Nokia Collection for Windows Phone

Just when it seems like Xbox games for Windows Phone’s darkest hour, when all hope of a new release before January 30^th has long been abandoned… Nokia once again comes to our rescue with a new exclusive Xbox for Lumia owners: Blobster from Chillingo (who we’ve barely written about today) and Divine Robot. With this surprise late-day release, there are now eleven Nokia exclusives in the Xbox lineup.

Nokia is constantly tweaking their user experience on their Windows Phone 8 lineup and while sometimes we get new features, other times we just get fixes and under the hood changes.

The boys and girls from Finland are once again actively tweaking their system apps for their Windows Phone 8 Lumias. We’ve received a few tips this morning that their Network+ app has been updated and indeed, we can confirm.

The app is now being bumped to version 1.2.4.18. What’s changed? Heck if we know though we can tell you that the app, formely called Calls + SMS, deals with some cell network settings and is considered pretty important, especially if you’re experiencing any oddities in cell behavior.

Nokia has been a busy bee indeed, and has begun rolling out a number of updates for its collection of apps and system apps available for Windows Phone hardware. Accessories, World of Redbull, Weather, Panorama and Ringtone Maker. We're not entirely sure what's new in the apps that have been bumped to a new version, and life is made that much more difficult with the Windows Phone Store being down.

Hot damn. Nokia has updated a handful of their Windows Phone 8 apps for the Lumia 820 and 920. Most of you are going to bed excited for ‘Portico’ to hit tomorrow, but now get even more. Nokia has updates in the Marketplace for Nokia Maps, Cinemagraph, Nokia Music and some audio settings. Read on to see what has changed.

Draw Something for Lumia Windows Phones has been updated to match the version the official app is currently on for all other handsets. Unfortunately a changelog isn't available (as usual with most apps and games), but it's believed the latest release, version 1.0.13 fixes bugs that saw the game freeze when waiting for opponents to guess the drawing, and more.

The paid edition of Draw Something saw the updated being rolled out last week. Nokia offers Draw Something for free (but is ad-supported) in its collection of OEM apps.

Nokia has just begun rolling out an update for their Creative Studio app for editing your photos. The other day we gave you a tutorial on how to make the best of the app, as it’s quite handy for quickly touching up your images (and not downscaling their size).

Version 4.1.2.4 is now trickling out, updated from 4.0.16.13, though it may take awhile to hit the servers (only a few of our staff were able to see the update, so this is very fresh). 

Just a few weeks ago Nokia released PhotoBeamer for Lumia Windows Phone 8 devices such as the Lumia 820 and 920. Today, the photo sharing app has been released for Lumia Windows Phones running Windows Phone 7.5 such as the Lumia 900 and 610.

Photobeamer allows you to display your pictures on PC's or other web-enabled devices. Just run the app, head over to Photobeamer.com, scan the QR code that appears on the screen with your Lumia Windows Phone and your photos will appear on that web-enabled device.  It can be a computer, tablet, or a friends phone.  You just need a 3G/4G network or WiFi to send the pictures. 

We contacted Nokia a short while ago to check in on their navigation apps and we were told to expect some updates soon. Today one of the first of the updates has arrived to bring the Nokia Drive+ Beta to version 2.1.

So what’s new? As well as the usual bug fixes they have introduced a better way to manage power consumption. Read on past the break for more details.