Kik Messenger (for Windows Phone)

Pros Free. No ads. Super simple to set up and ad contacts. Shows when messages have been delivered and read. Private—doesn't require cell phone number. Versions available for all major mobile platforms, including Blackberry and Symbian.

Cons No video or audio messaging. Windows Phone offers fewer goodies than iPhone version. Bottom Line Kik Messenger is one of the simplest free, cross-platform messaging apps around. It's also more private than some major competitors, and doesn't' foist ads on you.

By Michael Muchmore

If you've spent any time at all browsing the multitude of Instagram photos or Vine mini-videos, there's a good chance that you've seen posts with captions containing the phrase "KiK me" or those that include a Kik username. Kik Messenger has become the de facto standard for instant messaging among the new generation of mobile social communicators. It differs from competitors like WhatsApp and Viber by not requiring your phone number, but it too lets you include photos in your messages and engage in group chat.

Setup and Signup
I tested Kik Messenger on two phones, a Nokia Lumia 928's and a Samsung ATIV Odyssey. Signing up for a Kik account is a matter of entering your first and last names, a username, an email address, and password. The signup form recommends, but doesn't require entering you phone number. I really wish you could just sign up with your Facebook or Twitter credentials, though; all this filling in forms is so 2005.

The signup procedure asks if you want Kik to scan your address book for existing users of the service. Any user found will get a notification that they can now chat with you over Kik. In general, I had a much easier time connecting with my pals in Kik than in WhatsApp; I could also send invites to email or Facebook.

The Kik Windows Phone app has just two swipe-through pages: Contacts, and Conversations, making it one simpler than WhatsApp. On the Conversations tab, you can tap a gear button to get to settings for things like Notifications, Account, Privacy (you can add users to a block list), and interface color.  It would be nice to be able to change the font and font size, but the color choice is already more personalization than you get with WhatsApp.

Kik has no pretensions of creating rich profiles the way that's become standard with social networks: You don't have to enter any personal info. Your contact info page is just a photo and your username.

Messaging
Kik was an innovator with its ability to show you whether your contact had read your message or not. When you first send a text, an S appears in a small box to its left; this turns to a D to indicated "delivered," and then to an R when the message has actually been read by the contact.

When it comes to energizing conversations with extra goodies, Kik lets you insert the standard selection of smilies to your chat, but they're not as impactful as Facebook Messenger's stickers. You also don't get as many message attachment options in the Windows Phone version of Kik as you do in the iPhone version: things like video sketches, YouTube videos, and memes (those photos with the big block text). But if an iPhone contact adds any of this, you'll be able to see it in the Windows Phone app. Nor can you create a video or audio message the way you can in WhatsApp. And forget about actual voice calling like you get with Viber or video calling like you get with Skype.

One thing you can do is engage in group chatting. Kik makes this a simple matter of tapping a big plus sign after tapping the Convo Info button at the bottom of the chat screen. You can add up to 10 group members, and anyone can leave at any time, using the same Convo Info page.

Will You Get a Kick Out of this App?
The choice of a messaging app depends a lot on whether people you want to chat with are using it. Though pretty bare-bones, Kik for Windows Phone has loads of users and a few good things going for it—its very simplicity is one of them. Kik also provides more privacy than competitors like WhatsApp and Viber, which require your cell phone number. That also means you don't have to worry about a small app developer ever selling your number to marketers. Another plus over WhatsApp is that you don't have to see ads in your inbox. But if you want free, ad-free, privacy protecting text messaging, stick with our Editors' Choice, Skype[], which adds voice and video chat.

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Tube Pro (for Windows Phone)

Pros Windows Phone style interface with tiles and swiping. Upload videos. Save videos for offline viewing.

Cons Map feature didn't work. Ads. Video recording dicey, with no privacy choice on upload. Bottom Line A decent YouTube experience comes to Windows Phone, with the extra perks of upload and download capabilities.

By Michael Muchmore

There's been a lot of high-profile squabbling between tech giants Google and Microsoft lately over the Windows Phone YouTube app. To me, there are a couple of good reasons to keep calm and carry on in the midst of all this: First, you can do nearly everything YouTube on a Windows Phone's Internet Explorer browser by simply navigating to YouTube.com—view top popular videos, comment, rate videos, see your subscriptions, and more. In fact, there's a little third-party YouTube app that does nothing but redirect to the video-sharing mobile website; it's a top free download with 5-star rave reviews in the Windows Phone store!

So what can you not do in the mobile YouTube site on a Windows Phone? You can't upload videos. But this too is not an inextricable hardship: You can still upload videos by emailing them to your YouTube upload email address from the mobile shown on your YouTube account page. And plenty of Windows Phone video apps let you upload to YouTube. I'd originally intended to review the excellent YouTube HD app, but that suffered the same unfortunate fate as the official YouTube app, with the search advertising behemoth blocking even the playing of videos. Luckily, a very similar app, TubePro, does it all, too (so shhhh! Don't tell Google).

Using YouTube HD
After downloading TubePro from the Windows Phone store to my Nokia Lumia 928, I wasn't required to create an account or sign into my YouTube account, but it's much more functional if you do sign in. When I did sign in, the Google sign-in page had me approve a "This app would like to Manage your YouTube account, similar to a Facebook or Twitter app authorization. The app does show ads on some pages, but you can buy the $1.29 SuperTube, which is just an ad-free version of TubePro.

Unlike a lot of YouTube apps in the Windows Store, this one uses a real Windows Phone-style interface, with the expected tile and swiping navigation between app pages. Many of the other apps simply use Google's mobile video site. TubePro's gray tiles with large red icons let you navigate among Hot videos, your Subscriptions, your Favorites, and more.

Swiping to the right from the home screen shows you Top Rated videos broken down into subcategories. Another right swipe takes you to your subscriptions, and at the bottom is a search button in the form of a magnifying glass. One cool-seeming option was Map Tube, which shows a map with options for view count, and time ranges, but I didn't see any data on the map.

