950’s smoother output.

Microsoft Lumia 950: 9 pts; Sony XZ2 Premium: 7 pts

Test 5: Indoors with lamp light

All right, let’s stop messing around on the easy stuff. Moving indoors for the evening, I shot a picture of my cat lounging with me on the couch. The scene is lit only by one lamp, with an 800 Lumen light bulb and a dark shade. Here is the whole scene, as presented by the Lumia 950:

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 and Sony XZ2 Premium, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

This is a pretty strong argument for the XZ2 Premium’s second sensor. There is simply more detail in the XZ2P shot than in the 950’s. Whiskers, small hairs, the texture of my sock, it’s all just more present. The XZ2P’s shot is much more convincing when viewed in total. Upon pixel peeping, there is the noise characteristic of high ISO shooting (the XZ2P chose ISO 1250 using the auto settings, while the 950 chose 640). But the noise adds to the image here instead of detracting from it.

Microsoft Lumia 950: 6 pts; Sony XZ2 Premium: 8 pts

Test 6: Street lit alley at night

Let’s head outdoors at night to look at the alley behind my condominium. Here is the whole scene, as presented by the Lumia 950:

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 and Sony XZ2 Premium, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

While every shot thus far has been taken hand held, here I stabilized both phones on the rail of my balcony to give both cameras their best possible chance with this low-lit night shot. The 950 has an admirable level of detail but the dynamic range is rather flat. Shadows look grayish. The XZ2 Premium delivers a noisier shot, but the detail level is comparable and the shadows and highlights are much more convincing. The XZ2 Premium also does a better job with foliage and overall color. This is a tough call, and I think on their strengths both shots are about even.

Microsoft Lumia 950: 6 pts; Sony XZ2 Premium: 6 pts

Test 7: City scene at night

All right, no more pussy-footing around. Let’s really push these cameras. This is a plaza in downtown Chicago taken at night time. Here is the whole scene, as presented by the Lumia 950:

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 and Sony XZ2 Premium, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

This shot was taken hand held while standing. I took several snaps with each to ensure that hand shake was not a factor. This was the best shot the 950 could come up with, and frankly, the XZ2 Premium blows away the 950 here. The level of detail is just off the charts on the XZ2 Premium. The rivets in the statue are all clearly visible, as well as small reflections in the windows that the 950 fails to pick up. The XZ2P renders the puddles in the pavement convincingly, while they almost disappear in the 950 shot. The XZ2P even picks up the green granite blocks on the interior of the rear building. A resounding win for the XZ2 Premium.

Microsoft Lumia 950: 6 pts; Sony XZ2 Premium: 9 pts

Test 8: Chicago theatre at night

This is one of my favourite pictures to take downtown at night, and it presents a big challenge for a camera because of the dynamic range from the signs to the shadows. Here is the whole scene, as presented by the Lumia 950:

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 and Sony XZ2 Premium, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

Both cameras produced a pleasing shot overall. The 950’s output is again smoother, the XZ2P’s more noisy. There is a flatness to the dynamic range of the 950’s shot that doesn’t really reflect how bright the theater lights are in comparison to the shadowy surroundings. The XZ2P’s shot is more convincing in this. The XZ2 Premium, while more noisy, does clearly pick out more detail in the shadows of the theater’s terra cotta stone elements, as well as in separating the marquee light bulbs and the segments in the marquee surface. But the 950 renders the man and little girl more convincingly – not with more detail, but with less noise. I think, on the strength of the dynamic range and detail, the XZ2 Premium edges this one out.

Microsoft Lumia 950: 7 pts; Sony XZ2 Premium: 8 pts

Test 9: State street from under a bridge

Another very tough shot, given the range of elements and the fine detail needed to render this shot convincingly. Here is the whole scene, as presented by the Lumia 950:

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 and Sony XZ2 Premium, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

Again I braced each camera on a lamp post in order to give each one its best shot. The 950 excels here  with dynamic range. The white bus going away from me shows better delineation between the tail lights and the body of the bus. With that said, the XZ2 Premium picks out more detail in the pavement and the bridge structure. Obviously the XZ2 Premium shot is more noisy on close inspection. Both cameras settled on ISO 250 for this shot, so this is a good indicator of their different approaches. I do think the XZ2 Premium has a bit more detail overall, but the 950’s shot is just a bit more pleasing to my eye in total.

Microsoft Lumia 950: 8 pts; Sony XZ2 Premium: 7 pts

Test 10: Indoor still life in good light

Another of my favourite tests for detail, with a mix of produce, currency and knick knacks, taken hand held from above. Here is the whole scene, as presented by the Lumia 950:

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 and Sony XZ2 Premium, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

Both cameras really do a fine job. The 950 is warmer and renders the bills with a bit less noise. With that said, the XZ2P wrings a little bit more detail out of the pearlescent flakes on the car paint jobs, as well as the carrot. I think this is a tale of two software approaches, and both have their (big) strengths and (minor) weaknesses.

Microsoft Lumia 950: 9 pts; Sony XZ2 Premium: 9 pts

Verdict

Lumia 950: 79pts/100

Sony XZ2 Premium: 79pts/100

These phones cameras have different strengths. While both phones capture detailed images that would satisfy most users, upon close inspection the 950 does better in bright light and in distance shots, while the XZ2 Premium does better in low light and does equally well with brightly lit close-ups. This is not even to mention the XZ2 Premium’s video capabilities, which are exemplary.

At the end of the day, and after weighing their pluses and minuses, I find these phone cameras to be evenly matched. What it comes down to for me is ecosystem and hardware stability. The 950 simply isn’t usable for me in 2018. It lacks too many apps, the apps it does have are inferior and unsupported compared to their Android counterparts, and the hardware overheats and blows through battery inexplicably.  A 2018 phone with a modern chipset and a supported operating system suffers none of these drawbacks.

I want a camera button, expandable storage support, and something approximating live tiles. Android can provide the latter with most models, and Sony provides the former. The 950 featured a camera ahead of its time. But I’ve got to live in the now, not the “what could have been.”

Thanks, Matthew!

Confining comments to imaging here, the Lumia 950 struggles in low light when focussing is critical. Get the focus right and the 950 can still blow almost anything away, but I'll be the first to admit that its primitive PDAF can let users down when light is low, while the 'laser a/f' plus the far faster chipset in the Sony produce crystal clear focus almost instantly. Oh, for an up to date Lumia with faster supporting chipset and modern focussing technology.

In general, Matthew's choice to use full resolution on each device was interesting - real world users would be best using oversampled shots, e.g. on the Lumia 950 at 8MP, wherein low light shots get even purer. I'll go down these lines as and when I get my own hands on with the XZ2 Premium.

Your comments?

Reader Ross Hudson asked an interesting question in an email to AAWP a few weeks back. And one that bears investigating. Ross wonders "what would happen, in an imagined future, if I chose to continue using Windows 10 Mobile after support ended?" He's wondering "what would still work, and what wouldn't, and from a security point of view, what the risks might be?" Although the AAWP crystal ball is a bit cloudy these days, I'll have a crack at peering into the future for us all...

Ross specifically mentions "4 years" in the email, so looking to the end of the year 2021. Let's go with that, then. Windows 10 Mobile (W10M) is officially supported in terms of updates until the end of 2019 (depending on the branch in question, see my chart in the various news posts, e.g. here), so by the end of 2021, the OS would have been out of support by a full two years. Now, I'm absolutely sure that Windows 10 Mobile will continue to run, in terms of booting up and starting applications (after all, Windows Phone 8.1 still works pretty darn well even now), but as ever, the devil is in the detail. And there are quite a few details to expand on here, in the table below.

I'm not worried about security vulnerabilities, note. By the end of 2019, the 1709 'feature2' branch of Windows 10 Mobile will have had over 20 updates, all of them addressing core bugs or vulnerabilities, so the OS will be about as secure as it's ever going to get at that stage. I suppose it's possible that some new issue introduced into the Windows kernel for ARM devices over in the Desktop world might creep into Mobile, but that's unlikely. Even more unlikely is the thought of any malware authors attacking Windows 10 Mobile specifically, since the installed base is tiny (a few million now?) compared to Android and iOS on Mobile and Windows or Mac OS on the Desktop. Multiplex two 'unlikely's together and you essentially get zero: Windows 10 Mobile will boot, work and be secure, even in 2021. Trust me.

