Tag Archives: Windows Phone 7

Make Free, Cross-Platform Voice & Video Calls With Tango For WP7

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Skype might still be missing from Windows Phone 7’s Marketplace, but many of its alternatives (WNM Lite, for instance) have made their way to Mango, and now, the popular multi-platform video calling application Tango has been released for WP7 as well. Using Tango, you can make voice and video calls to any of your contacts who use Tango, and they don’t have to be using a Windows Phone to connect with you; you can interact with your Android, iOS and Windows PC using friends too! Read More

Battery Status: Live Tile For Battery Percentage & History [WP7 Homebrew]

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Since Nodo, Windows Phone 7 users have looked for ways to view the exact remaining battery percentage of their devices. Before Mango, that was only possible via the Diagnostics Menu, but WP7’s fruity update brought that functionality to the OS and now you can view the battery status in the battery saver menu in Settings. However, if you're still looking for something more, try Battery Status, a homebrew app available for all unlocked Mango devices. It can be a little annoying having to go deep into the Settings menu just to see the remaining battery of your phone, and it is not as convenient as being able to see the percentage on your Start screen. This app shows the current and past battery status of your device and comes with live tile support. Read More

How To Interop Unlock Samsung WP7 Devices & Get Internet Tethering

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It was annoying to find out that despite all its awesomeness, Mango still hasn’t introduced internet sharing and tethering in Windows Phone 7. Another annoying thing about the Mango update is interop unlock. Now devices cannot be simply dev unlocked. There are two levels of unlocking WP7 now. You can have a developer unlock or there is the more privileged interop version of unlocking. If you are a Samsung WP7 user, then you are in luck as both these problems (interop unlock and internet sharing) can be solved in one go using a rather simple method, which is for developer unlocked devices. Read More

Image Downloader: Save All Images On A Webpage In One Go [WP7]

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Image Downloader is a new app for Windows Phone 7 that lets you download all images on a webpage of your choice. All you have to do is provide the link of the desired page; Image Downloader will pull all images present on it and save them to your Mango phone’s Pictures hub. So, basically, it lets you can download whole galleries of images on a particular search term. The app integrates with the hub and adds a new tab for itself in the Apps section of Pictures. More after the break. Read More

Navigation Made Easy On Windows Phone Mango With Compass VO

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Recently, there has been a boom in the Marketplace for apps related to navigation and maps. Nokia Maps was hacked to work on any unlocked WP7 device, and a few days before that, Navigon finally made its way to Windows Phone 7. But most navigation apps for the metro OS can gain more in terms of productivity if they have a compass incorporated with them. WP7 has suffered a few issues regarding the internal compass of devices, but with Mango, the compass seems to have been fixed and is working just fine. So it was about time we got an app like Compass VO, which not only lets you use a compass anywhere, but can also be superimposed on images of maps. Read More

Nokia Maps, Drive & Music Apps Available For All Unlocked WP7 Devices

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Nokia launched its first ever series of Windows Phone 7 devices just a few days ago. There are many other manufacturers currently making Mango phones and many of those phones have got better specs compared to Nokia's new Lumia series (like the HTC Titan), so what makes the Lumia series so special? The sole reason is that Nokia has been granted the rights to make alterations to Microsoft’s mobile platform and customize it any way they want. Even though Nokia didn’t make any significant additions to their Mango firmware, there are a few native apps which are extremely useful but are slated to be Lumia exclusive, but not if the XDA community can help it. An avid WP7 user over at the XDA forums has released XAP files for Nokia Maps, Nokia Music and Nokia Drive, which any WP7 user can install as long as their device is developer unlocked. Read More

Tag Contacts & Add Images To Notes With Note Well For Windows Phone 7

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Windows Phone 7 has pretty deep Office integration and OneNote renders the use of other note-taking apps pretty much redundant. But nothing is perfect and there are gaps in usability which third-party apps can take advantage of and add to their own arsenal of features. Note Well is one such app which strives to bring some of the features that are not present in the Office hub by default. Using this free app, you can add images to the notes you write and tag people from your contacts list in your notes. Read More

Stop The Music: Remove Active Songs From WP7 Volume Bar & Lock Screen

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Windows Phone 7 has a pretty neat, comprehensive Music hub. Especially with Mango, there have been a few positive changes due to the enabling of multitasking in the metro OS. However, whenever you play a song from your library, it keeps showing in the volume bar even after you have stopped playing it. Also, on the lock screen, the music menu stays active until the phone gets rebooted. This is designed for users’ convenience, but could become a bit of a nuisance when you accidentally keep hitting the play button while the phone is locked. Using a free new app called Stop The Music, WP7 users can now get rid of the music bar without switching the phone off. That is not all on offer in the Stop the Music app, you can also use it to clear the playlist that is currently running in Zune on your device. Read More

DVD Collector: Scan DVD Barcodes To Keep Track Of Your Collection

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Windows Phone 7 was one of the most criticized mobile platforms almost as soon as it was launched, but with a few updates, it improved by leaps and bounds and now that we are on Mango, WP7 has finally become what it should have been in the first place. There were a lot of improvements in Mango (10 of which you can read about here) one of which was the revamped Bing search. The search menu now allows users to scan barcodes and find out all about them via online searches. So it was about time that third-party apps started taking advantage of this functionality. DVD Collector is a free app which allows its users to catalog their DVD collection by merely scanning the barcodes of the DVD’s covers. Read More

eHow For WP7: Find Detailed, Step-By-Step Guides For Any Task

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eHow is a pretty popular source on the web for finding tutorials on any topic you could think of. Be it fir everyday life or advanced technical tasks, chances are you will find something useful on the website or its mobile app, for that matter. eHow launched its Windows Phone 7 app a few days ago, and the app looks at home with its metro interface while maintaining all its practicality courtesy of the large collection of informative articles in the site’s database. Read More