Watching a Video
Once you've tapped on a particular video either on Hot, Top, or from your subscriptions, you'll see its Details page with a large thumbnail of the video's poster image, with the thumbs up and down icons, view count, user name, and description. Below the thumbnail, you get choices for LQ (low quality), HQ, and HD. But next to this is the really verboten item: Download. Buttons on the bottom let you add the video to your Watch Later list, favorite it, subscribe to its creator, and share it through email or social networks, or SMS—all the stuff you can do on YouTube itself.

Right-swiping form the video details page moves through pages for Related videos, Author's videos, and Comments. During playback, you can change the aspect ratio (from 16:9 to 4:3 and back), fullscreen, or skip ahead an back. There's also a scrubber that lets you jump ahead and back anywhere in the video you want and you can pinch on the screen to lower the volume or unpinch to raise it.

Uploading Video Shot on Your Windows Phone to YouTube
As I mentioned in the intro, uploading your own mobile videos is one of the only things you can't do simply by opening YouTube.com in Internet Explorer. TubePro makes both uploading from your camera roll and from video you shoot on the spot possible. Tap the "Recorded" tile on the home screen, and you'll see two icons at the bottom: a movie camera and and upload button.

Hitting the movie camera starts the camera view, with the same icon for starting recording. This was a little hit-or-miss with me; sometimes the screen just turned black for a while before the recording started. I wish I could start recording by tapping the screen, as I could in the default camera app. Speaking of that default app, I'd like to see a TubePro upload option added to that, as Vyclone and other apps do.

Once the timer started and I was filming, I could hit the Pause button, which let me directly upload the video to YouTube after entering a title for it. I would have like to have been able to choose the privacy level: My test upload was public.

After recording some video clips, the Recorded page is populated with a list of them, but oddly this doesn't show thumbnails, just a date.

Downloading
One thing that Google made Microsoft take out of its official YouTube app was the ability to download videos from the site. For now, anyway, this Tube Pro app doesn't suffer from that restriction. Just tap the Download link on any video's Details page, and you'll be taken to a black Downloading page with a progress bar showing percent downloaded. You can pause the download, and a setting lets you enable background downloading. Once the video's in your phone's storage, you can head to your My Download page from its home screen tile and watch it at your leisure, without the need for a data connection. 

Which Tube Is For You?
If you just what to watch the top YouTube videos or those you've subscribe to, the sites' mobile Web version is all you need. Tube Pro adds the useful abilities to upload videos right from your phone and to download videos for later viewing. It also offers a more Windows-Phone-characteristic interface than the mobile Web site. Despite a few minor drawbacks like finicky video recording and not-too-obtrusive ads, I can recommend Tube Pro as a decent YouTube experience for Windows Phone users—at least until the almighty Google decides to cut it off, too.

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Yelp (for Windows Phone)

Pros Excellent Windows Phone style interface. Vast repository of restaurant and business reviews. Lets you write reviews. Monocle shows augemented reality view. Rewards for checking in to certain businesses.

Cons Doesn't have the "compliment" feature. Can't search phone contact list to add Yelp contacts. Bottom Line A beautifully designed app lets you find the best local eateries and businesses.

By Michael Muchmore

If you desperately need to find a good place to eat nearby, Yelp can come to your rescue. Designed with all the "metro" style cues, the Yelp for Windows Phone app (free) is a rare example of a Windows Phone app that doesn't fall short of its iPhone counterpart. It even includes some more advanced features like "monocle" (more on that later). Yelp's rating on the Windows Phone store is lower than it should be, but the recent update on July 18 should change that. The higher-rated, closely competing UrbanSpoon, while well designed and useful, offers far less than Yelp.

Setup
I installed the app on a Nokia Lumia 928 running Windows Phone 8 and a Samsung ATIV Odyssey. As only makes sense for an app intended to help you find local businesses, at installation Yelp asks if you'll allow it to access your location. The app would be far less useful without this, and in fact, you can't install it unless you tap the "allow" button. You can use the app without a Yelp account, but it's far more helpful if you do sign in.

Interface and Using Yelp for Windows Phone
Large red tiles on the home screen let you see Nearby, Bookmarks, Feed, Friends, Deals, and Recents. You can swipe to the right (visually cued by thumbnails peeking from the side of the screen) to see "hot+new nearby" and "about me" (if you've signed in). Tapping the Nearby tile displays a list of popular venue categories—Restaurants, Bars, Coffee & Tea, and so on. You can pin a home screen tile for any of these, and even make a home screen tile for a particular business, by holding your finger down on the entry and choosing "Pin."

Each business's page has five "tabs" you can swipe through, from left to right: info, reviews, photos, tips, and regulars. From the businesses page, you can place a phone call, see the menu, or call up a map; but a small map doesn't appear right on the main business page as it does in the iPhone app.

I often have to remind myself that Yelp is for more than just restaurants: I was trying to remember the name of the violin maker across the street from our office, since they occasionally have concerts. Google Maps didn't do the trick, but choosing "music venues" in Yelp found the YMP Concert Hall on the first page of results. You'll also find detailed reviews of opticians and hairstylists—pretty much any retail or service you can think of.

I mentioned in the outset that Yelp for Windows Phone even supports the "monocle" augmented-reality feature. This lets you hold up the phone to see business entries hovering over your camera view in a heads up display. But it was only available on one of my two test phones, the Nokia Lumia 928. On bottom of the results page for a Nearby category, the monocle button appeared, letting me use the phone's camera to view tags for businesses in the direction I was pointing. The Samsung ATIV Odyssey, however, lacked this button, probably due to some hardware spec limitations.

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Yelp (for Windows Phone)

Pros Excellent Windows Phone style interface. Vast repository of restaurant and business reviews. Lets you write reviews. Monocle shows augemented reality view. Rewards for checking in to certain businesses.

Cons Doesn't have the "compliment" feature. Can't search phone contact list to add Yelp contacts. Bottom Line A beautifully designed app lets you find the best local eateries and businesses.