However, things aren't quite so bright as we look across the full feature set, plus there's a sting in the tail below the table that dominates everything else in this article in my opinion. But first, the applications and services:

In summary, most - but not all - of what you have today under Windows 10 Mobile will still work in 2021, but you shouldn't expect much in terms of updates or improvements.

______________

All of the above notwithstanding, however you or I choose to navigate the world of sometimes failing services, there's a bigger issue here that needs acknowledging and it's not software-related. Microsoft stopped manufacturing Lumia phones mid-2016 and so any Lumia 650 or 950 range handsets are already at least two years old as I write this. By 2021, the hardware will be five years old and falling apart, even with careful use. Yes, Alcatel sold some IDOL 4 Pro (IDOL 4S in the USA), but manufacture of these stopped in late 2017, so these too will be old, at least four years old. The most recent hardware is the Wileyfox Pro, low end but flexible, and this is very much still sold, though I expect this to be out of stock by the end of 2018.

In the Android or iOS worlds, there's a never ending supply of new hardware. If you can't re-buy (or get repaired) what you already have, in the event of failure, then you buy a newer model, there are always options. But the options run out with Windows 10 Mobile hardware. It's already almost impossible to get a Lumia repaired or to buy an official spare battery and it's only going to get harder. Take a Lumia 950 (say) to a phone repair shop in 2021 and they'll look at you as if it's from another planet.

In fairness, the Lumia 950 range (at least) are trivial to take apart, thanks to the back cover coming off, to loads of Torx screws, etc. So a DIY repair isn't out of the question - if you can find a source for any spare parts needed. But I think we're squarely in the area of 'hobbyist repairs' here, meaning that it'll be hard to trust a Lumia as a main phone in 2021 purely because it's hard to instantly replace or repair it if it gets dropped and broken.

The one glint of hope in all this has been that Microsoft would return to the mobile fold - literally - with a folding phablet, the legendary Andromeda project. This was scheduled for Autumn 2018 but put back until 2019 (at least) for reasons that even I had to agree with. But surely this will be out in 2019 in some form, making this article a little less painful. Surface Mobile, or whatever it becomes, will be expensive and a professional tool rather than a consumer smartphone, but at least for those with deep pockets it will be a way forward with Microsoft's OS, UWP applications, live tiles, and so on.

For many of us, of course, all of this is interesting but not showstopping, since I know many are experimenting with running an Android phone in parallel, usually with many of the same Microsoft applications and services. If a Lumia 950 or similar did take a tumble or suddenly pack up then it's best to be prepared and have something ready to take up some of the slack, I think?

It CAN be done. But that doesn't mean you should do it. In fact, it's a last resort if this is something you feel the need to do. What am I talking about? Reframing. Exemplified by the Lumia 1020, this was part of Nokia Pro Camera back in 2013-14, and the idea was that you could zoom in to take a photo, then - back at home - decide that you wish you hadn't zoomed in so far and that you wanted to 'reframe' the photo, either zoomed out or with a different zoom centre. It worked brilliantly. And, well, you can't do exactly the same on the Lumia 930 or 950. But you can get close... with caveats!

All about reframing

In case you're not familiar with the Lumia 1020 and 'reframing' check out these AAWP features (especially the first one):

• Review: Nokia Lumia 1020 camera - photo capture
• Details of Nokia Camera improvements and changes for the Lumia Cyan update
• How to: say 'no' to RAW and keep reframing quality
• The difference between 'cropping' and 'reframing' when there's no oversampling
• How to: reframe PureView photos under Lumia Denim (looking at reframing after 'Lumia Camera v5')
• Seagulls, the Lumia 1020 and 'zooming later'...

With Windows 10 Camera (essentially a close descendant of Lumia Camera v5) on the Lumia 950 and 950 XL, the question asked in the comments of an article here was whether something similar could be done in terms of reframing - and the answer is a heavily qualified yes. 

The context was deciding what resolution to set Camera to - the default is (I think) now 'JPEG 16MP' at 16:9, i.e. using the full sensor resolution, but cropped intelligently across the optical circle. But 16MP is very high for most normal uses and I always leave my 950/XL phones set to 'JPEG 8MP' at 16:9, so using the same sensor area, but using software oversampling to combine the data from adjacent pixels to create a 'purer' (hence 'PureView') final image, yet still at a very respectable resolution. You won't really notice the effects of PureView in bright light, but the moment you shoot in low light or at night, the benefits become apparent, with far reduced noise.

Think of the ways in which you use/display your Lumia-shot photos. I'll bet that NONE of them require anything more than 8MP, which equates to a 4K display/TV, the highest resolution display most of us will ever use. So there really is little point in capturing at 16MP most of the time. You're just wasting bytes and battery life.

However, there's often more detail available/wanted for a subject in a frame, which is why it's good to zoom in at capture time, perhaps on a person or particular subject. The Lumia 930/950 allow for 1.5x lossless zoom and everything thereafter is lossy, but you can go to 2x without the artefacts being too bad. Unfortunately, if you do this then you're normally burning your bridges in terms of salvaging unzoomed detail - perhaps you zoomed in too far or perhaps you've changed your mind as to what you wanted as the central subject in a frame?

This was what the Lumia 1020 did so well. You could zoom by (in this case) 2.5x losslessly, get a great shot, but decide a few minutes later that you wish you hadn't zoomed in quite this way and would like to try again. Yet the subject has gone - or you've moved on yourself. Which is where 'reframing' came in, since the Lumia 1020 kept the underlying 34MP JPG as well by default, and you could 'reframe'/zoom/smart-crop (whichever term you'd like to use) to your heart's content, as if you were capturing the scene all over again. 

No such luck on the Lumia 930 and 950 phones, but the extra information can be there if you really, really want it. I can't really recommend the procedure here to casual users because it's not trivial, but I wanted to document the possibility of 'reframing', in a sense, even on these phones. It comes at a cost of your own time in fiddling about and of your own storage space, up to 30MB per image.

The RAW connection

As you may have gathered by now, what I'm going to do involves the third resolution option in Windows 10 Camera, 'JPEG 8MP + DNG 16MP'. You see the very generation of the 8MP oversampled photo requires work on the underlying 16MP 'RAW' image for the sensor, so it makes sense to offer the user the chance to save this extra 'unprocessed' image as well. This is where the 20MB (or so) DNG file comes in. It's absolutely as the image comes off the sensor, so all that's been done to it is to have the RGB data converted to sensible colour pixel values using a Bayer filter. The idea of a RAW image is that it looks, well, 'raw', and it's expected that you do extra things to it, usually on a powerful desktop computer.

However - and I can't emphasise enough that this is all in the interests of geeky science, I doubt most people will ever need, or have the patience to do this - it also means that you can shoot in 8MP, complete with capture-time zoom, and yet still have the unzoomed full frame photo saved, ready to reframe from later on.

Some examples would help, of course. Here's a 2x zoomed shot of some statues on a fountain:

[You can grab the 8MP original here.]

Nice zoomed framing, but what if I decided, back at home, that I'd also like a shot of the whole fountain? Without going back to the park to shoot it all over again! Happily, the answer is to fall back to the full resolution DNG file, also on the phone and also backed up automatically to OneDrive:

[You can grab the 23MB 16MP DNG original here.]

You'll notice one thing immediately - the DNG (RAW) file looks very underexposed. This is all as intended, this is the raw image that comes from the sensor and when you get to see results they're normally after they've been through Windows 10 Camera's impressive enhancement algorithms. Making sure that the DNG file errs on the side of under-exposure means that no points in the image are 'blown out' and that you can do lots of boosting in an editing application on the desktop to create a masterpiece.

I'll come to a more detailed enhancement example next - let's move across to Cliveden's water garden and a nice pond shot. Again, this is zoomed in to around 2x:

[You can grab the 8MP original here.]

Again, let's say that I decided, back at home, that I'd like a different framing, without the fountain, but with the pagoda and the greenery off to the right of the original zoom? Again, the answer is to fall back to the full resolution DNG file, on the phone and also backed up automatically to OneDrive:

[You can grab the 23MB 16MP DNG original here.]

Again, it looks a bit gloomy, but the photo purist will leap on this unzoomed shot with glee - there's detail, there's resolution and - in the right editing application on the desktop - reframing and enhancement can be done. 

