Tiled In

Want a quick way to log into your Windows 10 (or 8.1) PC? Lets use your fingerprint.

Available for under 25 bucks on Amazon, the Eikon Mini Fingerprint Reader allows you to slide your finger for a quick and easy login. Plugging into one of your available USB ports, the device drivers download automatically to your PC. Setting up a fingerprint for login is simple enough, opening your Settings app, then navigating to Accounts, and Sign-in Options. If installation completed, you should see an option to add a fingerprint, Windows running you through a simple tutorial on setting it up.

Once you've done that, signing in is as easy as waking up your machine and scanning your finger. Whether you’re on Windows 8.1 or 10, your PC will automatically log you in once you get a good scan. Sliding finger scanners can be trickier than onces you simply place your finger on, but once you use it a few times you’ll likely have it down.

With the Rio Summer Olympics almost upon us, it’s a great time to look at a fabulous resource that’s available to those in the Windows Phone community. The Rio 2016 app, which is officially developed by Samsung, is probably one of the visually stunning  and comprehensive apps for the platform that the organization could have come up with.

Before the start of the games, you are treated to a daily report of the Olympic torch and where it is headed to next. In addition, the user can check out the schedules of the upcoming events, history of the Olympic games, and a look at the different sports venues that will be in use.

If you are lucky enough to attend the games, the app allows you to buy tickets to most of the events that still have openings at this point late in the planning. One of the other great features of this app is the idea that you can explore other Brazilian cities that are nearby, so this works wonderfully as a tourist tool too.

One of the great features added to Windows 10 is Actionable Notifications.

There’s any number of ways to keep up with the news, but one of the cornerstones online has to be Breaking News.

Available for free in the Windows Store, the Breaking News app pulls from their always updating feed of stories online, linking you to any number of sources across the internet. The design of the app mimics their offers on other platforms as of their Windows 10 release, allowing you to easily follow topics of your choosing, as well as muting others. The app also pushes out notifications time to time depending of topics you follow and major news events.

It’s been hard to not see Windows 10 Mobile as the neglected, obligatory piece of the puzzle Microsoft has been putting together. From buggy builds, to broken third party apps, plus a messaging nightmare on upgrades, how could anyone really give Microsoft a chance. That said, I finally took the dive and upgraded my primary phone, a Nokia Lumia Icon, to the Insider Release Preview.

How’s It Been?

After a week of usage, and installing an upgrade I had missed, I’m surprised to say things are nice on Windows 10 Mobile. Performance on high end hardware is solid, whether that’s launching apps, taking photos, or fiddling with settings. Battery life has been livable, though I’ll admit Windows Phone 8.1 seems to perform better.

On the app front, nearly all of the built-in experiences have been upgraded and improved. Mail and Calendar both perform well for a light user like myself, processing a few emails and possibly adding a calendar item time to time. Groove is light years ahead of XBOX Music, questions about whether you’re playing content offline non-existent, and catalog browsing easier than ever.

As for third parties, the evolution is here and there, but definitely coming along. Some long time apps present on Windows Phone, like iHeartRadio and TuneIn, received substantial updates which improved their look and feel, but deprecated some of their past nice features. Other apps, like Breaking News, simply crossed the line into usable, a welcome change as a Windows phone user.

Last, but not least, customizing Windows 10 Mobile has been surprisingly nice. I was critical of backgrounds behind tiles, but I’ve found myself experimenting and finding some solutions I’ve loved. The lock screen changes are okay, but I’m still not the biggest fan of font sizes or transparency focus here.

What’s My Verdict?

A week in, I don’t think I’ll downgrade my phone.

I’ve come to enjoy many of the improvements in Windows 10 Mobile, while gaining the ability to overlook some of its faults. The only thing that worries me is reliability, which isn’t in huge terms like phone crashes and apps failing, but small things like the new Data Sense not consistently showing how much data I’ve used. The issues that come up seem like ones I could live with, as well as Microsoft should be able to fix with a small amount of work.

Watching the Lumia 950XL review from PocketNow, I couldn’t help but sympathize with Michael Fisher’s view that nobody should be buying a Lumia at this moment. While one would assume this is about the app gap, the reality is Windows 10 Mobile brings forward a whole new problem only Microsoft itself can solve: The OS.

For all of the criticisms you could laud at Windows Phone, stability wasn’t traditionally one of them. Yes, you could have issues with the lowest end devices, but anything mid-range and above would be quick and responsive. Bring in Windows 10 Mobile and that perspective seem to be thrown out. Pauses in various parts of the system, empty screens, app crashes, and other quirks are the norm, not the exception. On my personal test device, a Lumia 640, it’s almost a joke how many times I’ve fully reset the device just to attempt clearing up performance issues.