By Michael Muchmore

If you desperately need to find a good place to eat nearby, Yelp can come to your rescue. Designed with all the "metro" style cues, the Yelp for Windows Phone app (free) is a rare example of a Windows Phone app that doesn't fall short of its iPhone counterpart. It even includes some more advanced features like "monocle" (more on that later). Yelp's rating on the Windows Phone store is lower than it should be, but the recent update on July 18 should change that. The higher-rated, closely competing UrbanSpoon, while well designed and useful, offers far less than Yelp.

Setup
I installed the app on a Nokia Lumia 928 running Windows Phone 8 and a Samsung ATIV Odyssey. As only makes sense for an app intended to help you find local businesses, at installation Yelp asks if you'll allow it to access your location. The app would be far less useful without this, and in fact, you can't install it unless you tap the "allow" button. You can use the app without a Yelp account, but it's far more helpful if you do sign in.

Interface and Using Yelp for Windows Phone
Large red tiles on the home screen let you see Nearby, Bookmarks, Feed, Friends, Deals, and Recents. You can swipe to the right (visually cued by thumbnails peeking from the side of the screen) to see "hot+new nearby" and "about me" (if you've signed in). Tapping the Nearby tile displays a list of popular venue categories—Restaurants, Bars, Coffee & Tea, and so on. You can pin a home screen tile for any of these, and even make a home screen tile for a particular business, by holding your finger down on the entry and choosing "Pin."

Each business's page has five "tabs" you can swipe through, from left to right: info, reviews, photos, tips, and regulars. From the businesses page, you can place a phone call, see the menu, or call up a map; but a small map doesn't appear right on the main business page as it does in the iPhone app.

I often have to remind myself that Yelp is for more than just restaurants: I was trying to remember the name of the violin maker across the street from our office, since they occasionally have concerts. Google Maps didn't do the trick, but choosing "music venues" in Yelp found the YMP Concert Hall on the first page of results. You'll also find detailed reviews of opticians and hairstylists—pretty much any retail or service you can think of.

I mentioned in the outset that Yelp for Windows Phone even supports the "monocle" augmented-reality feature. This lets you hold up the phone to see business entries hovering over your camera view in a heads up display. But it was only available on one of my two test phones, the Nokia Lumia 928. On bottom of the results page for a Nearby category, the monocle button appeared, letting me use the phone's camera to view tags for businesses in the direction I was pointing. The Samsung ATIV Odyssey, however, lacked this button, probably due to some hardware spec limitations.

View the original article here

Twitter (for Windows Phone)

Pros Full Twitter functionality. See conversation threads and images. Multiple account support. No external ads. Free. Shows Vines without leaving app. Translates tweets automatically.

Cons Fewer option settings than some third-party Twitter clients. Bottom Line Straight from the source the Twitter app for Windows Phone is the one you want when it comes to tweeting on your mobile.

By Michael Muchmore

The Windows Phone OS has built-in twitter support: its People app lets you connect to your social microblogging account and see updates and contacts. But for app richer experience—and the experience designed by the service's creator, the official Twitter app is hard to beat. The only other Twitter app in the Windows Phone store worthy of comparison is Rowi, which does offer full functionality and maybe even more control than the official Twitter app, but it's not free without ads, and its design isn't as polished as the from-the-source microblogging app, though that may be a matter of taste. Let's take a look at using the excellent official app.

Install
I tested the app on a Samsung ATIV Odyssey. You can get the Twitter app from the Windows Store, remotely install it from the Web, or have a text message sent to the phone with an installation link. On first run, you'll be asked to sign in to an existing account or you can create a new one from a link at the bottom of this page.

Before you can first view your tweet feed, you have to decide whether to allow the app to see your location. Then you'll have to make a similar decision about notifications. It probably makes sense to OK both of these options, to get the full mobile experience.

You can connect the Windows Phone Twitter app to multiple accounts, just as you can with other platform versions and apps. Switching between accounts is a simple matter of tapping-and-holding on your user name at the top, or a choice from the … menu on your Profile tab.

Interface
The Twitter for Windows Phone app bears a strong resemblance to the official mobile clients for other platforms—Android and iOS. Four big clear buttons grace the top: Home, @, #, and Profile  You can swipe through these four "modes" rather than having to tap the buttons, just as you can in Rowi. The buttons show dots below if new messages are awaiting, and in yet another nice interface touch, the button for the mode you're currently in lights up blue.

One advantage of the official twitter app over Rowi is that it lets you watch Vine videos right inside the app, without going out to a Web browser the way Rowi needs to do. Another trick Rowi can't match is the Twitter app's ability to translate foreign-language tweets on the fly. I followed a Spanish-speaking user, and when I tapped on a tweet to view it full-screen, the English translation appeared below the original tweet without my having to do anything. Rowi does offer to translate with Bing, too, but it's a deeper … menu choice.

Another option that you may want to set up is to let Twitter show status on your phone's lock screen. A button link from the Settings page takes you to Windows Phone settings where you can add Twitter as a "quick status" source. For some reason, though, after I did this, I didn't see the notifications on my phone's lock screen. Nor did I see the number of waiting tweets on the app's tile. I'll attribute this to OS version, the app is officially for WP7, but I'm running on WP8. I've contacted support and will update this review based on the response.

Tweeting, Retweeting, and More
Just as with the Web version, you can reply, retweet, and favorite any tweet after you tap into the tweet details. The … menu offers copy tweet, copy link to tweet, mail tweet, text tweet, and reply with message. I liked that the details view of a tweet shows the whole conversations, before and after the tweet you're viewing, as well as any photo included in the tweet.

When you tap the compose tweet button at the bottom of any of the app's four main pages, you'll get a familiar question, like "What's happening?" or "What's on your mind?" You'll also be able to take a picture with the camera's phone or add one from your camera roll. I couldn't, however, shoot a video for inclusion in my tweet. Happily, the app also let me delete a tweet I regretted.

From either app, I could change my profile images, but a subtle difference showed up: The official Twitter app showed my profile picture and background image with the same layout you see online, while Rowi showed the profile picture at the left—a minor difference, but one that illustrates the more standard design of the official app. In its favor, Rowi does offer more fine-grain options, such as text size, tile color order of tweets, and how many tweets to load how often. But for most users, the official client's settings are all that's needed.