So let's go there now. I was using Mac OS's Preview application (comes in the box) to view and edit the DNG image, but many editing apps do the same under Windows 10 on the desktop. You'll find something you like. Here's my new crop from the DNG file above:

So the crop is done and I'm happy, but as it was done from the DNG file it's still utterly unprocessed and needs some TLC. On the Desktop, there's no Windows 10 Camera to do all this for me (though Photos has an 'enhance' feature), so I improvised with brightness, contrast, saturation, and sharpness in an editor and got:

Looking back, I think I overdid the saturation, but you get the idea. With a master DNG file to work with on the desktop, you can produce any reframe of the image and try out a hundred different adjustments, it's very much up to you and how you want the photo to turn out.

In real life, I never bother with any of this, though. As I said at the top, all this is effectively proof of concept and a long-requested acknowledgement of DNG capture and editing in the Lumia world.

How would I proceed in real life, then? All in 8MP mode, I'd take two photos. So I'd shoot one with the zoom and one without, giving me options later. Yes, the 'no zoom' version won't be at full resolution, but it's always good enough, and without having to keep fiddling in Settings to change resolution, let alone capturing DNG files (along with losing 25MB per photo) and having to edit them later on a different piece of hardware.

What about you? What's your standard shooting resolution and how often do you resort to dual (JPG plus DNG) capture? Comments welcome!

PS. On the Lumia 930, the '8MP' references are actually '5MP', but everything else is the same and still applies.

There's so much to like about Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile in terms of hardware options, interface, and ecosystem (in that W10M is part of a larger whole), that you might be surprised, in hindsight, that it failed so badly - in relative terms, compared to Android and iOS. There's no one single reason for this - rather many reasons, with cumulative effect, over the best part of a decade. Here's my - rather damning - list.

1. Too late, too slow

Microsoft and Symbian (along with Palm and Blackberry) were smartphone pioneers, of course. I still remember handling the first 'XDA' running Windows Mobile, and recognising that this was the future. That was in 2002, with 'large' touchscreen, a full five years before the iPhone was even announced.

So there was momentum on Microsoft's side, but Windows Mobile was very much a sideline and development was glacial. HTC and others did what they could to slap skins on top of it, but results were always a kludge. And by the time Microsoft felt it had to really compete, after three years of iPhone and two years of Android, Windows Mobile was so long in the tooth that it had to be completely gutted and rebuilt, for Windows Phone 7. The UI was superb, the underlying OS less so and it wasn't until Windows Phone 8.1, four years later in 2014, that 'Windows Phone' became a viable software product that manufacturers could really push and that reviewers could recommend.

2014. So it took seven years to really respond to Android and iOS in a mainstream way, seven years in which these other two mobile OS had been building up their maturity, scope, applications ecosystems, and in Android's case, signing up a hundred different licensees. While Microsoft had Nokia and... not that much else. Bringing us to...

2. Nokia was too dominant for too long

Although Nokia wasn't in the initial batch of Windows Phone licensees, when it did 'sign' with Microsoft (via ex-MS man Stephen Elop) it put its entire smartphone future into Windows, whereas HTC, LG and Dell (from the initial batch) were just playing with the OS by comparison. As a result, well over 90% of all Windows Phone sales were of Nokia handsets before too long and this only served to push other licensees away. The brand 'Lumia' became synonymous with the OS and even with the might of Nokia's branding there just wasn't enough momentum.

Yes, Apple does very well with its single-brand OS, but that has a 'fashion' association that's unique in recent tech history. Windows Phone required more companies getting involved in a serious way.

3. Nokia's focus on the low end

If Nokia had aimed for the high end, putting most of its efforts into its flagships, then I think Windows Phone would have been taken more seriously. As it was, we had the Lumia 1520 (terrific handset, ahead of its time, but unheard of in the High Street), the Lumia 1020 (widely marketed as a camera-centric device, and rightly so, but every spec other than the camera was decidedly 'old' and it's not surprising that it was one compromise too far for the mainstream), and the Lumia 930 (utterly flawed in terms of display - no always on facility, and chipset - Nokia really screwed up the thermal management).

But the mainstream smartphone world viewed Windows Phone and Lumias as low end, cheap devices, fuelled by a never ending sequence of launches of horribly small and underpowered Nokia handsets. The 4xx, 5xx and even 6xx series all struggled to run fluidly as the OS and applications grew and as people's expectations of how fast a smartphone should be increased over the years.

I realise that this might be a personal thing (i.e. for me), but if there had been a Lumia 1030, with larger display, a Snapdragon 8xx chipset, sub-second oversampling times, in 2014 to accompany the Lumia 930, then I think Nokia would have had some serious traction in the phone enthusiast community, with interest that might have trickled down more to the low end (the 'friends and family' effect).

4. Not in the USA

Yes, Microsoft is a US company, but Nokia is Finnish and the Nokia brand has never dominated in the USA in the way it has in the rest of the world. When Symbian OS had 60% world market share in 2008 or so, it was almost unknown in the USA. And when Nokia's Windows Phones were starting to pick up traction in Europe (20% or so at one stage in Finland and Italy), the brand and OS combination were a non-starter in America.

From 2000-2010, this was because Nokia largely refused to compromise its handsets and OS for the US carriers, which were very arrogant in pre-iPhone times, in terms of their demands; in the Windows Phone age, it was because everything got drowned out by the ever-pricier iPhone and the way the US phone contract model dominated, making Apple's handset barely more expensive to own and run than a plastic budget offering.

Why is the USA so important? Because it just is - to the chagrin of a UK writer like myself. The big money, the largest traffic flow, the big advertising budgets, are nearly all in USA-based online publications (The Verge, Engadget, Wired, Mashable, the list is endless). Making it somewhat unfortunate that the USA smartphone scene is so skewed towards what is a minority OS worldwide (Android has 80% market share now, but you wouldn't know it when walking around a US city - you'll mainly see iPhones).

5. Ignored by Google, Snapchat, etc.

One of the key gaps in Windows Phone's (and then Windows 10 Mobile's) ecosystem has been a lack of official Google applications. The problem is that the Chrome browser, YouTube and Google Maps, to name just the biggest three, are ubiquitous in 2018 in most homes. Yes, they're (respectively) a browser and information available via a browser, but the latter two in particular are much better as standalone clients. But because Google is behind Android, Windows Phone's (and Windows 10 Mobile's) biggest competitor (iOS stands apart in many ways), why should Google put any effort into coding up first party clients for its services for a rival OS, especially one that's very much behind it in real world use? Why help a challenger challenge more?

Why indeed. AAWP readers will know how good Edge often is, of course, and that there are excellent third party YouTube and Google Maps clients, but it's not quite the same for the man in the street, who expects first party clients in the on-device Store.

Google's motivation for ignoring Windows Phone may have been professional rivalry, but other popular services have ignored Microsoft's operating systems for different reasons. Snapchat is a good (but not the only) example - CEO Evan Spiegel has apparently often spoken about his hatred for Microsoft and Windows and, while I think 'hatred' sounds too strong to be an accurate quote, there's certainly some dismissal going on. So no first party Snapchat client and lawyers sent to the developers of any third party Snapchat clients (e.g. 6snap) for Windows phones.

6. Under-using the Metro UI

Around nine years ago, Microsoft came up with the Metro UI ideas for Windows Phone 7 - large, bold titles, side-swiping pane UI, bottom-of-screen controls, grouping information between applications into 'hubs' (especially the People hub), deep linking from one app to a specific position in another. The look and feel - and functionality - was different to Android and iOS and there was a genuine feeling that Windows Phone could take off, carving out a sizeable niche as the 'third partform'.

[Original caption from 2011:] Metro UI certainly offers a different approach to the usual grids of largely static icons, though the cheeky resizing of the phones to give one a psychological edge made us chuckle!

What actually happened was that development resources for Windows Phone 8.x were limited and, stung by disappointing sales market share, Microsoft ended up folding mobile into its new, all-encompassing Windows 10 ('Windows as a service') project. Which is pretty cool in its own right, with applications that run on the phone just as they do on tablets and laptops and with twice-yearly OS branch updates.... yet it's not as immediately ground breaking as the Metro UI on the earlier Windows Phone 7.x devices. Windows 10 Mobile is all about function and less about 'wow'.

