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Sunday, February 5, 2012

A Swiper's Guide to the Lumia 800



The swipe concept that we all love in the Nokia N9 has been a major talking point amongst users, so it is interesting to take a swipe at how the Lumia uses 'swipe' in its interface. 

Generally, swipe not been fully implemented in all it's glory on the Lumia 800. The main home interface of tiles can only be swiped to the left to reveal a more detailed menu of tiles. To get to the multitasking screen, you need to hold down the "Back Arrow" virtual button on the bottom left of the phone which reveals all the open applications or screens. However, many of the applications do use the swipe to get between various screens. For example: 

Swipe in People - This tile brings together your different social media worlds to one integrated view. The swipes give you the following views: 
What's New (tweets / facebook updates) -> Recent (calls / text) -> All (phone and facebook contacts)

Swipe in Messaging - In Messaging, you can swipe across from your SMS threaded conversations to reveal your online messaging such as facebook etc. This makes the integration between social media and real life text messaging much easier. 

Swipe in Marketplace - Swipe between 
Applications -> Games -> Music 
and within these options, you can swipe between applications that are 
Featured -> Categories -> New -> Top. 

Swipe in Camera Mode - When you are taking photos, you can swipe across to the right to see your previous photos / videos taken which makes it easier to review captured media without pressing buttons (which we now hate doing thanks to the N9). 

Swipe in Calendar - You can have a look at what your day looks like, then swipe to check out your agenda overview of your week, and then swipe one more time to check out your To-Do list. Much faster!

Swipe in Emails - Swipe between All your emails, Unread emails, and those classified Urgent. However swipe does not take you from one email to another which requires you to press the forward and back buttons on the screen. 

Swipe in facebook - This has  made Facebook browsing on the Lumia a little more interesting as you can swipe across from the News Feed to 
Photos -> Events -> Notifications -> Profile.

So there you have it, a quick overview of the future of swipe in Microsoft Phone 7 phones. There could be changes in later updates so a lot of that depends on your feedback. What swipes do you think must be included? 

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