Direct messaging is also well-handled by the Twitter app: When you start typing a recipient's name, matching contacts drop down from the text box. You can see your list of previous conversations. As an aside, I don't really understand why Twitter has to limit this messaging to 140 characters, unlike any other messaging system on the planet: It makes sense for tweets that would fill up followers' feeds, but not for one-on-one messaging.

The Meat of the Tweet
As probably makes sense, the official Twitter client for Windows Phone lets you engage in the social microblogging network in just about every way you'd want to. It may lack some customizability and settings of Rowi, but, for most Tweeps, the standard app is the best choice. Its ability to show more in the tweet details view trumps Rowi's other advantages, as does its ad-free view in the free version. Hence, Twitter for Windows Phone is our Editors' Choice among Windows Phone Twitter apps.

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Pandora (for Windows Phone)

Pros Awesome sound quality. No ads till the end of 2013! Simple, attractive interface. Wide musical selection.

Cons No scrubber or back button. Can't specify exact song. No digital locker. Bottom Line The ad-free Pandora app for Windows Phone is a must-have, deep source of music for your Microsoft mobile.

By Michael Muchmore

There's certainly no dearth of music apps in the various mobile app stores—even in the less expansive Windows Phone catalog—but as a major innovator in the field, Pandora remains a top choice among the many competitors. Sure, you don't get the digital locker or subscription options that let you listen to all the music you want, as you do with Xbox Music, Google Music, or Rdio. But unlike those, Pandora is free, with limited commercial interruptions. You can also subscribe to Pandora One account for $36 a year or $3.99 a month. This adds commercial-free listening and more skips per day.

In short, the Windows Phone app does everything Pandora does exceedingly well, and I'm not alone in this assessment—users have awarded it an uncommonly high 4.6 rating out of 5 in Windows Phone store. One of the coolest things about the app, which may account for this high rating: no ads will interrupt your listening though the end of 2013.

Signup and Setup
Getting a Pandora account follows the typical pattern for online services: You simply provide an email address, password, ZIP code, birth year, and optionally gender. A check box lets you opt into email notifications about music you're interested in, and another has you agree to the service terms. Once you've created an account, you'll be able to use it on any of Pandora's multitude of apps and integrations: You can find the music service on every phone and tablet operating system, as well as on the web and on home entertainment set-tops such as Roku and Apple TV.

After you've got yourself an account, the app asks you to type in your favorite artist or select from a list of 28 genres, from Alternative to Classical to Electronic to Metal World—you name it. Even after that selection, you have subcategories: After I chose New Age, Pandora presented me with subgenres like Relaxation, Ambient, Yoga, and Spa.

Interface
After you've created a station or two, you can start with the listening pleasure. To fine-tune a station, you can tap and hold its entry on your Pandora home screen and choose "Add variety." When you do this, you'll get another search box for adding an artist whose work and style you want to spice up your station.

As with every incarnation of Pandora, you get the track title, performer, and album name, then album art takes up the lion's share of the screen, below which are the standard thumbs up, thumbs down, and Skip buttons. You get six skips per hour per station, and up to 12 total skips per day. You can tap and hold a finger on the album art to get biographical info on the artist.

A three-dot menu button at the bottom of the player interface pops up choices for pinning the current station to the home screen, starting a new station, sharing the station via email to any contact on the phone or current track via Facebook. Other choices are to buy the song on Xbox Music, bookmark it (your bookmarked tracks will show up on Pandora.com), or indicating that your "tired of this track," to stop hearing it for a while.

One thing I miss that you get in competitors like Rdio is a scrubber like that in Rdio, which lets you skip ahead within a song. You also don't get a back button, in case you'd like to re-listen to a song. You can, however, swipe back through your previous songs' info and album covers, in case you forgot what that song you heard a while ago and loved was. And of course, with this type of service, you don't get to specify the exact song you want to hear, as you do with one of the paid services.

Sound Quality
But what are the most important things when it comes to an internet music service? Selection and sound quality, that's what! First, sound quality: On my Nokia Lumia 928 test phone connected over Wi-Fi the sound quality was simply awesome.

Pandora's musical selection is broad and deep. From Justin Bieber, to Sharon Van Etten, to Orbital, to Thelonious Monk, to Thomas Tallis, there are very few musical tastes that won't be able to find their cup of musical tea through the graces of Pandora. Of course, if your tastes are extremely narrow, say, you only prefer 18th century British choral music, you may run into more repetition that you'd care for.

The Pandora app for Windows Phone interface is not relegated to just when you're viewing the app itself: It also shows up on the lock screen when it's running in the background. You can pause or skip the currently playing song without having to log in to your phone—convenient! I wouldn't mind a notification of song change, the way you get on the Windows 8 Radyo app, but I can see how people wouldn't want the interruption to what they're doing on their smallest screen.

Pandora: A Musical Gift Box
If you dig music of any stripe, you'd be doing yourself a disservice not to download Pandora for Windows Phone. At least for the rest of this year, having this incredible mass of free—and ad-free—music at your fingertips is one of the best deals around. So at least for now, Pandora wins a PCMag Editors' Choice for Windows Phone streaming music apps.

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Facebook (for Windows Phone)

Pros Clear interface with good use of touch. Separate home screen tiles for separate Facebook features. Lock screen photos. Notifications.

Cons A paucity of emoticons and stickers, let alone chat heads. Camera feature limited compared with iPhone's. Bottom Line The Windows Phone Facebook app lacks some bells and whistles found in the other mobile platform's equivalents, but it's quick and reasonably feature-complete.

By Michael Muchmore

Windows Phone 8 comes with built in Facebook integration: Its included People app will show you updates, the Messenger app lets you conduct Facebook chats, and from other apps you can share to the leading social network. But none of this replaces an actual purpose-built interface to Facebook. The Windows Phone Facebook app got off to a shaky start, with users complaining about performance and limited capabilities, but, with this latest version, Microsoft's mobile platform has an improved app that holds its own against its OS and Android counterparts.