Which is a shame - live tiles aside (some of which have stopped working now), all people see of W10M in 2018 is a phone interface that looks a little staid and which runs at half (or less) the speed of other phone UIs.

7. Under-developing Windows 10 Mobile's USPs

Leaving aside the 'staid' interface, W10M did have USPs, not least the aforementioned UI and UWP compatibility with many other form factors of Windows 10 computer, plus the Continuum system to utilise external TVs and monitors as larger native displays. But in the real world, no one really cared about the former, other than computer science geeks like me. And the latter (Continuum) was never developed to its fullest potential - heck it was hardly tweaked after the initial release.

Compare Continuum with Samsung's 2017 DeX system, which isn't as elegant (it's an add-on windowing system rather than being a literal extension of the main phone display) but it works much better, thanks to far faster chips powering the experience and to more development, including windows that can overlap, be minimised, and so on.

The fact that Microsoft got 'there' first two years before is, ironically, forgotten by most commentators now. But development of the Continuum system in Windows 10 Mobile got axed at the same time as development of the rest of the OS, which is a crying shame.

8. Sheer bad luck in terms of timing

Yes, Microsoft was late to the new wave of smartphones with its Windows Phone OS, but it has also been unlucky in terms of timing in the context of the industry.

For example, PWAs (Progressive Web Applications) are the latest thing and could in theory have been the saviour of Windows 10 Mobile, but development of the integral Edge browser was halted (with the 'feature2' branch) under Windows 10 Mobile with only partial PWA support. Which is why we get PWAs highlighted here on AAWP but with caveats like "of course, there's no support for notifications, or background operation". If Edge development for W10M had been carried on for just one more OS branch then PWAs would be dramatically more powerful.

Then there's the Internet of Things, cloud-connected home accessories that have really started taking off in the last couple of years, with the smartphone being the obvious personal computing device with which to control them. Yet not Windows 10 Mobile, since the OS had effectively been mothballed in terms of development just as the IoT scene was exploding. The 'app gap' for IoT under W10M is not just a 'gap', it's a yawning chasm.

9. No investment, no payments

A huge part of the modern smartphone experience is being able to pay for things with just your phone. Even if you don't do this every day, it's cool to think that it's possible and I'll bet you'll have experimented. If you have an iOS or Android smartphone that is. It turns out that implementing 'tap to pay' from a phone is a lot of work. Not just on the application itself - that's quite easy, but in working with multiple banks in multiple countries to hook your APIs together with the rest of the financial world. And with proven, reliable (and quick) operation. 

image credit

It's a lot of work and Microsoft simply didn't put enough effort into this area. Microsoft Wallet/Pay was rolled out to some degree in the USA as a trial, but without a succeeding mobile platform of its own the necessary investment by Microsoft to go further afield didn't really make sense. iPhones use Apple Pay, Android phones use Google Pay, and so on. Yes, Samsung has its own version too, but then Samsung has enormous reach and resources.

10. The big shutdown

Microsoft's decision to buy Nokia's Devices division could have worked if it hadn't then shortly started shutting down everything it had just bought, culminating it stopping making new phones at all mid 2016. In the main, the Ballmer/Nadella change at the top was to blame, with very different visions of what Microsoft should be doing. And while I sympathise with the idea that the 'old' Nokia factory/support/sales infrastructure had to go, that doesn't mean that first party hardware had to go - there are many different ways Lumia production could have continued. Look at the Surface hardware, for example.

Plus designing a phone, getting it made and distributed is far easier these days than it was a decade ago. Look at the multitude of willing Chinese OEMs, heck look at Wileyfox, which 'made' a brand new Windows 10 Mobile smartphone in 2018 and which is still being updated in line with the top Lumias.

_______

Ten reasons then - and I dare say that you can add more in the comments below. But ten is enough - take them cumulatively (over eight years, admittedly) and it's easy to see why Windows Phone and then Windows 10 Mobile ended up being a technological backwater rather than a mainstream contender. 

Could things have been different? I think so. More belief by Microsoft in its own mobile OS, better management at Nokia, more Windows Phone licensees, all resulting in more engagement with the developer world, more applications, and so on.

I'd normally finish with an aphorism like 'hindsight is a wonderful thing', but in this case we at AAWP (and many other writers and broadcasters) called most of the mistakes above as they were happening, yet Nokia's and then Microsoft's management seemed set on a dithering sequence of bad decisions, culminating in the virtual disappearance of Windows on phones.

Conventional wisdom for the Lumia 950 and 950 XL is that when snapping something you shouldn't go too far down the route of using 'zoom' in the UI, since the PureView lossless zoom only goes so far. But how does this work out in practice and where exactly in the UI should you stop zooming and 'crop later'? Here's a clue: it's sooner than you might think!

In order to investigate, I set a Lumia 950 XL up at the recommended 8MP resolution and snapped a scene across the garden, at around 3 metres. My subject was, deliberately, a magazine with some large headline text. As humans, we're very sensitive to text, especially when things go wrong. It's easier to see this happening with a text headline than with, for example, a flower or the tower in the magazine cover.

Here's the full (simple) scene I was snapping for this test. It's a kind of imaging 'benchmark' (get it?!):

Now, simple maths tells us that a PureView zoom of 1.37x is the 'lossless' limit for the 950 XL. At that exact zoom factor, the 8MP output is effectively 1:1 from the underlying 20MP sensor. Sadly, Nokia and then Microsoft (I'm sharing the blame here) refused to give us an indent or any clue in the UI as to when this limit is reached. Instead, there's a zoom control that appears in the UI when you start to zoom in (usually by swiping upwards) and you just get + and - controls, along with a sliding indicator at the bottom of the viewfinder:

Assuming the zoom indicator is marked invisibly at 10% intervals, I've tried to get close with a series of zooms of the test (bench) scene:

The visuals bear out my maths - though the 'break even' point is rather scary in terms of the UI. You can see optimum zoom perhaps in the very first zoomed crop, i.e. just 10% along the zoom bar, and everything following that is 'made up' detail and increasingly fuzzy.

This is something I've never covered before on AAWP, but my guesstimate 10% intervals along the zoom 'line' correspond to zoom factors of:

Now, refer back to my earlier maths and you can see that by the time the zoom slider has even got to 20% we've gone way beyond the PureView limit for this device. (As a reference, the original Lumia 1020 went up to 2.5x for lossless zoom.) In fact, we veer into lossy territory when we get much past 10% on the UI slider, which surprised me - I'd always gone for about 30%, to 'play safe', when in fact this was already seriously lossy. And my camera comparisons which involved the Lumia 950 XL and zooming usually went for 2x zoom, matching the hardware telephoto of competing devices. The table shows just how far this goes beyond what is really 'safe' on the Lumia 950 range.

It's hard to see pixel level details even with crops above, so I've gone the extra mile in zooming into the crops above too, reproducing the same detail (the letters 'ver' in the title) at each zoom factor:

 (1x)
 (10%)
 (20%)
 (30%)
 (40%)
 (50%)
 (60%) 
 (70%)
 (80%)
 (90%)
 (100%)

I realise that your eyes are probably completely squiffy staring at pixels by now, but I take two conclusions from all the crops above:

1. There's some extra detail at 20%, but not a significant amount. In practice you gain nothing by going much beyond 10% along the provided zoom indicator. But if your fingers should slip and end up at around the 20% mark then it's not the end of the world.
    
2. The much criticised Nokia/Microsoft digital zoom algorithm isn't as terrible as I previously thought, i.e. the text isn't really ugly as you zoom in further. From 20% onwards you do start to get a white halo around letters, but the pixellated title remains pretty smooth as you zoom 'in'.

Comments welcome if you've followed along with this super-geeky feature so far! Maybe you like shooting everything at full (16MP/20MP) resolution and just never zooming at capture time? For the 950 range (unlike on the 1020 before it) perhaps the idea of capturing everything and then cropping later is just simpler and less prone to artefacts?

This is the latest (September 2018) update to the AAWP directory of curated UWP applications, those with native Windows 10 UI and which support different orientations, Continuum and even use on laptop or tablet. I've added about a dozen new UWP apps and PWAs - please do keep me posted if you spot any which have been withdrawn though.

With regards to the 'curated' bit in the title, all of these titles have been personally checked or recommended by a trusted reader of the site. See below the table for some helpful notes and background.

