Photos taken with Lumia 930 beat iPhone 6 Plus and Galaxy Note 4 in blind test

A recent blind test of photos taken by various recent smartphones has resulted in a win for theLumia 930 and its 20MP PureView camera beating out images taken by the iPhone 6 Plus and theSamsung Galaxy Note 4, among others.

The Phone Arena site took images of a number of locations in different lighting conditions with six smartphones that at the time were unidentified and asked its readership to vote on which photos were the best. The Lumia 930 was the overall winner with 6032 votes, beating out the Galaxy Note 4 by less than 100 votes. Considering that the Lumia 930 is basically the same smartphone as theLumia Icon that Verizon released over a year ago, that's a pretty good achievement over a smartphone that's been out for less than half of that time.

The iPhone 6 Plus was a distant third in this smartphone camera battle with 4344 votes, with Google's Nexus 6 in fourth place, the Galaxy S5 in fifth place and the newly announced HTC One M9 in sixth place, even with its own 20MP rear camera.

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Microsoft Band online shipments vary by retailer, some stores have them back in stock

The small and medium models of the Microsoft Band are currently showing long waits for shipments for some online retailers. _Again._The Microsoft Store site shows that if you order the small or medium version of the fitness band, you will have to wait until May 6 to receive them

People who want to buy the large version of the Microsoft Band on the company's site won't have to wait nearly that long. The store shows shipments going out on April 1 for orders made today. Microsoft is still restricting online order to one Microsoft Band per customer, which shows that there is still a fairly limited amount of the devices to go around.

Thankfully, Best Buy and Amazon's websites show they have all three versions of the Microsoft Band on sale for shipment April 1 (Best Buy) or even immediately (Amazon). Sadly, Target's website currently shows the Band as "out of stock" just a few days after it started selling the device.

We have received tips from a couple of Windows Central readers that some Microsoft Store retail locations have also received new shipments of the Microsoft Band. If you live near one in the US and Canada, you might want to see if you can stop by and get one immediately.

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Windows 10 for phone to support NFC payments similar to Apple Pay

Microsoft wants owners of Windows 10 for phones to pay for goods and services similar to howApple Pay works for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. It detailed those plans last week at a presentation at its WinHEC 2015 hardware conference in China.

You may remember that Softcard released NFC-based "Tap to Pay" apps for Windows Phone in November for Verizon and T-Mobile, and then a few months later announced those apps would be shut down on March 31, due to Google acquiring their technology for use in Google Wallet.

During WinHEC 2015 Microsoft revealed that Windows 10 for phones will support Host Card Emulation (HCE). HCE will allow any smartphone with Windows 10 and NFC hardware to transmit payments from the device to an NFC terminal designed to receive that money but without needing a special secure app like Softcard. It also won't require any secure SIMs from wireless carriers. The slide shows that VISA, MasterCard and American Express are supporting this feature.

HCI is already supported in Google's Android since Android 4.4.

Another slide shows that Windows 10 will also support "Tap to pair" for NFC hardware so it can pair with a Wi-Fi Direct device via Wi-Fi Protected Setup. It will also support tapping to a Miracast dongle, presumably so that the screen for a Windows 10 smartphone can be mirrored to a larger screen that has such a dongle installed.

It's possible that not every Windows 10 smartphone will have NFC support but those devices that do contain the hardware should be able to pay for things at the grocery store, restaurants or other locations that have an NFC payment solution. We should learn a lot more about Microsoft's plans for this part of Windows 10 in late April as part of its Build 2015 developer conference.

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Latest Analog Clock Tile update adds multiple tile and custom background support

Analog Clock Tile is a popular app for Windows Phones that puts an analog clock on your start screen. The app has been bumped to version 3, bringing multiple tile and custom backgrounds support. It's quite the update and one we're sure fans of the app will welcome with unlocked lockscreens.