Setup
I installed the app on a Nokia Lumia 928 running Windows Phone 8. In addition to the usual permission granting for location, the new Facebook app for Windows Phone has a couple of intriguing new features that you can enable the first time you run the app. The first is the ability to display your Facebook photos on the phone's lock screen. This is actually a pretty cool way to personalize the phone. You can choose which of your albums to derive photos from, and one of two layouts. Both of these also display your most recent Facebook notifications. The feature actually does a nice job of showing your most-liked images, rather than just random ones.

Next, you decide whether you want to enable toast notifications. These are those rectangles that slide down from the top of the screen no matter what you're doing on the phone, telling you that you have a new message, like, or comment, and then slide back out of view. For some reason, I saw neither toast nor live tile updates on my test Lumia 928, though I'd enabled these. I did see both of these notification types functioning on a colleague's HTC 8X, however.

Interface
The interface of the Facebook Windows Phone strongly resembles that of other Facebook mobile apps: The lined button at top left slides out a dark gray left-side panel, which lets you switch among your profile, news feed, messages, places, events, friends, and groups. At the bottom of this list are Apps and Settings. As in the other mobile Facebook apps (and on the website itself), along the top are buttons for Friend requests, Messages, and that Earth-shaped icon for Notifications. Swiping left-to-right moves you through these modes, as well as simply tapping the icons.

You can search from atop the left-side menu, and a top-right button takes you to your recent chats and favorite friends. The new app lets you extend its footprint on your phone: You can make start screen live tiles for subsections such as Messages, Nearby, Events, and Groups.

One interface-related testing note is that the app performed snappily on both phones observed for this review. No longer can the charge of slow performance be leveled at Facebook for Windows Phone the way it was in earlier versions.

News Feed
A gear icon next to the News Feed choice in the left-side control panel lets you decide whether you want to just show top stories or all recent stories. One awesome feature that was missing in the iPhone Facebook app for a long time is the simple ability to delete a post of your own. But the iOS app has surpassed this capability, now letting you adjust the privacy setting for a post—public, friends of friends, friends only, and so on.

The iOS app, but not the Windows Phone app also lets you hide others' as well as your own posts from your timeline. Neither goes the next step, letting you change how many updates you see from a particular user, as you can on the website. One cool interface touch the app does have is "shake to refresh." You can still drag down the screen to refresh or simply tap a refresh icon, too.

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Netflix (for Windows Phone)

Pros Excellent picture quality. Huge content library. Simple, clear interface.

Cons No offline viewing. Bottom Line This Netflix app lets you take advantage of your Windows Phone's large high-res screen, with a deep library of movies and TV shows.

By Michael Muchmore

Very few things with a screen of any size are without a way to play Netflix movies and TV shows, and the company is pretty consistent about its presentation in all the various player scenarios. Whether you're watching on a large screen TV using a Roku box, an iPad, or a mobile phone, you'll see that familiar bright red screen and logo, and a clear way to navigate around your account and start watching a video stream. The Netflix app for Windows 8 is no exception: You get access to your instant queue, top picks, and can start watching almost as soon as you install it. 

Get Started with Netflix on Your Windows Phone
Of course, you'll have to have a Netflix account for this app to be of any use, but anyone with a smartphone these days is likely to already be a member of the leading streaming video entertainment service. For just $7.99 a month, you get a massive library of movies and TV shows, including exclusives like the wildly funny new episodes of Arrested Development. If you don't already have an account, a link takes you to the Web signup page.

Once you've signed in with your account, you'll see a Metro-style version of your Netflix account. The startup view shows Recently Watched, along with a button to continue watching a show you started and didn't finish. Swipe down to see the Top Ten recommendations for you, Popular on Netflix, Popular on Facebook, New Releases, and more shows in genres you've frequented.

Swiping right to left reveals a text selection of Genres, a Search box, and your Instant Queue. Tapping any show's "box" image launches playing of the show immediately. I'd prefer options to read its description and credits, perhaps watch a trailer, and to add to my queue. As it turns out, if you tap on the title text (which also shows the user star rating) instead of the thumbnail image, you'll get just those options.

So as you can see, there are plenty of ways to find tons of shows to watch. Though Netflix doesn't publicize the actual number of programs available, the company states that it's constantly looking for new deals with content producers and studios. Sometimes a current hit TV show will be available on Hulu but not Netflix, so you may want that app, as well. If the app's tools aren't floating your boat, there are a couple of excellent sites dedicated to nothing but finding good shows on Netflix by scanning new releases and ratings, including instantwatcher.com, A Better Queue, and the visually interesting Pivot View.

Watching Movies and TV
Unsurprisingly for a service that produces a pleasing HD picture on large-screen TVs, the picture quality on my Nokia Lumia 928's sharp AMOLED 1280x768 TrueColor screen was crystal clear. While playing a movie or TV show, the on-screen controls are at a minimum. Tapping on the screen reveals the title of the production at the top, and at the bottom there's a pause button and a scrubber, which let you slide forward and backward through the show. You also get a Subtitles icon in the shape of a text bubble.

And that's it. I do wish I could just tap to full-screen the view and remove the controls immediately: instead you have to wait for them to fade out after a few seconds. As with any streaming service, playback is dependent on connection speed and Neflix use volume, but during my testing I didn't encounter a single playback hiccup.

One main drawback of Netflix for Windows Phone is that there's no off-line viewing feature. It is, after all, a streaming service, and this limitation is shared with any other media playing app that streams. To get movies onto the phone for offline viewing, you have to transfer them from your PC using the Windows Phone app for desktop after downloading them from Xbox Video or another source of DRM-free video.

The Best Flicks for Your Windows Phone?
Netflix is a must for movie and TV buffs, and movies and TV shows look great in the Netflix app for Windows Phone. The app is a snap to navigate, and you can add any content from Netflix's huge library via browsing, searching, and seeing what the service proposes based on your viewing history. The ability to continue watching a show you started on another screen is a big plus. Don't expect offline viewing, but that's a limitation no matter what device you use to watch Netflix. All told, Netflix for Windows Phone is a big win for mobile couch potatoes.