NB. I've included (and marked as such) the new Store-packaged PWAs (Progressive Web Applications). While not UWP, they're in the same category in my mind, working with the Edge engine on Windows 10. Note that I haven't (on the whole) included PWAs that haven't been professionally packaged, i.e. which you have to access explicitly through the Edge browser, living with the URL bar. But don't let that stop you seeking these out too, via our Flow stories and via portals like Appscope.

Directory updated 5th September 2018

General AppRaisin  Box  CAS Preview Cloud Drive! Connected Devices  Cortrigga DailyPic Digicam Remote.test Download App Later Dropbox Explorer  Dynamic Theme edgeTile FieldWire Files&Folders Pro GDrive.NET Hand Off Hopic Explorer Instabullet MEGA Privacy PAWA PDF Conversion Tool PDF Reader QuickProfile Roamit Share.it Share me Files Torrex Web Tiles	Productivity/Office Action Note Choshim Diary Chronos Calendar Clipboard Manip Count-It CV Sampler Denna Diarium FileTag 2 Foxit MobilePDF Keep To Do Markdown Editor - Write Beautifully Microsoft To-Do Nimbus Note NotepadX  Notiny OneCalendar  One Task Paperly Power Planner PPT Sampler Project Studio Revent ScribePad ShapeResume SharePoint Slack  SMS to Excel Spreadsheet Conversion Tool Textnotes Tiles for Outlook Todoist Track Goals WorkingHours WP Message Backup
Commercial Travel/Movie Booking AirBnB PWA Expedia  London Travel  SkyScanner PWA Travel Currencies Trivago PWA	Communications and IM Facebook Messenger FlowMail HipTalk Universal  Loadkit Download Manager  Read My Mail Skype TeamViewer  TeamViewer QuickSupport Telegram PWA Unigram X (Telegram) Viber  Video Optimizer for Whatsapp
News and Web AAWP Universal Ark View Coc Coc Browser Dailyhunt Daily Mail Online  FeedLab  Flipboard PWA GHub U Hypersonic iNi Reader Latermark for Pocket mAloud Monument Browser MSPoweruser Newsflow RSS Live Tiles Shiye Browser Short.y Vivid Windows Central	Reference/Language Astronomy Hub Binocleo CodeHub Collection Keeper Diccionario Dicionário Português Earthquake Watch Elements - The Periodic Table  Flights Radar FlowDict  GeoQuiz Hear it first! ISS Finder Kiwix JS Offline Wikimedia reader Mobile Studio U NASA Picture Galleries onePedia Perfect Dictionary Planetarium 3D Small Media Manager Reloaded Songbook Pro Speaking Recipes Star Walk 2 Terrae Motus Translatium Translator UrbanDict WikiMed Yandex.Maps
Shopping/Banking AliExpress Shopping BitPay Boots UK PWA CryptoChart Flipkart i-bank pass Loyca My USPS (USA) My Giffgaff NatWest  Packages Tracker Royal Bank of Scotland  Tangerine Bank (Canada) USAA	Social 6tum - Tumblr client Aeries  AIR for Facebook Baconit Disqus  Facebook Friendica Harvester Messenger  HipTalk Instagram  LightSocialPro MALClient Meme Generator Suite Ouga (Tumblr) Perfect 9GAG  Perfect Flicker Pinstar Piny Readit ReddPlanet SlimSocial for Facebook Tik Tok TopicStack Tumblast Tweet It!  Tweetium  Twitter  Ouga - Tumblr
Personal Navigation/Travel AroundMe Backroads Cartograph Maps Pro Findery PWA Flights Info Flights Radar GeoMeterPro 10  London Travel  North Pocket Map (Norway) SG iBus (Singapore) Sygic GPS Navigation Traffic Uber (PWA) Volvo On Call Wikivoyage by Kiwix WinGo Maps Yandex.Maps Zenit	Settings/Internals/Utilities 8 Zip Lite / 8 Zip  AIDA64 Battery Bar Graph CodeHub DataCounter DOSBox Interop Tools IP Network Scanner PRO Kirik Battery LAN drive Landiskape PhoNetInfo  Remote Desktop Specs Analysis Speedtest Wifi Analyzer Wifi Analyzer Tool
Sports/Exercise/Health Diabetes Analyzer fitbit  Fitbit Coach Fitness Foundation Garmin Connect GoodDoc  Insulin Buddy PWA Mr Pillster Onefootball  Pillbox ScoreBall SofaScore LiveScore True Fitness	Privacy/Secrecy/Security 9Zen Universal Locker Enpass  File Hasher Hacked? KeePassReader KeePassWin Master Password Microsoft Authenticator mSecure OneLocker  OTP Manager Passkey Password Hello Personal Files  Secret Mind
Weather-related Weather Notify Yandex.Weather	Time related  Jack of time My Big Days Realarm Special Day Countdown Stopwatch Yokto Timer ++ WorkingHours World Time Clock
Calculators and (numeric) Converters Calculator2 Travel Currency	Finance (tracking/analysis) EtherWallet Money Lover - Money Manager Money Tracker Pro UMeter (Uber)
Camera replacements/aids 1Shot camera  Office Lens  Photo Scan  ProShot  QR Scanner  Scanner One	Music/Speech recording/tuning Airyware Tuner  Ax-Exp DIY Piano Chordle FL Studio Mobile 3  MeeDJ Music Stack Piano10 Sound Recorder Hi-Res Talkinator Auvid Tuner
Music playback/streaming /downloading/FM 8 Soundcloud ABC Radio FTW! ACG Player Audiocloud  Deezer Duplex FM Radio Media Player for gMusic Pro Media Tag Moodflow Musbox Napster Neutron Music Player Next-Player Playcast Songify Spoticast Tidal Unofficial VLC YouTunes!	Imaging/Graphics 10Lapse Perfect 9GAG   Afterlight Auto Face Swap Colory DrawNotes  Fliky Fresh Paint  Fused Double Exposure  GeoPhoto GDrive.NET  Image Raw Image Resizer  Imgur4Windows Inkodo Instagram  Likegram for Instagram Monocle Giraffe (Imgur) Perfect 500px Perfect Flicker Photo Box Pro Photo Scan Photo Shader  Photo Stacking Pic Collage ProGet QRafty QR Code Light Scanner Resize Image Screenshot Join SketchMaster Spirality SpotBright  Tapershop Vector Conversion Tool Wallpaper Studio
Podcast related/Audio-book Audible  Audiobooked  BookListener Booxio BringCast  Grover Pro  MyPodcasts  Podcasted Podcasts (Beta) Podcast+ Pro  Podcast Lounge	Media (Video) and Entertainment Awesome Tube Cast To Crunchyroll Dailymotion Duplex Movier myTube!  Perfect Tube  Playcast Scorpio Player Small Media Manager Reloaded TorrentPlatinum Trakter Tubecast PRO  TubeGet TVPlayer Unstream (Twitch) Video 360 Vime - Ultimate Vimeo Client VLC  zTwitch
Reading/PDFs/comics Comic Show Cover - Comic Reader Foxit Mobile PDF  Freda KNFB Reader Libby by Overdrive LightReader PDF Assistant Pro PDF Reader PDF Viewer Plus Perfect PDF Reader	Video editing/sharing Animotica - Video Editor Auvid Tuner

This is a bookmarkable page of the top 500 or so applications that should be a useful aide-memoire after a hard reset if rebuilding a Windows 10 phone from scratch or, perhaps more appropriately, a great place for a new Windows 10 Mobile user to start.

Some notes:

• FAQ: I don't mark new entries as 'new' in any way because there's no point - you already know what they are as we've featured them on the front pages of AAWP over the last month. These reference pages are just that - for reference. For newcomers and for people looking up recommendations.
• Thanks to the AAWP community for suggestions so far (e.g. in comments below and on previous pages), this is a crowd-sourced project!
• Not included (obviously) are games. They're here (for both 8.1 and W10M). Also not included are applications which come with every phone, such as the core Windows and Lumia apps.
• Yes, I know that a couple of entries are in two categories. Just trying to be helpful!
• Implemented as a table, I've kept the width right down, now with just two columns, in order to be phone-friendly. In other words, you can view this article on your phone and, depending on the link and the item, dive right into an app, its page and then download it. In theory!
• If you're after the original WP 8.1 app directories, they're here: Photo/Media/Reading and General.

