Windows 10 Mobile news recap: Discord comes to W10M, Skype gets SMS support, Photos app improved

Michael Cottuli

Windows 10 Mobile Office

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.

Discord comes to Windows 10 Mobile with Clamour

Discord is a huge app, and it gets bigger and better with each passing day. With countless gamers migrating to the app from old fan-favorites like Teamspeak and Ventrilo, it only makes sense that one devoted fan would take the time to develop an app that lets Windows 10 Mobile users chat on the go with Discord. Windows 10 Mobile user CodIsAFish went about developing Clamour, an app for Windows 10 Mobile that lets you log into Discord and chat without any issues. While logging into the app takes a bit of a roundabout approach and voice features aren’t working quite yet, Clamour is the best that Windows 10 Mobile users will have for a long while.

The Photos app gets a fancy new look for Windows Insiders

If you weren’t quite satisfied with the interface that the Photos app had before, there’s a chance you might like the new one better. The updated UI for the Photos app ditches the all-caps menu headers for  nice looking normal-case headers, and brings in a few other changes as well. Apart from the expected tweaks that have come to the app, we’ve also got a new animation when opening photos that’s not too shabby at all. Nothing changes here as far as the Photos app’s functionality is concerned, but a prettier UI is always a plus.

Skype Preview for Windows Insiders gets new SMS feature

Sometimes it’s a pain moving from messenger to messenger to chat people up. If you’re tired of splitting your attention between Skype and your SMS text messaging, then the latest update to Skype Preview is going to make you a happy camper. Version 11.8.180 of Skype Preview introduced SMS support to Skype, allowing you to make Skype your default messaging app instead of SMS. Insiders can also activate SMS syncing on Windows 10, making it so that they can shoot off text messages from Skype on their desktop.

Windows Maps gets a new dark theme, as well as traffic information

Are you a Windows 10 Mobile user that likes to navigate using Windows Maps? The latest update to hit the Fast Ring of Insiders might just be right up your alley. With the new version of Windows Maps, a dark theme was introduced to make the map a little more pleasing to look at for people who prefer not to look at a particularly bright screen. Beyond that, an actually significant improvement to functionality was made in the way of Traffic Hub, which lets you not only monitor traffic, but even check out live video feed of streets where available. This can be a pretty valuable resource if you’re not sure which route is going to hold you up the longest on your commute.

Anniversary Update starts rolling out to NuAns NEO and VAIO Phone Biz, no word on HP Elite x3

Due to a bug with Continuum, the Windows 10 Anniversary Update has been very slow to roll out to the recent batch of third-party Windows 10 Mobile devices that have been releasing. It seems like the update is starting to roll out on the VAIO Phone Biz and the NuAns NEO, but the phone that a lot of people have been excited about – the HP Elite x3 – still hasn’t started rolling out the new features. Only time will tell when the HP Elite x3 will get the Anniversary Update, but in the meantime, people are rightfully frustrated by the delay.

Here’s the Insider build that was released over the past week:

Thanks for joining us. If you want all of the news as it happens, keep an eye on our Windows 10 Mobile tag.