Bring in the Windows Phone community and you get a variety of voices, the most urksome being the idea that the OS “isn’t finished” and that should excuse the issues. For those who own last generation devices running Insider builds, that could be fair, but the people who bought brand new devices, that’s a complete non-starter. Buying a device with a half-baked OS isn’t something we act kindly about, think back to Vista, or Windows 8, where people had less than stellar experiences out of the box, improvements only coming after months, if not a full year, of updates to “finish” the OS.

One of the overarching changes in Windows 10 Mobile is the introduction of the hamburger menu to the array of app designs. Is this an improvement? Yes, in some situations.

Why?

I know this sounds blasphemous to the Windows Phone community, but hear me out.

Pivots and Panoramas work beautifully when an app can be distilled down to a limited number of actions and screens. Whether you’re quickly getting your forecast and current conditions in Appy Weather, or viewing your timeline and replies in Tweetium, the presence of a pivot control is far superior to anything else.

Where Pivots and Panoramas fall apart is in apps that require a complex set of functions which shift you across a variety of screens. The prime example of this is XBOX Music. The app was effectively a maze, forcing you to pan multiple columns to get to the collection view you wanted, each of those taking a moment to generate even on higher end devices. If you wanted to move faster, you’d have to back out to the Panorama, then jump back in via. the list available there. The end result is a lot of back and forth, combined with the ability for the app to lock up even on high end devices.

Time for a Hamburger

If an app requires a high number of screens, a wide variety of entirely different views (text lists, images, images with text, etc.), and a high likelihood of wanting something fast, a hamburger menu may be beneficial. Case in point, Groove.

Introduced in Windows 10 Mobile, Groove is Microsoft’s latest iteration on it’s music playing experience. Featuring the same collection categories you expect, plus a new beautiful Now Playing screen, the game changer is the hamburger menu. Why? Switching between views is quick and predictable. Instead of swiping three or four times to get from Artist to Playlist, I only have to swipe in from the left and tap on Playlist to do the same. Nice.

Edit: As a follower let me know, the swipe in for the menu in Groove isn’t the default action in most apps. It should be.

Not time for gloom and doom

There’s any number of situations where a Pivot control is the best solution, allowing us to quickly swipe across a screen to navigate an app. When heightened complexity is unavoidable, a hamburger menu works even better.

After three years, and growing frustrations, I finally let go of my HTC Windows Phone 8X and moved on - to a Nokia Lumia Icon.

Comparing the two phones, there’s any number of differences that are instantly recognizable.

The Icon’s 5 inch, 1080p OLED screen dwarfs the 8Xs smaller 4.3 inch, 720p SLCD display, making everything a little easier on the eyes.

The weight of the Icon, vs the 8X, is recognizably heavier and a negative.

The design of the Icon, with its squared off edges and sharp angles, is a mixed bag vs. the 8X. The flat edges make for a nice photo taking experience, and the buttons have a more solid feel - especially the camera button, but the 8X simply felt better in the hand.

The rear camera on the Icon is far superior to the 8X, which is evident in the photos above, but the front facing one is a joke. Why Nokia/Microsoft never took that seriously, until their recent phones, is beyond me.

Sound seems cleaner in the Icon vs. 8X, though each have some hiss that I’d notice depending on the song playing.

General performance is nice on the Icon, something to expect when you get double the memory, plus a faster quad core CPU, compared to the 8X. The point it take mere seconds for the phone to boot, when it must, and responds near immediately, is such a welcomed change.

Overall, I’ve come to terms with the change. While the Icon’s power and capabilities are welcomed, the 8X still stole the show for design. With curved edges that fight right into the palm of your hand, a size that never felt unwieldy, plus an eye-catching exterior that no other phone had, it was the best designed Windows Phone for a long time. Sadly, its time has past, and its design appears to be lost to time.

One of the new features in Windows 10 is Virtual Desktops, but how can you make use of them easily? One option is switching by apps in your taskbar. How?

Open your Settings app and navigate to System, then Multitasking. Under Virtual Desktops, you should see an option that says On the taskbar, show windows that are open on. From the dropdown, select All Desktops. What this will do is make your open applications appear across every taskbar, and thus allow you a quick click to switch between desktops.

Now that you’ve changed that setting, set up your multiple virtual desktops by opening up Task View on the taskbar and clicking the bottom right “New desktop” button. Click and pull the open apps you want on each desktop and return to your current desktop. If you want to switch between desktops, just click on an app you know is on the corresponding desktop.