_____________________________________

One extra that came along for the ride with Windows 10 Camera (née Lumia Camera) was digital stabilisation for video capture, perhaps because this was something enabled by the faster and more capable chipsets as 2015 rolled into 2016. But it may be that you've resisted turning 'digital stabilisation' on in Camera's Settings? I often wonder whether to do so myself and then thought that a comparison video would be interesting for others too. Long story short, it's definitely worth turning on for 1080p footage and below.

You'll remember that smartphones like the Lumia 930/1520 and of course the Lumia 950 and 950 XL all have OIS, i.e. their lenses are optically stabilised, meaning that small hand wobbles get compensated for and you can shoot more stable footage. And OIS generally works very well, though when you start factoring in significant movement it's clear that there are limits - physical limits because of the small size of the OIS mechanism.

Which is why Microsoft added 'Digital stabilisation' as an option (to 1080p footage and below), effectively using the processing power of the phone's GPU to analyse captured video frame by frame and 'lock on' to central subject detail, keeping it in the same position (within reason) by juggling the entire frame around it. Obviously if you pan the shot around then the software detects the trend early and adjusts its algorithms.

In practice, this works rather well. Some smartphone companies in the Android world have even gone down the route of only having digital stabilisation and foregoing OIS. My worry here for the Lumia 950 has always been that the OIS and digital stabilisation would 'fight' to some degree and the result would be a mess. Instead, the OIS tends to work on a different timescale and the two systems complement each other rather than conflict.

I did a short mention of all this and a test here, when Windows 10 Mobile hadn't yet been formally released, three years ago on the old Lumia 930, but I wanted to be a little more extreme here and also use the much newer and more capable Lumia 950 chipsets.

As usual for embedded video content, maximise the window and 'up' the quality, or click through to YouTube (click on the word itself) - depending on which device and browser you're using to view this page:

There's no commentary in the video, so here are a few notes:

1. Digital stabilisation + OIS is almost always better - in the first (walking) test, you can see some processing artefacts in the frame, but the overall improvement in smoothness is worth it.
2. OIS takes out the worst of hand wobble, but the result still looks phone-shot. While adding digital stabilisation as well takes the footage closer to being 'cinematic'. My test cases above were extreme, especially the driving video, bear in mind that real world video of places and people will be a lot smoother and more watchable.
3. The driving video looks unwatchable in both cases, but look at the lorry in front of me - as central detail it's stable in the frame on the left and is wobbling like crazy with just OIS.

Bear in mind that the OIS used in the Lumia 950 range isn't bad - in fact, it's arguably as good as, or better than, anything else in the  phone market, even today. But the duality of OIS plus digital stabilisation really is better and I'm struggling to think of any reason to turn it off.

Making it slightly puzzling why the default setting here is 'off'. At least on my Lumia 950 devices - maybe you know of handsets that have this defaulting to 'on' out of the box?

It's a fair cop, Windows 10 Mobile is still alive, so maybe it's too early to do a little grave-jumping. And devices like the Lumia 950 are still eminently useable and even enjoyable. But at the same time, there have been some stinkers in Windows phone history - and I've never compiled an list... until now. Whatever you might think of the development of the OS itself, there's little to excuse some of the hardware below.

Before launching into the worst, I do want to provide some balance with, according to my own article from a couple of years ago, the Top 5 Best Windows phones:

1. Lumia 1520
2. Lumia 1020
3. Lumia 640 XL
4. Lumia 950 XL
5. HP Elite x3

All of which have some redeeming features, though the number five pick from late 2016 is interesting because... it's also at number ten in my late 2018 Top 10 Worst phones!! Here we go then, in reverse order, down to the worst:

10. HP Elite x3

In December 2016, the Elite x3 and its Lapdock system were promising but awaiting serious updates - and price drops. As I said two years ago:

But it's hard to fall in love with the X3. At least not yet - the Lap Dock may change a few people's minds, but only if they're well-heeled - the Lap Dock is crazy expensive. Add in a camera which is decent but not as good as it should be(cough - resolution) and stereo speakers which significantly under perform and you have a flagship which simply has to be in the top 5 but doesn't deserve to be any higher than this.

The problem is that the updates never came and the phone and its Lapdock remained buggy and problematic. Plus the price drops took so long to arrive that everyone had lost interest. HP has a history of pitching 'business' IT gear way too high for consumers and so the x3 system had no chance away from business bulk buys.

At £499 for the phone and £249 for the Lapdock there could have been a serious amount of interest from geeks around the world, but at the original joint price of way over £1000 there was no chance. 

9. Lumia 928

A USA variant on the Lumia 925, there was nothing intrinsically terrible about the 928, but there was a huge sense of disappointment because of the inclusion of one tech spec. The 920 had Xenon flash, previously the prerogative of the camera flagship. So was this the phone that combined outstanding imaging with solid styling and fast performance?

Not really. It's a little unfair that the 928 should be in this list since neither Ewan nor I used it in its home environment (in the USA, with their frequencies), but I did test the camera out and the Xenon flash was just about the weediest I'd ever used - it was hardly worth including. So why put it in in the first place?

8. Lumia 930

Heresy! I hear you cry - the Lumia 930 is a classic device. Indeed it is, I love mine dearly and it still feels like a Rolls Royce in the hand. But it's a heavily flawed classic, thanks to terrible heat management - run a game or shoot video on it and you could fry and egg on its plastic back. The Snapdragon 800 was just not integrated properly into the Lumia 930.

Add in a second flaw, of sorts, in that Nokia's designers massively underestimated how popular always on displays were on Windows phones and opted to save a few pennies and not integrate 'display memory'. As a result, the Lumia 930 display is forever black and it's the odd one out among all its Lumia peers. Hugely disappointing, since the 930 could have been so good...

7. Lumia 430, 435

The 430 and 435 weren't terrible per se - after all, the earlier Lumia 530 had already plumbed rock bottom (see below), but they were cheap, small and plastic in a phone world that was growing exponentially and in the other direction. This was mid-2015 and the phone world was seeing rising prices and specifications and the increasing use of metal. Yes, there will always be a need for ultra-budget phones, but by this point we had Android handsets that matched the Lumia 430-series in price and yet with far greater application and service compatibility.

The Lumia 430 series was actually rather good for the price (£50 or so) and very pocketable, but they arrived at least a year too late in the market. The world had moved on.

6. Lumia 530

Ah yes, the fatal weakness of Nokia exemplified in one simple handset. Anyone remember the Nokia N97 back in Symbian days? It didn't ship with enough system storage, resulting in insane work to try and keep it running after updates. Ditto here, with only 4GB user memory - and that had to be divided up for the OS and working files too! In practice, a user would typically face a non-working phone within a few weeks of of getting it and OS updates were often prevented for lack of working space. Yes, there was a microSD slot, but trying to juggle system files, applications and working space through it was a right pain.

Quite simply a specification disaster. This deserves to be forgotten, except as a lesson in what not to do. Happily, Nokia did learn and future budget phones shipped with 8GB internal user memory (plus microSD).

5. HTC 8S

At the risk of repeating myself, as for the Lumia 530, the issue here was lack of user memory. Again, 4GB for everything. OK, you can add a microSD card as usual, but it's not the same. And it was rather telling that HTC shipped an application explicitly called 'Make More Space'. You know, HTC, just putting more flash storage in in the first place would have been 100x better...

Sadly, the 8S was flawed in all other areas - you couldn't swap the battery, despite the end cap coming off, the screen was nasty, the camera ultra-cheap.... I could go on...!

4. HTC 7 Mozart

This is the second time in this 'Top' 10 that Xenon rears its head in a bad way. The 7 Mozart was one of the first flush of Windows Phone 7.5 devices and I was overjoyed to see a Xenon flash included. Windows Phone and great imaging, I was so excited...

...and then I tried it. HTC had put zero effort into the camera on the 7 Mozart, it took terrible photos. In fact, I don't believe we ever reviewed the phone because it was un-reviewable. I was gutted, absolutely gutted, preferring instead the QWERTY version that I highlighted in my original Top 5...

