Microsoft Bing Apps For Windows Phone 8 Launched

In an effort to bring its desktop and mobile operating systems closer, Microsoft has launched the Bing Apps suite for Windows Phone 8. Windows 8 users are greeted by these couple of apps as soon as they boot into a new system as they are preinstalled, and now Windows Phone 8 users can experience the same. The four apps in this suite, Bing News, Bing Weather, Bing Sports and Bing Finance are basically straight ports of the ones on Windows 8, but optimized and customized for Windows Phone 8. Here’s details about the new Microsoft Bing Apps for Windows Phone 8!

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Microsoft Bing Apps Suite for Windows Phone 8

Bing News

“Want to keep tabs on what’s happening in the world? The Bing News app for Windows Phone has you covered. With the new app, you have one comprehensive experience to keep tabs on the latest headlines and videos of breaking news.  And the app is customizable so you can track specific story categories, topics, or news sources that matter to you.  You can even rearrange the headline clusters so that the news that matters most to you is at the top.”

First up is the Bing News app, which incorporates all the great features of the full desktop app including fast caching and selective sources plus adds support for HD pictures and wide live tiles. There’s also an option to get notified when breaking news happens. Unfortunately there’s no lockscreen support yet, but we’re pretty sure it will be implemented sooner or later.

Bing Weather

“Want to know to know whether you need to grab an umbrella? Now you can stay a step ahead of the weather with an overview of conditions including temperature, precipitation and wind.”

Microsoft’s own Weather app isn’t too shabby compared to the other top weather apps for Windows Phone 8 and should satisfy you if you’re not a fan of fancy animations and the like. The information is all there, in depth forecasts, daily/hourly temperatures, weather maps, “Feels like” temperature and so much more. Again, there’s no lockscreen support, yet.

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Bing Sports

“The Bing Sports app is your personal sports companion letting you stay on top of the sports and teams that you care about.  You can swipe through to see the recent scores, top sports headlines, game videos, photos, schedules, standings, extensive statistics and much more across most major sports.”

Bing Sports is a great app for Sports fans since it brings all the latest news, fixtures, scores, pictures and videos to your phone. The best part is the ability to add your favorite teams to the “My Teams” area to quickly keep up with their latest happenings. Live tile support is included as well, so there will be some pretty sweet sport photos adorning your home screen.

Bing Finance

“Keep tabs on your portfolio and gauge performance of your stocks at a glance with the Bing Finance app which include financial news, market info, watchlists, timely US stock updates and customizable interactive charts.”

Last but not the least is Bing Finance, which is similar to Bing News, except totally focused on all things business and stocks. You can select what companies you want to follow and even choose to have them pinned as a live tile, with graphs and data to boot. Also, you can set news sources of your choice.

The Bing Apps suite for Windows Phone 8 foreshadow the rumored merging of the desktop and mobile versions of Windows, so until that happens, at least you have a semblance between the currently separate versions of it. Microsoft has of course made sure that the apps are as polished as you’d expect, but there are a couple of things we’d like to see added. There’s always next time though!