Order Pizza From Your Windows Phone With The Official Pizza Hut App

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Windows Phone 7 has finally got its very own official Pizza Hut app and it really does look delicious. It is always a nice boost for the somewhat struggling WP7 platform when a popular brand launches its official app for it. Pizza Hut is one of the most popular eat-out places in the world today. But there’s a slight catch here. Pizza Hut might be popular equally all over the world, but the WP7 app is for US only. If you are a WP7 user in the US,  read on to find out everything about this new app. Read More

GeoReminder: Location-Based Reminders For Windows Phone 7

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Watching the launch of iPhone’s latest model, the iPhone 4S, many users were awed by the Reminders app in iOS 5 and its ability to trigger alerts when near a certain location. Similar third-party apps have been around in app stores of all currently leading mobile platforms for quite a while, and now, Windows Phone Mango has an app for that too. GeoReminder will let you set location-based reminders, which will set the alarm off whenever you get near a certain location. Read More

Lyrics Show: View Synchronized Lyrics For Currently Playing Song [WP7]

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Windows Phone 7’s Zune is a pretty good option for listening to music on Microsoft’s mobile platform. Specially with Mango, the music player has attained a certain sense of completeness. Now, most of the third-party apps related to music and songs can access the player too, allowing users to control whatever music they are playing through the stock player's interface. A lot of apps are making good use of this integration. Lyrics Show is one such app. It allows WP7 users to listen to the songs in their library while it displays the lyrics of the currently playing song, highlighting each verse in sync with the vocals. Read More

Private Video For WP7: Shoot Videos & Secure Them With A Password

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Private Video is an app for Windows Phone 7 which brings some much-needed area-specific privacy options to the Mango version of the metro platform. Most people aren’t big fans of the all-in-one password lock on WP7 which prevents anyone from accessing the phone through the lock screen. But not everyone requires the complete lockdown of their phone all the time. For instance, you might just want your Messaging hub to be password-protected while your friend plays Angry Birds on the phone. With Mango, these selective protection apps are finally making their way to the Marketplace (like the Content Shield app we covered a few days ago). Private Video is another example of this functionality. Using this free app, you can shoot videos that you want to store privately, under password protection. Read More

Download Free Ringtones On Windows Phone 7 With Myxer

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It hasn’t been long since Windows Phone 7 began supporting the use of custom ringtones (with the introduction of Mango), but already, the Marketplace has become home to a sizable number of apps related to ringtones. Free Ringtone was one of the first of the kind to hit the Marketplace, but its no longer the only free option available to WP7 users for loading up their mobile with the ringtones of their choice. Myxer is a really good-looking app with popular variants for Android and iOS and a pretty decent-sized collection of free tones. Read More

IM / Social Network App WNM Live Adds Support For Voice Calls [WP7]

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The Windows Phone 7 community finally got voice calls for Mango a few days back with Mobile VoIP. And now, WNM Live, which is a pretty old and popular WP7 social network app, has added the functionality to make voice calls to your WNM contacts, and that too completely for free. Of course WNM Live still has all its social networking features, and you can use it to connect to strangers and friends alike, but the voice call feature has surely converted it into a utility app rather than an app that is in the Marketplace just for fun. Read More

Ask The Crowds: Create & Participate In Anonymous Polls [WP7]

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Ask the crowds is a rather simple app for Windows Phone 7, the sole purpose of which is to help you get answers to tricky questions and assist you in making choices when you just can’t decided between two options. Of course, creating polls to get people’s opinion on a particular matter is not a new concept by any means; you can do that on Facebook too. But with this app, you don’t have to rely only on the opinion of people you know. You can ask any user’s choice and that, too, while staying anonymous. For example, you can use Ask The Crowds to find out the public opinion regarding a particular event, movie or place. Read More

How To Get Folders In Windows Phone Mango [Homebrew]

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It was big news when folders were introduced in iOS, but Windows Phone 7 is a platform that (some might argue) has a better alternative to folders in the form of live tiles. The whole search by alphabet at one touch concept, especially in Mango, makes accessing any app or icon fast and efficient. Still, having folders on your WP7 would sure be a fancy way to keep your data more organized, and for categorizing stuff easily. For now, instead of making your decision based on this discussion, you can give folders on WP7 a try yourself, if you have an unlocked Mango device, that is. Read More

Unlock Unlimited Windows Phone Devices With A Single Developer Account

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Ever since Mango rolled out, it has not been easy unlocking your Windows Phone 7 if you do not have a developer account. Then, if you do have it, and you are in an environment where there are more than one WP7 devices, you can unlock  only up to 3 devices with a single developer account. What if you have more, or a friend wants you to unlock their device, too, to get access to all those cool homebrews? Turns out, Microsoft isn’t as strict as it poses to be when it comes to unlocking. There is a simple way you can try to unlock as many WP7 devices as you want, as long as you have one genuine dev account. Even if you don't have one, all you need to do is to convince any person who does have it, as using the original account is only temporary and you will not harm the developer account in any way. Read More

Smart Note 2: Create Colorful Text And Freehand Notes On Windows Phone

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There might be a lot of note-taking apps available for Windows Phone 7 that make use of live tiles (we have even covered a few, like Sticky Tiles and Live Tile Now), but none as colorful and eye-catching as Smart Note 2. Not only can you create notes with this free app, you can pin them to the start screen of your Mango phone in the color of your choice. And if you are in a hurry, or just in the mood for doodling, you can do that, too, with Smart Note 2. The app can serve the dual purpose of letting users create new notes, and managing reminders or to-do lists. Read More