Chronos Calendar
Our 20 Favorite Apps For Your Windows Phone 8 Device
By
Chronos Calendar
While the standard Windows Phone 8 Calendar app is serviceable, it's a bare bones affair that offers relatively little information in separate screens, and even less customization. The solution is Chronos Calendar. A $1.99 purchase from the Windows Phone store, Chronos Calendar delivers an excellent split-screen month/day interface and a highly customizable Live Tile.
Of course, one of Windows Phone 8's big issues is syncing with Google accounts and calendars, and unfortunately Chronos Calendar hasn't solved this yet. [Edit: Google Calendar Support has been added in the April 26th Chronos Calendar update.]
See more
See less
This is despite using a lumia, with all of Nokia's apps there too.
Oh and, can't eject apps from memory without opening them and pressing "back" all the way to the first screen.
I have a longer list.
Also those Here Maps only show a blur in satellite view.
But there's still too much left...and a lot of things that only MS can add.
You know, if you want to "share" a picture, video, file or song via bluetooth, you need to turn bluetooth on first, otherwise you won't even see the option in the share menu.
And the PDF reader sucks.
Post PC era my butt. And Android is Windows for the mobile world. Ironical since it's reversed the Windows-Linux equation that existed in the PC space.
But yes, it looks pretty, shiny and smoother! Oh how smart.
Pity...
1. Weather (by MS or Nokia, can't remember) is simple.
2. Calculator Toolbox.
3. Flashlight XT. No non-sense, no ads, no requiring access to privacy settings.
4. Academic Search
5. Wikipedia...is okay
6. Foreca Weather
7. Dev Center (you have to have Win 8 to develop for WP8, despite the fact that VS 2012 uses an emulator for the purpose. MS is mad, i tell you. They're tying the development of a minority OS to a minority OS).
8. Minesweeper!
9. HERE City Lens. Slightly off a few degrees in my experience.
10. Panaroma is a bit difficult, but only one i know off
11. Creative Studio, Camera360, Cinemagraph
12. OneNote, anyone?
13. Photosynth and Ztitch
14. TouchMouse for Logitech TouchMouse. Unofficial.
15. TouchDevelop. Still raw, imo, not very obvious how to use it, but there's a ton of documentation.
16. SOUND HOUND. This should have been #1 on this list, actually.
17. WhatsApp: not very good on WP8. Can't share files, music, videos. Only pics.
18. PhotoBeamer
19. Ringtone Maker.
20. Smart Shoot
21. Shopping list, anyone?
That's it. Would have tried to make a file explorer on my own, if i could dev on Win 7.
The Unix file structure makes little sense to me, so this sort of sucks.
This is despite using a lumia, with all of Nokia's apps there too.
Oh and, can't eject apps from memory without opening them and pressing "back" all the way to the first screen.
I have a longer list.
Ah, sounds like we've met before. I adjusted my list a little after reading your post:
Uses cellular data when on WiFi (?),
Limited settings (can't even control the annoying search button),
No application data access management,
No task manager
Trying to force me to use clouds which is (for me) unacceptable (there is a workaround for this),
Cannot install anything outside of the store,
No file explorer (with sending files over BT) or access to the system and application files,
No direct Outlook sync,
No music player that can sort by folders,
Only global volume control (plus on phone),
Lack of any kind of patch notes,
Can't see the amount of transfered data for the last 30 days,
Can't uninstall things like "games" or "calculator"
Can't download whatever I want,
Can't get rid of the message preview,
Can't set static IP for WiFi
Plus I have no idea what is the phone sending back to M$ and I'm sure like hell it does send way more than necessary even though I opted out from any and all data-harvesting programs they put in the phone (and there is like 20 of them). But nobody seems to care about privacy nowadays (except Germany). All of those mentioned "apps" are asking impossibly irrelevant data about the user.
This is despite using a lumia, with all of Nokia's apps there too.
Oh and, can't eject apps from memory without opening them and pressing "back" all the way to the first screen.
I have a longer list.