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The Weather Channel (for Windows Phone)

Pros Trusted source of weather info. Simple, clear, touch-friendly design. Animated weather maps. Hourly and 10-day forecasts. TV video weathercasts.

Cons Live tile doesn't update frequently enough. No lock screen entry. Premium features only available for Nokia phones. Bottom Line You need a weather app for your Windows Phone, and this one does the trick.

By Michael Muchmore

Every morning, before heading out the door to work, I pick up my smart phone or tablet (whichever is closer to hand) and run the Weather Channel app to see whether I'll need to tote along my bumbershoot in case of the advent of inclement precipitation. In the cooler seasons I'll do the same to see which jacket I'll need to don. Sure, all the mobile platforms come with built-in weather apps, but those can't hold a candle in the wind to Weather.com's free, in-depth, up-to-the-minute, deep yet concise coverage.

There are actually two versions of the app: One for any Windows Phone user, and a Nokia version that adds a few more features, which I'll discuss later. For now, let's take a walk through setting up and using the Weather Channel app available to all Windows Phone users.

As you'd expect, the app requires access to your location to be worth much, so at install you'd probably better accept the privacy warning prompt. Next, so that there's no confusion over whether 30 degrees is cold or hot, if you're in one of the three countries on earth that don't use the metric system—the Burma, Liberia, and the United States—you can choose Imperial measurements, as opposed to the Celsius units used by the rest of the developed and undeveloped world.

Interface
The first run of the app has a small delay, but if you've allowed location sharing, after a few seconds, you'll see your local temperature, the next three day's forecast, and any alerts about severe conditions. When I tested the app on my Nokia Lumia 928, I saw two such alerts—a Heat Advisory and an Air Quality Alert. Tapping the orange notification opened a page with more info on these conditions.

Tapping on the weekday entry below the big temperature number opens an hourly table of upcoming conditions, showing projected temperature, precipitation, and wind. This is very useful if you know you'll be outside during the day. Swiping right show the 36-hour forecast, and swiping again opens a table for the next 10 day's weather, including a graph showing the rise and fall of high and low temperatures and each day's percent chance of rain. It's a really clear and nifty view, especially when it's fixing to cool off, as it finally is at testing time.

You can swipe through three more sections in the app in addition to the current conditions page: radar map, video, and menu. You can select a number of map overlays—radar, clouds, both, UV, temperature, feels like, dew point, and wind speed, as well as the past 24 hours precipitation. You can pan and zoom around the map to see conditions in other areas, and just hit the location button to get back to where you currently are.

Though I've read comments in the Windows Phone app store claiming that the animated weather maps were too many hours old to be useful, that was not my experience in testing the maps. I saw a radar map for Pittsburgh that ended just 4 minutes prior to the testing time.

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Pandora (for Windows Phone)

Pros Awesome sound quality. No ads till the end of 2013! Simple, attractive interface. Wide musical selection.

Cons No scrubber or back button. Can't specify exact song. No digital locker. Bottom Line The ad-free Pandora app for Windows Phone is a must-have, deep source of music for your Microsoft mobile.

By Michael Muchmore

There's certainly no dearth of music apps in the various mobile app stores—even in the less expansive Windows Phone catalog—but as a major innovator in the field, Pandora remains a top choice among the many competitors. Sure, you don't get the digital locker or subscription options that let you listen to all the music you want, as you do with Xbox Music, Google Music, or Rdio. But unlike those, Pandora is free, with limited commercial interruptions. You can also subscribe to Pandora One account for $36 a year or $3.99 a month. This adds commercial-free listening and more skips per day.

In short, the Windows Phone app does everything Pandora does exceedingly well, and I'm not alone in this assessment—users have awarded it an uncommonly high 4.6 rating out of 5 in Windows Phone store. One of the coolest things about the app, which may account for this high rating: no ads will interrupt your listening though the end of 2013.

Signup and Setup
Getting a Pandora account follows the typical pattern for online services: You simply provide an email address, password, ZIP code, birth year, and optionally gender. A check box lets you opt into email notifications about music you're interested in, and another has you agree to the service terms. Once you've created an account, you'll be able to use it on any of Pandora's multitude of apps and integrations: You can find the music service on every phone and tablet operating system, as well as on the web and on home entertainment set-tops such as Roku and Apple TV.

After you've got yourself an account, the app asks you to type in your favorite artist or select from a list of 28 genres, from Alternative to Classical to Electronic to Metal World—you name it. Even after that selection, you have subcategories: After I chose New Age, Pandora presented me with subgenres like Relaxation, Ambient, Yoga, and Spa.

Interface
After you've created a station or two, you can start with the listening pleasure. To fine-tune a station, you can tap and hold its entry on your Pandora home screen and choose "Add variety." When you do this, you'll get another search box for adding an artist whose work and style you want to spice up your station.

As with every incarnation of Pandora, you get the track title, performer, and album name, then album art takes up the lion's share of the screen, below which are the standard thumbs up, thumbs down, and Skip buttons. You get six skips per hour per station, and up to 12 total skips per day. You can tap and hold a finger on the album art to get biographical info on the artist.

A three-dot menu button at the bottom of the player interface pops up choices for pinning the current station to the home screen, starting a new station, sharing the station via email to any contact on the phone or current track via Facebook. Other choices are to buy the song on Xbox Music, bookmark it (your bookmarked tracks will show up on Pandora.com), or indicating that your "tired of this track," to stop hearing it for a while.

One thing I miss that you get in competitors like Rdio is a scrubber like that in Rdio, which lets you skip ahead within a song. You also don't get a back button, in case you'd like to re-listen to a song. You can, however, swipe back through your previous songs' info and album covers, in case you forgot what that song you heard a while ago and loved was. And of course, with this type of service, you don't get to specify the exact song you want to hear, as you do with one of the paid services.

