Microsoft’s new Windows 10 Phone build brings Spartan browser, new apps and more
Software giant Microsoft’s new Windows 10 Build 10051 brings new features to phones, but it can be an extremely slow downloading experience that rewards you with a useful update.
The new update adds support for the Project Spartan browser along with the new versions of several apps: Outlook Calendar, Outlook Mail, Messaging, Phone, Maps and People.
Users will also find an improved basic Camera app that pulls in some of the functions from the recent Lumia Camera update. The majority of them are slow to load and use, particularly Spartan and even parts of the core OS.
Spartan can take seconds before a webpage appears to load, and seconds more until the page becomes responsive. Part of that has to be due to how the browser handles all of the codes and processes attached to modern webpages, which is disconcerting given that Spartan was built from the ground up to handle such content.
Reading a page in the browser’s built-in reading mode speeds up the process, but there does not seem to be a way to open a link directly in the reading mode?you can only reload an existing page.
The only element that feels out of place is burying the additional tabs behind a menu at the bottom of the screen, although Windows Phone 8.1 also does this.
The new Calendar apps and Outlook Mail are impressive. The company has dozens of variations on its core mail apps: there’s the basic Mail app in Windows 8.1, Outlook 2013, the Mail app on Windows, Outlook.com. On Windows 10 for phones, Outlook Mail links your various inboxes into one nice package, and then incorporates it with the Outlook Calendar app.
Email is minimally presented in Windows 10 Build 10051. The inbox is presented as a list of tiles: swipe right to flag, swipe left to delete. By default, the emails are saved in conversation view, which users can expand by tapping on a tile. Once a user opens an email, all the options he wants are listed in a row of icons at the top.
Users can jump to the calendar by digging through the menu at the upper left. Once in calendar mode, Outlook presents a good weekly view at the top, and an endless column of the user’s appointments at the bottom.
The user interface is too minimal, with a gray-on-black theme that’s a bit dull and difficult to read. Same for the Messaging interface as well.
At its core, the Maps app favors the unpretentious look of Bing Maps. But start searching for nearby places of interest, and Bing shows local restaurants with large photos and even a “streetsider” view.
Windows 10 Build 10051 takes a small subset of the recent Lumia Camera update and imports them into the generic Camera app.
Originally Posted on delhidailynews