If you're not familiar with Analog Clock Tile, the app takes advantage of changes in Windows Phone 8.1 where Microsoft allows developers to update live tiles every minute, making a clock tile actually viable. This also means 8.1 is required to be able to use this app. Here's what is new in version 3:

• Multiple tiles support
• Custom background colors
• Time zones support
• Memory and bandwidth optimizations for low-spec phones

Now you can pin numerous clocks to your start screen. memory and bandwidth optimizations could prove to be a massive improvement alone for those rocking low-end hardware. Interested in trying out Analog Clock Tile? It's available for free on the store.

Download Analog Clock Title for Windows Phone (free)

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Microsoft will let you upgrade to Windows 10 for free, even if you're running a pirated version

In what may turn out to be an historic move in the battle against piracy, Microsoft's Terry Myerson has announced that the software vendor will allow all customers — whether they're running genuine Windows software or a pirated version — to upgrade to Windows 10 for free.

The move is clearly targeted at the Chinese market, where two-thirds of all PCs run pirated versions of Windows. Speaking to Reuters, Myerson said:

"We are upgrading all qualified PCs, genuine and non-genuine, to Windows 10," he said in a telephone interview with Reuters. The plan is to "re-engage" with the hundreds of millions of users of Windows in China, he said, without elaboration.

By giving away Windows 10 for free, at least for the first year, Microsoft is deviating from its regular sales model for the first time. The software maker announced earlier today that Windows 10 will be launching this summer in 190 countries, with the vendor focusing its attention on China.

Lenovo has committed to rolling out the Windows 10 upgrade to its customers as soon as it becomes available, as well as stating that it would launch its first Windows Phone over the summer.

The Redmond giant also inked a deal with Chinese internet portal Tencent in bringing popular games such as League of Legends to the Windows 10 store. Tencent has stated that it will also be working to roll out the Windows 10 update as soon as possible.

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Microsoft to replace the traditional Control Panel with the Windows 10 Settings app

Microsoft plans to replace the traditional Control Panel with the Windows 10 Settings app, bundling functionality and tools into the latter option.

Windows 10 (as well as Windows 8) provides users with two ways to access settings, the traditional Control Panel with access to various functions and tools, as well as the new Modern UI Settings app. The former is the more advanced option, but Microsoft is moving away from the familiar Control Panel in favor of the Settings app.

According to Microsoft's Gabriel Aul, the company plans to replace the Control Panel with the Settings app "in time", slowly migrating across the numerous tools.

Unfortunately, should you be a fan of the Control Panel after all these years, the Settings app will become the new portal to manage your Windows PC. It isn't known just how long it will take Microsoft to make the Control Panel entirely redundant. Have you grown attached to the Control Panel, or are you backing said change?

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Windows 10 will include new touch gestures for precision touchpads and touchscreens

Microsoft will include new gestures for controlling Windows 10 for owners of laptops that have precision touchpads. It will also offer some new actions for gestures made on touchscreens.

In a session at today's WinHEC conference titled, "Designing Great Hardware for the Windows 10 UI" Microsoft showed slides that illustrated the gestures that will be enabled for precision touchpads. Microsoft also stated that the cost for including such touchpads, which were first supported by Windows 8.1, have been "significantly reduced" since they were first launched. Hopefully, that means we will see more of them installed in new Windows 10 laptops.

As the slide shows, the edge gestures that are a part of Windows 8.1 have been replaced with multi-touch gestures on Window 10 for precision touchpads. Some of them are similar to touchscreen gestures, such as pichcing and zooming with two fingers and tapping and sliding with just one finger. Another slide showed how these gestures will work with specific Windows 10 commands.

The presentation also indicated that Microsoft has "relaxed the requirements on how the digitizer should perform around screen edges" for touchscreens, which means that Window 10 devices that support edge gestures should be available for a broader number of devices. In Windows 10, swiping on the left edge will bring up the Task View of the most recently used apps, while doing the same on the right edge brings up the new Action Center. Swiping from the top edge can bring up a hidden title bar on an app in desktop mode or the ability to snap or close an app while in tablet mode. Finally, swiping from the bottom edge reveals the desktop taskbar when an app is in full screen mode

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