Sound Quality
But what are the most important things when it comes to an internet music service? Selection and sound quality, that's what! First, sound quality: On my Nokia Lumia 928 test phone connected over Wi-Fi the sound quality was simply awesome.

Pandora's musical selection is broad and deep. From Justin Bieber, to Sharon Van Etten, to Orbital, to Thelonious Monk, to Thomas Tallis, there are very few musical tastes that won't be able to find their cup of musical tea through the graces of Pandora. Of course, if your tastes are extremely narrow, say, you only prefer 18th century British choral music, you may run into more repetition that you'd care for.

The Pandora app for Windows Phone interface is not relegated to just when you're viewing the app itself: It also shows up on the lock screen when it's running in the background. You can pause or skip the currently playing song without having to log in to your phone—convenient! I wouldn't mind a notification of song change, the way you get on the Windows 8 Radyo app, but I can see how people wouldn't want the interruption to what they're doing on their smallest screen.

Pandora: A Musical Gift Box
If you dig music of any stripe, you'd be doing yourself a disservice not to download Pandora for Windows Phone. At least for the rest of this year, having this incredible mass of free—and ad-free—music at your fingertips is one of the best deals around. So at least for now, Pandora wins a PCMag Editors' Choice for Windows Phone streaming music apps.

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Aviary (for Windows Phone)

Pros Lots of effective photo editing tools. Simple, clear interface. Photo effect filters.

Cons No pinch zoom. No sharing options. No extra filters or effects available through in-app purchase. Bottom Line Aviary gives you a flock of excellent photo-editing tools for Windows Phone, but the app has yet to really take flight.

By Michael Muchmore

Aviary makes some of our favorite, easy-to-use photo editing software. It's available in many venues, including as the default online editor integrated with Flickr, as an iPhone app, and even as a Windows 8 app. It includes a dozen Instagram-like special photo-look effects, but adds loads of photo correction, adjustment, and enhancement tools, like text, stickers, cropping, blemish removal, and drawing brushes all in a super clear, simple interface. The app has recently been updated as a Windows Phone 8 app, and even though it's a top choice for image editing on that platform, the app still falls short of its iPhone counterpart and other Windows Phone photo apps.

Interface
I tested the app on a spiffy new Nokia Lumia 928. The startup interface for Aviary on Windows Phone differs in design from the iPhone version—not in a bad way, though: A large sample image takes up the largest part of the screen, followed by thumbnails of your camera roll and a camera button for snapping a shot on the spot. The app doesn't add any shooting features, but the excellent Windows Phone camera interface is less in need of that than the iPhone's, which doesn't give you access to ISO, exposure, and so on. A Browse button lets you traverse all your photo folders including any that reside in the cloud on SkyDrive or on Facebook (if you've hooked up your account to your Windows Phone). You can't swipe through images the way you can in the iPhone app, however.

After the initial screen, the Aviary Windows Phone app's interface is nearly identical to that of its iPhone app counterpart, once you select an image. It's also nearly identical to the top free photo app in the store—Picture Perfect, and to the top paid photo app, Instagraph, though the latter adds the actual Instagram filters and lets you share the picture on Instagram. Unlike the iPhone version of Aviary, however, I couldn't change the interface's button selection and order.

Like the iPhone version, Aviary for Windows Phone has a streamlined workflow from selection to image adjustment to enhancing to sharing. The editing interface sports a row of 15 cartoon-like but very clear, labeled icon buttons along the bottom. The first is simply Enhance, which offers four options—Auto, Night, Backlit, and Balance. On several test images, the Auto made very subtle fixes, while the Backlit and Balance tools noticeably improved problematic photos. Unfortunately, I couldn't unpinch to zoom, as I could on the iPhone version of Aviary and in Picture Perfect.

Filters and Other Effects
Aviary's Effects button leads to Instagram-like retro film looks and monochrome choices. There are 12 in all, and unlike the iPhone version of Aviary, there's no in-app up-sell option for getting more. When I asked an Aviary rep whether these would be offered at some point, I got this reply:

"For a limited time, Photo Editor by Aviary comes with a set of filters and stickers that are free to Windows Phone 8 users. Once we have a better sense of user dynamics and are ready to roll out the in-app purchases, users will have the option of purchasing additional filters and stickers while they are editing their photos."

Most of the effects have non-descriptive names, such as people's first names, which doesn't help much in selecting one. You do, however, get a sample image with the effect applied in the thumbnail. I like that once you use one tool, like one of these effects, you can go back and edit the photo more with any of the other tools, like cropping or brightness. This gives you a lot more control and customization than just applying a preset filter. One missing tool is tilt-shift, aka, selective focus. Free competitor Fhotoroom offers a well-functioning tool to produce this nifty effect.

The Stickers tool lets you overlay things like moustaches, eyeglasses, hats, speech bubbles, arrows, and other useful items on top of your photo. Again, you don't get the option to add more stickers at cost the way you can in the iPhone version.

The app's crop tool uses large touchable corner controls and offers preset aspect ratios, but the inability to zoom limits its usefulness. Another tool for which that's an even bigger problem is the blemish tool. Despite this shortcoming, however, I was able to remove a pimple from my test subject's forehead fairly convincingly.

No Sharing?
When I was done editing a test photograph, I had but one option, to save my new creation to a folder called Saved Pictures. No Facebook, no Flickr, no SkyDrive, no email. Of course, it's easy enough in Windows Phone to share to any of those places from the folder, but it's preferable for this to be a part of the app's workflow, the way it is in another Windows Phone photo app: Fhotoroom. 

Does Aviary's Windows Phone App Take Flight?
This official Aviary app feels just like what it probably is: a proof-of-concept demonstration of the software's photo-editing capabilities, rather than a full-bodied photo app like the one the company has produced for iOS. There are no sharing options, to social networks or otherwise, and no configuration settings. Don't get me wrong, the app offers an abundance of effective photo tools that will serve many users' purposes.  But if you want more than basic editing, you may be better off with another Windows Phone photo editing app, such as Picture Perfect; or for photo editing plus a community, the rather interesting Fhotoroom.

