Date: February 6, 2011
App type: Photo
Publisher: Yahoo! Inc.
Release date: February 2, 2010
Price: FREE
Phone features used: Location services, data connection, media library, push notifications, web browser, owner identity, phone identity
Slowly but surely, the list of must-have mobile apps from other platforms are making their way to Windows Phone. This week's pick, Flickr, is one such app. And while it doesn't enable the deep services integration I so desperately want on Windows Phone, it does at least tie Microsoft's great new mobile platform to one of the most popular and powerful online photo services.
Flickr for Windows Phone provides two basic bits of functionality. First, you can use this app to upload the photos you've taken with the phone's camera to the Flickr service online. And second, you can also view photos on Flickr, and interact with them by leaving and responding to comments, and manage your own photo collection. It's a pretty full-featured app.
Navigation occurs via a now-familiar multi-column panorama with You, Explore, Recent, and Invite Contacts columns, each of which is formatted in the way that makes the most sense for the topic at hand. For example, while the You and Recent columns provide a nice combination of thumbnails and text, the Explore column is more graphical, with differently-sized thumbnails highlighting the available photos.
Photo uploading occurs through a simple and obvious Upload button at the top of the screen. After choosing which picture(s) to upload, the Flickr app provides a nice screen for naming and describing the uploaded item(s) and setting the Flickr privacy setting. An animation indicates something is happening, and then a Flickr "double dot" graphic appears on the thumbnails of uploaded pictures. Nice.
Overall, nothing surprising, but the Flickr app is yet another notch in Windows Phone's belt. If Yahoo! Could just get those integrated services going in the future, this would be the perfect phone/services experience.