3. Samsung Omnia M

"Omnia what?" I hear you proclaim - this was a quickly launched and soon forgotten entry from Samsung in the latter days of Windows Phone 7.5 and despite an OK screen and hardware generally (including camera), it - like several in this list - was crippled by only 4GB of user memory - and no microSD. As per the title of this article, what WAS Samsung thinking? The phone was effectively thus un-upgradeable and shortly unusable, almost out of the box. Making things worse, RAM was also skimped on, with only 384MB (rather than the more common 512MB at the time), meaning that even Windows Phone 7.5 struggled.

Add in the sad timing, to arrive just before the launch of Windows Phone 8.0 and with no upgrade path, and the Omnia M died an immediate and ignominious death.

2. Yezz Billy range

These were an oddball range of three handsets back in the days of the Lumia 735 (so 2014) and the hardware was surprisingly good (though all a little 'reference design'-ish), but the utter failure of the range in my eyes has to do with an issue I've never seen to the same degree since - the software from Microsoft, i.e. 'Windows Phone 8.1', was simply installed and not checked or tweaked or customised in any way. In ANY way, meaning that tiny things like font sizes and UI layout were left utterly on defaults and not checked on every phone. 

What I think happened was that someone at Yezz loaded the OS, as-is, on the smallest 4"-screened phone, looked at the layout for 10 seconds and said 'that'll do, ship it'. And then assumed that the exact same binaries and configuration would be appropriate for the larger screened phones. Resulting in comic mismatches in layout and unusable application UIs in many cases.

It all comes down to chronic lack of Tender Loving Care. Another sign? You couldn't watch videos on these things. Playback was limited to 3 or 4 frames per second. You'd have thought that someone at Yezz would have been awake enough at the wheel to test this?

1. Lumia 900

Although not technically the worst phone in this list, the Lumia 900 holds a special place of mistrust in many AAWP reader's memories.  Essentially, everything was wrong with this handset.

This was released in the USA under AT&T, with Windows Phone 7.5 only a few months before 8.1 was launched and with no upgrade path (technical reasons prevented 7.x devices being moved to 8.x). For a low end budget device this might not have mattered, but the Lumia 900 was marketed heavily and those who bought into the device felt (understandably) very aggrieved a few months later.

Adding insult to injury, the Lumia 900 was only shipped with 16GB of user storage and no microSD, meaning that trying to use the phone in daily life inevitably ended up filling it with photos, videos, and so on. 

But it's the misleading marketing and timing of the launch that rankles the most - and that it was done as a 'flagship' (certainly in the USA) gets it the no. 1 spot here as a high profile misstep.

____________

Your comments welcome though - what stinkers have I missed?

The Lumia 950 and 950 XL were announced almost exactly three years ago, in October 2015. Not exactly to huge fanfare, and they needed six months of Windows 10 Mobile updates for the phones to really fly. And, for a short period, they were competitive with the best of iPhone and Android, but the pace of hardware development on the latter has been astonishing and unrelenting. Even imaging, the Lumia 950/XL's star feature, has now been overtaken. Where will it all end?

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that there's little point in still doing my traditional blow-by-blow comparisons of the last Lumias and even the Alcatal IDOL 4 Pro versus the new 2018 iPhones, Pixels, and so on. We've got to the point now where the core components in the Windows phones are now just out of date.

And beyond saving with outstanding imaging. True, I'm going to persist with camera shootouts, since the Lumia 950 XL can still hold its own on the whole, it's still there or thereabouts. So, for example, next week will see a shootout between the 950 Xl and iPhone Xs Max. But general specification and feature comparisons are starting to feel a bit desperate. Instead, I'd like to point to some of the recent and upcoming smartphone alternatives from the wider phone world and highlight their redeeming features.

______________________

So, from the perspective of a typical owner of a Lumia 950 XL, here are other options from the Android and iOS worlds, from the last few months and looking ahead until Christmas, and in rough chronological order:

Nokia 7 Plus (available from Spring 2018) 

Price in the UK at end-Sept 2018: £300 inc VAT

A great option if you're on a budget, with good screen, speaker and camera - nothing's class leading, but it's definitely the pick of the sub £300 phones.

Samsung Galaxy S9+ (available from Spring 2018)

Price in the UK at end-Sept 2018: from £670 inc VAT (for dual SIM 64GB, more expensive for single SIM, bizarrely)

A terrific all rounder, super camera with telephoto option, insanely good display, very fast, and surprisingly great stereo speakers. The solid option if you're not sure what to jump to, and now available second hand at £500 or so?

OnePlus 6   (available from May 2018)

Price in the UK at end-Sept 2018: from £470 inc VAT

With very 'stock' Android, this is the vanilla Android flagship to get if you're really not sure what else to buy and don't want to pay top whack.

Samsung Galaxy Note 9 (available from August 2018)

Price in the UK at end-Sept 2018: from £870 inc VAT

Top of the heap in the Android world right now, with super capacitor S-Pen, loads of stylus features in addition to all the benefits of the S9+ above - what's not to love?

Apple iPhone Xs Max (available 21 Sept 2018)

Price in the UK at end-Sept 2018: from £1100 inc VAT

The biggest iPhone ever and now competitive with the best of Android, plus it matches the Lumia 950 XL form factor, for the AAWP audience. Top rated camera and processors.

Apple iPhone Xr (available some time in October 2018)

Price in the UK at end-Sept 2018: from £750 inc VAT

A compromise (for Apple, rare) and 'affordable', though it'll still cost as much as most of the Android handsets here.

Google Pixel 3 XL  (available some time on 9th Oct 2018)

Price in the UK: estimated £900 inc VAT

Much has been leaked of this already - it certainly won't get close to the Galaxy Note 9, but the Pixels remain the definitive Android reference devices, with earliest updates, and this is important to many.

LG V40 ThinQ  (available shortly after 3rd October 2018)

Price in the UK: estimated £700 inc VAT

The LG phones have a distinctive Android skin, but also many USPs, including best-in-class headphone audio and true wide angle cameras.

Huawei Mate 20 Pro  (available 16 Oct 2018)

Price in the UK: estimated £700 inc VAT

Huawei's flagships are usually highly specced, but they've cut quite a few basics in the last year or so. Expect a high end camera system and 'marmite' EMUI skin on Android.

That most of the specifications above are fairly similar and can be condensed so easily shows how commoditised smartphones have become. For most purposes it now doesn't matter much which Android or iOS phone you have, beyond a certain budget threshold, you'll still be able to do the same things. So it then comes down to size, audio and camera smarts, durability, and so on.

Of all the handsets above, the Galaxy Note 9 leaps out as to one most likely to appeal to readers here, with that huge unique selling point of the stylus. Given the touch-centric nature of Surface devices, with Surface Pen too, and even the Surface Dial, a phone like the Note 9 would seem the perfect fit. It's also the phone that does - literally - everything, ticking every specification box.

Comments welcome though. You'll probably be coming from a Lumia 950/XL or perhaps an Alcatel IDOL 4 Pro - which of the options above appeals most? One thing's for certain - you're spoiled for choice right now. I'm a phone reviewer and, for the first time in a decade, I'm genuinely finding it hard to keep up!

PS. It's worth noting that - against all the odds, the Windows 10 Mobile-powered Wileyfox Pro is still available, having come back into stock, and is only £80. So low end, but let it not be said that the age of new W10M sales is totally over!

Having been highlighting PWAs here on AAWP for months, it's becoming clear that a little guidance might be needed in terms of the 'best' way to run them. In fact, it turns out that 'best' is subjective and depends on how you like to run your Windows 10 phone - but hopefully the advice and examples below will clarify the situation.

Taking a step back, I've written about Progressive Web Applications (PWAs) before here, explaining what they are and why they're important. So they run (reasonably well, even if they don't take advantage of all functions possible in the PWA spec) in the Edge browser that's on every phone. But there are various ways to get to them, here arranged from least to most sophisticated(!):

Although the table sets out the options clearly, some examples and screenshots may be helpful too. So here goes, I'm in the terrific Tracks timer utility in Edge on my Lumia 950:

Here, Tap the '...' menu and there's 'Add to favourites', the most basic way of 'remembering' a PWA. Check the title, hit 'Save' (here covered by the virtual keyboard) and you're done.

Next time you need the PWA, it's there in Favourites (at the bottom of the list here).