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Skype (for Windows Phone)

Pros Beautiful, clean interface. Background operation. Cheap calls to regular phones. Good voice sound quality. Group text chat and group voice calls.

Cons No search in contact list. No group video chat. No video or voice messaging. Text chat lacks photo or file transfer. Bottom Line Skype is the department store of communication: voice, video, and text chat, as well as calls to regular phones. The Windows app is attractive and functional, though it doesn't offer all the features of desktop Skype.

By Michael Muchmore, Sara Yin, Alex Colon

Skype is part of the culture at this point, with widespread use in both personal and public spheres. I'm often amazed at how many hot new "breakthrough" apps really just offer subsets of what Skype has offered for over a decade, apps like Kik, Oovoo, Viber, and WhatsApp. In our original review of Skype for Windows Phone (free, with optional service fees), our main beef was that it lacked background operation, making it pretty pointless for inbound communications. Microsoft, which bought Skype last year, has rectified that situation: The Skype app for Windows Phone now can accept and notify you about calls and chats no matter what else you're doing on the phone.

More than just for video-calling, Skype is pretty much an all-in-one communication service; not only does it offer voice, video, and text chatting with other Skype users, but you can call regular phones at much lower rates than you'd pay traditional phone carriers. Both subscription and pay-as-you-go credits are available, starting at $2.99 a month for US and Canada, and 2.3 cents per minute.

Setup and Signup
I installed and tested Skype for this review on a Nokia Lumia 928 running Windows Phone 8. You first agree to the full-page license agreement, which oddly states that the app might use cellular data even if Wi-Fi is available. Of course, if you already have a Skype account from desktop app use, you can simply sign in with that, and all your contacts and history will be replicated on the phone.

The next easiest option is to sign up for a Skype account using your Facebook account or Microsoft account (which you already have if you've used Hotmail, Outlook.com, or Messenger).

Absent any of those options, new users can sign up for a Skype account by entering an email, DOB, gender, language, mobile phone number, and a new Skype user name and password. After a CAPTCHA entry and email confirmation, you're ready for Skyping.

On first sign-in to a new account, the app asks whether you want to allow message notfications when the app is closed.

Interface
As you'd expect, the Skype app for Windows Phone sports the clean look formerly known as "Metro," with its large thin fonts and tiles.  The startup home interface lets you swipe through Favorites, Contacts, People (gleaned from the phone's People app), and Recent sections. On your profile page, you can set your status, either available or invisible, as well as enter a profile picture from the phone and a "mood message"—just a text status that shows up on your profile when contacts view it.

One annoyance for me is that theres' no search feature in contact list; you have to scroll down alphabetically to find who you want. Other than that, it's a highly clear and usable interface.

Voice and Video Calls
I can say with confidence that the voice quality of Skype, even on international calls, is actually better than cell service. Skype has long been in the forefront of developing codecs to make sure this is the case. Video call quality is more dependent on connection speed, and though at times it can look somewhat impressionistic, it's usually is good enough to make you feel you've really visited with your friend, relative, or colleague.

With broadband Wi-Fi connections on both sides, you can get surprisingly good "HD" video quality. Granted, it's not up to the quality of Apple's FaceTime, but that only operates within the restricted domain of Apple-only devices. You can still text while you're in a video call, but unlike Skype for desktop, there's no group video chatting.

IM Texting
Skype has for years let you send and receive instant messages as well as conducting voice and video calls. IM chatting in the Windows Phone app is more limited than on the desktop. You get the same set of smilies as in other Skype instances, and you can add more users for group chat. Earlier entries are time-stamped, but you don't see if your contact is typing, or if they read your message, as you can with most modern IM systems. IM clearly takes a back seat to voice and video.

Calling Cell Phones and Landlines
Many people are surprised when I mention that Skype lets you communicate with landlines and cell phones, as well as just with other Skype users, and the Windows Phone app supports all the functionality mentioned in this section. I frequently use Skype to call foreign numbers, usually just to get the other person to turn on Skype for a free voice or video call. You can reload your account in $10 increments, with calls costing from 2.3 cents a minute. You can auto-recharge this when your balance falls below $2. Alternatively, you can subscribe to unlimited service for $2.99 a month for U.S. (including Puerto Rico and Guam) and Canada; other plans, such as $1.19 a month for 60 minutes to China, or unlimited world for $13.99 a month.

You can also set up Skype to receive calls from plain-old phones and cellphones, with a Skype Number. This lets you receive actual calls in whatever Skype app you're running. Prices for this vary by country whether you have a subscription, but they start at a very reasonable $5 a month.

A couple caveats for using Skype to replace your phone: It doesn't offer local emergency calling such as 911 in the U.S. Also, sending SMS text messages is pricier than with most cell phones, at 11.2 cents per message. 

Missing Features
As is already probably pretty clear from the above, there are several Skype features found on other platforms that are missing in the Windows Phone app. I already mentioned the lack of video and voice messaging, which will no doubt appear in the app at some point. You also can't send photos or files, let alone share your screen.

As far as the competition goes, the newer Viber app and service has a couple advantages when it comes to call handling: It lets you move a call from your handset to your computer or mobile service easily, and lets you auto-answer calls with a text message. Skype is more of a one-device-at-a-time setup, though it's easy enough to see recent history on any of the devices and start another call. And remember that Viber doesn't do video—a Windows Phone version of Tango would be a better match, but that video-calling app is morphing into a gaming communication service, with support for new phones dwindling, including no more support for Windows Phone 8.

Skyping the Windows Phone Way
Despite lacking the features mentioned in the last section, Skype for Windows Phone contains everything you need for what most people want from the leading VoIP and video-calling service. Its ability to run in the background and display notifications for new messages and calls removes our biggest previous peeve. Skype earns a PCMag Editors' Choice not only because it offers excellent VoIP, IM, and video calling in a well-designed interface, but also because there's simply no other app or service that offers so much in the way of communication possibilities.

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