The Windows Phone desktop app for Windows Phone 8 devices has finally come out of the beta, after over six months in preview form. The app, which is used to manage files and sync media with your Windows Phone 8 device has been hardly a replacement for the excellent Zune solution for the earlier generation Windows Phone 7 devices. But with Windows Phone 8 adding the MTP protocol for file management, the Zune app has been useless, while the Windows Phone app, with its limited features, proved of little utility. Anyway, the app has now added more features and is now available for download, in case you are craving for a decent sync app for Windows Phone 8, and don’t want to go down the explorer route.
According to the Microsoft Blog, these are the new features of the Windows Phone desktop app –
- Expanded podcast support. Support for iTunes podcasts has been a useful feature in the preview versions of the app, but many people get their podcasts from other sources. Now, as long as your podcasts are saved in a folder, you can automatically sync them to your phone.
- Simplified updates. Previous versions of the app required you to install updates from windowsphone.com. Now the app tells you when improvements are available, so you install them with a click.
- Flexible library selection. To provide more flexibility, the app can now sync files from any library or folder on your computer, even if they’re on an external hard drive.
- Many bug fixes. We’ve rolled up your feedback on the preview versions and made fixes to improve performance.
Adding sync for podcasts and better library selection for music, the app gains some pretty useful functionality. There is also a metro-style Windows 8 app for Windows Phone, but we are not sure if that will be adding more features soon. If you feel that the MTP solution is way too much work for file management on your Windows Phone 8 device, then check this app out.
Source Windows Phone Blog