Next up is pinning this page/URL to your Start screen (also, as per the '...' menu shown at the top). However, there's a sting in the tail, as every time you tap the resulting tile, a new Edge instance/tab is spawned, so if you're not careful then you can end up with multiple tabs all running the exact same PWA. Which isn't a showstopper - they should still work, but might get very confusing, plus it's not efficient on resources. And if you're like me, you only check your browser tab overview once in a blue moon, so you'll probably miss the duplication.

Third up, it's using PAWA to package up the URL in a controlled fashion. This involves copying and pasting the PWA's URL from the Edge address bar (below, left) and finding (e.g. online, below, right) a suitable graphic (Bing Images is your friend) and 'saving' it to a suitable location on your phone (e.g. Saved pictures')...

Then switch back to PAWA's Tile Creator, pasting in the URL into the PAWA form and picking the image as needed. Yes, it takes a minute or two to do, but it's a one-time operation and you end up with a nice Start screen tile that runs a special instance of PAWA itself. 

Above right, at the bottom, are the favicon-based pinned PWA and the PAWA-pinned tiles.

PAWA is designed so that you can have tiles for it for multiple sites and PWAs, without them stepping on each other. As a result, each tap on a PAWA tile involves a new instance of the app and if you're not careful then you can end up with multiple PAWA 'apps' running, in a similar way to having multiple PWA tabs running in Edge, above. However, these are more obvious to spot, since you'll be diving into the carousel many times a day, typically. And you can just tap on the PAWA instance you need from the carousel - quick and easy.

Obviously, if a developer or service has bothered to package their PWA officially in the Store (or if Microsoft has done it for them) then this is even better, since there will be no chance of multiple instances and you can treat it utterly as if a native application (in fact, the only real difference is that PWAs under Windows 10 Mobile don't have access to notifications - sadly). Twitter and Uber are good examples here, but I'm sure there are more.

Has this helped you? And what do you think of the flow (pun intended) of PWA applications highlighted on these pages in the last three months?

With Apple picking up several of the ex-Nokia PureView team, it was clear that the iPhone's imaging was only going to get better and better, and the new XS Max is terrific. Thanks to the stablised 12MP telephoto lens, it can pick up detail at distance even beyond the mighty Lumia 950 (from 2015). But what about artefacts and performance under challenging light?

As I discovered when testing the classic Lumia 950 XL against the iPhone X last year, the addition of a decent 2x telephoto lens does swing camera comparison rather a lot, especially if - like me - you're interested in resolving distant detail. This year's iPhone XS range claims a larger sensor and better algorithms, this time using more concurrent exposures to do 'Smart HDR' with. Given that a lot of the iPhone imaging improvements in recent years have been down to the PureView expertise of Ari Partinen and his team, I'm expecting a lot from the new iPhone.

In terms of methodology, I wanted to stretch the phone cameras, so I'm shooting into light and then in the dark. Every phone camera can nail a sunny day with the sun behind the shooter, so I was mixing things up. The Lumia 950 XL can shoot in oversampled 8MP mode and in 16MP as-is mode, both at 16:9. I used the former for the night shots, to give best noise handling, and the latter for the daytime shots, to give best absolute detail. While the iPhone uses twin 12MP sensors, fixed at 4:3, so I'd typically shoot the scene with each of its lenses, i.e. at 1x and 2x, as you'll see below.

Fun, fun, fun!

Test 1: Shooting into sunlight

In theory an easy snap, but I was shooting into the sun, to give added drama and hopefully a good work out for the auto-HDR in both cases. Here's the scene from the iPhone:

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and iPhone XS Max, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

Great results from both, albeit with the expected flaring and sun 'green spot' reflections. The Lumia has the higher resolution, and thus detail, while the iPhone's 'Smart HDR' system brings out even greater dynamic range, evidenced by the writing on the tyre walls.

Microsoft Lumia 950 XL: 10 pts; Apple iPhone XS Max: 10 pts

Test 2: Sunset landscape

Another fairly easy shot, but again I was shooting towards the brighter part of the sky, with light levels starting to go at sunset. And plenty of detail in my favourite test subject here. Here's the scene from the iPhone:

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and iPhone XS Max, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

The Lumia 950 XL's greater native resolution produces significantly more detail here, and with less sharpening artefacts. The iPhone photo looks brilliant on the phone screen, but you can see imperfections at the pixel level here.

Microsoft Lumia 950 XL: 10 pts; Apple iPhone XS Max: 8 pts

Of course, when looking at distant detail, what's needed is a telephoto lens... which is why I also took this shot with the iPhone XS Max's 2x lens, below.

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and (zoomed) iPhone XS Max, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

I'd expect the telephoto lens in the new iPhone to bring out more detail, here of the church door and surroundings, and indeed this is the case, though not perhaps by the margin I was expecting. There's still processing going on in the iPhone that adds a slight air of unreality to detail. But a small win for the XS Max overall.

Microsoft Lumia 950 XL: 10 pts; Apple iPhone XS Max: 11 pts

(See what I did there? I couldn't reduce the 950 XL score, so I had to take the iPhone 'to 11'. Fittingly!)

Test 3: OK, greenery and one more zoom

Having established the selling point of having a telephoto lens, I should provide another good example of its use. And I also need to stress that you can only use it when there's enough light, since the iPhone (and competing phones) switch to their main lens with larger aperture when light is low.

Anyway, here's a typical garden snap in surprisingly warm September sunshine in the UK, not least because one of the Achilles heels of many phone cameras is their handling of greenery, with grass and shrubs often being reduced to photographic mush. Here's the scene from the iPhone:

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and iPhone XS Max, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

Again the Lumia 950 XL's greater native resolution produces significantly more detail here, and as usual Nokia's/Microsoft's algorithms are right on the edge of 'OK' - any more sharpening and you'd be dealing with artefacts. Which what happens to some degree on the iPhone XS Max, though its sharpening is nowhere near as egregious as on some Samsung phones.

Microsoft Lumia 950 XL: 8 pts; Apple iPhone XS Max: 7 pts

But hang on, I wanted to demonstrate the 2x telephoto lens again, so let's try a shot with that, on the iPhone XS Max.

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and (zoomed) iPhone XS Max, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

Again, the use of telephoto - at least for this example - helps the iPhone leapfrog the Lumia. The XS Max's photo does have artefacts, and all detail is lost in the red flowers, but there's also great dynamic range and detail in the shadows.

Microsoft Lumia 950 XL: 8 pts; Apple iPhone XS Max: 9 pts

Test 4: Low light

One of my favourite subjects again, floodlit at night. A real test of colour balance, light gathering and stabilisation. I dropped the Lumia down to 8MP oversampled mode and, as explained above, I couldn't use the telephoto lens on the iPhone. Here's the scene from the latter:

In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and iPhone XS Max, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, again use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

Good shots, though the Lumia makes the night sky (well, two hours after sunset) too blue and somewhat artificial, while the iPhone gets the colours about right. What's interesting here is the difference in crispness. Now, some of this is down to sharpening routines in Apple's camera software, but some of this is also down to more accurate focus and I get the feeling that the Lumia 950 XL didn't quite focus properly. And anyone who's used a Lumia at night will be familiar with this - basic PDAF focussing can't compete in low light with more modern techniques (on the iPhone, 'focus pixels', on other competitors, laser, etc.)

Put the two factors together and I'd say the iPhone's result is 'better'. Perhaps a tiny bit over-sharpened, but there is genuine detail shown (e.g. in the stained glass windows) that you'd struggle to make out in the Lumia shot.

Microsoft Lumia 950 XL: 7 pts; Apple iPhone XS Max: 9 pts

Verdict

• Apple iPhone XS Max: 54/60 pts
• Lumia 950: 53/60 pts

I have perhaps been a little unfair to the Lumia by including the zoom shots - but then again a telephoto lens is a pretty significant selling point in a modern phone camera and it deserves a few plaudits. It was so for the mighty Samsung Galaxy S9+ earlier in the year and it's true here, with the new iPhone pipping the Lumia 950 XL too. 

Technology moves on, eh? But the winner is probably the consumer, with some great post-Lumia camera phones to play with. The 950 XL is still a stonkingly good imaging device. But it's now being outgunned by iPhones, Galaxys, and (probably, next month) Huawei flagships and that's fine - three years in tech is a long, long time!

PS. I haven't forgotten the Galaxy Note 9, which adds extra exposure tech, but Note 9s have been rarer than hen's teeth here in the UK, at least on the review circuit. Watch this space!