Welcome back to our weekly Windows 10 Mobile news recap series, where we go over the top stories of the past week in the world of Microsoft’s mobile operating system. Let’s get started.
Pokemon Go comes and goes on Windows 10 Mobile
Windows 10 Mobile users have been itching to get their hands on Pokemon Go since its release. The game became a worldwide phenomenon, and while its hype has died down due to the nature of the news cycle, the game has stuck to many users as a natural part of their daily routine. In an effort to bring the game to the Windows 10 Mobile users, a dedicated fan created PoGo – an application that finally let you play Pokemon Go on your Windows 10 Mobile device (Read: catch a Lugia on your Lumia.) After just about a week in service, PoGo was rendered ineffective by API changes by Niantic. The creator of the app says that he’s looking into getting it working again, but he’s relatively sure that Niantic will just keep making it harder.
Windows 10 Anniversary Update coming to mobile on August 9th – Maybe
The Windows 10 Anniversary Update dropped for PC users a few days ago, bringing an end to the waiting we’ve been doing for the past few months and delivering on all of the long-hyped features that the new build brought with it. For Windows 10 Mobile users, however, the update has been held at bay for the time being. The Lumia India Twitter account tweeted that the update would be coming to mobile on August 9th, but that tweet was deleted. Later, the same account noted that the update would be arriving “in the coming days.” It’s hard to say what this means exactly, but it’s a good bet that the update will arrive somewhere near August 9th, but Lumia India didn’t want to tie Microsoft to a specific date if any extra fixes needed to happen.
Xbox mobile app now lets you redeem codes
The changes made to the Xbox app with the Anniversary Update might be having many users falling in love with it for the first time, but the improvements didn’t stop there. A recent change made to the Xbox app on mobile made it even more effective, opening it up for gamers who want to redeem codes on the fly. If you run into a free game or other digital goody while you’re browsing the web on your phone, you can just switch over to your Xbox app, redeem it, and it’ll be ready for you as soon as you get home to your Xbox One.
Messaging Everywhere just might make a comeback soon
Messaging Everywhere was a really cool feature, and one of the first that really made it feel like your Windows 10 desktop and your Windows 10 Mobile Device were truly connected. For those unfamiliar, the feature made it so that, if you received a text on your phone, it would pop up on your desktop, where you could read and even respond to it without ever picking up your handset. Messaging Everywhere was removed in an Insider build and never made it into the Anniversary Update, but some screenshots are making it clear that Microsoft is toying with the idea of bringing it back. Tons of negative feedback came when Messaging Everywhere was pulled, so it makes sense that the team running Windows 10 Mobile heard that message and is resurrecting it by popular demand.
Gmail having trouble connecting to the Mail app
If you like to use Gmail on your Windows 10 Mobile device, you may have had some issues recently. If you’ve tried to sync up your Gmail account to the Mail app this past week, you likely ran into a problem where Gmail told you your “browser is not supported.” This problem makes it difficult to connect new Gmail accounts to your Windows 10 Mobile device, which could be a pretty serious inconvenience to some users. Keep in mind, though, if your account is already linked up to Gmail, you’re going to be just fine. For those running into this problem, we have a workaround that you can try out until Microsoft and Google get the problem fixed.
Builds from this week:
Thanks for joining us. If you want all of the news as it happens, keep an eye on our Windows 10 Mobile tag.