Ah, sounds like we've met before. I adjusted my list a little after reading your post:
Uses cellular data when on WiFi (?),
Limited settings (can't even control the annoying search button),
No application data access management,
No task manager
Trying to force me to use clouds which is (for me) unacceptable (there is a workaround for this),
Cannot install anything outside of the store,
No file explorer (with sending files over BT) or access to the system and application files,
No direct Outlook sync,
No music player that can sort by folders,
Only global volume control (plus on phone),
Lack of any kind of patch notes,
Can't see the amount of transfered data for the last 30 days,
Can't uninstall things like "games" or "calculator"
Can't download whatever I want,
Can't get rid of the message preview,
Can't set static IP for WiFi
Plus I have no idea what is the phone sending back to M$ and I'm sure like hell it does send way more than necessary even though I opted out from any and all data-harvesting programs they put in the phone (and there is like 20 of them). But nobody seems to care about privacy nowadays (except Germany). All of those mentioned "apps" are asking impossibly irrelevant data about the user.
True, true.
I'm unsure about how wi-fi behaves too. You can set it to turn off when the screen times out, though i'm unsure what happens in that period. Android (because it shows detailed graphs of how stuff's being used) i know uses Wifi in bursts of a few seconds while in sleep to check for stuff. I'm very unsure about what happens on WP.
Yeah the search button. I don't even use it. Global volume control! yes another PITA. Doesn't even turn down ringtone volume when you've got headphones on.
WP8 is also very bad with memory, though. My Lumia 620 has 512 MB, apps crash back to the home screen frequently if you don't eject them.
Biggest joke is audio codec support. Windows 98 and/or XP could probably play a larger variety of formats.
And the keyboard? Doesn't it occupy too much space? I have like 60% of my screen hidden by it. Pressing enter/return to get a new line ends up making the text-input box bigger, till it covers the entire remaining 40%. So in WhatsApp, you don't even know what you're replying to.
Needs a notification center too. The live tile method is okay, but at times is massively inconvenient.
I really hope WP 8.1 fixes at least some of this.
Nokia Music's caused a system lockup too, twice.
In addition to your list I would add PC Remote, which is something I would LOVE to see get baked into the OS as it is super useful for checking on your PC, or controlling a HTPC.
It's good to see WP getting some real attention finally. It still needs to grow in a lot of ways (and honestly, what platform doesn't), but overall I find it to be a great device for both work and play, and I really hope that it continues to gain traction.
In addition to your list I would add PC Remote, which is something I would LOVE to see get baked into the OS as it is super useful for checking on your PC, or controlling a HTPC.
It's good to see WP getting some real attention finally. It still needs to grow in a lot of ways (and honestly, what platform doesn't), but overall I find it to be a great device for both work and play, and I really hope that it continues to gain traction.
Who's PC remote by? I prefer TouchMouse since it supports iOS too...
But yeah, it should be a part of the OS. You would think that a Windows phone would be able to interface more completely out of the box with a windows PC.
Anyone else notice the absence of the ability to join a Homegroup?
No file system. Come on MS - you have a nice open desktop platform, but you pull an iOS with your phone OS, making it so we can't actually get to the nitty gritty of the file system? Huge problems with this. No easy ability to get an app out of memory when it has started? No static IPs?
I will be going Android next round unless some of these things improve. Havng great Skydrive and office support on a phone is very important to me but, over all, the Windows Phone is a ways behind Android at this point.
In addition to your list I would add PC Remote, which is something I would LOVE to see get baked into the OS as it is super useful for checking on your PC, or controlling a HTPC.
It's good to see WP getting some real attention finally. It still needs to grow in a lot of ways (and honestly, what platform doesn't), but overall I find it to be a great device for both work and play, and I really hope that it continues to gain traction.
Who's PC remote by? I prefer TouchMouse since it supports iOS too...
But yeah, it should be a part of the OS. You would think that a Windows phone would be able to interface more completely out of the box with a windows PC.
Anyone else notice the absence of the ability to join a Homegroup?
I agree Ojas. I have had the 920 since last November. And while I happen to like it a lot for my use case, I feel that MS didn't really live up to the integration across all screens talk before 8 came out. They talked of how Win8 tablets, phone, desktop, and (upcoming) Xbox would all seamlessly work together. I don't feel that the Win8 phone integrates any better/worse/differently than what my WP7 Focus did. Xbox Glass is the only 1st party app that tries to do this, and it's nothing great.
MS fanboys out in droves, i must say.
Another thing i remembered: Lack of contextual search.