VLC & Aeries for Windows Phone

VLC, the highly popular Windows PC app, has been in Beta for quite a time on WP. Today’s update for VLC is quite a significant one in the sense that while though nothing much has changed for you as a user but the app has undergone a major overhaul and has now become an Universal app.

As the Developer puts it

Today we’re sharing ~80% of our XAML code and >95% of the C# code, and this will keep improving during the next couple of months.

VLC will provide the same core experience on phones, tablets, laptops and desktops. We scale our user interface depending on the size of the screen, hence the responsive design with the help of XAML visual states.

This finally allows us to not only « code for two platforms », but also fix bugs on both platforms at the same time. This may be the best part for developers.

What your read above is Microsoft’s Universal vision & it gets only better with Windows 10.

VLC Change-log for Windows Phone

You’ll see that the Windows Phone update doesn’t bring a lot of improvements or bug fixes, except maybe the fact that the AppBar and the Music player are merged. We needed to publish an update so we could monitor how the WP version is evolving, and prepare your devices for a much bigger update that will come in the next couple of month, with Direct3D rendering and hardware decoding. At least in this update you won’t have green lines while playing a video.

One must note that VLC still does not play 720p & higher videos smoothly

Grab ‘VLC for Windows Phone’ from Windows Phone Store below

Type – Free
Size – 10 MB
Version – 2015.226.1256.1029
Works with WP8.1 (512MB RAM supported)
Publisher – VideoLabs

VLC for Windows Phone new

 


On the other side there’s Aeries, one of the best Twitter clients of Windows Phone. The Aeries update today brings the much required ‘Notifications’ support along with a plethora of other improvements.

Here’s the Aeries v1.2 Change-log

  • You will now receive completions for everyone you follow when composing tweets.
  • Settings page UI tweaks (everything is now aligned).
  • The option to pin saved searches is no longer hidden when using the white theme (To do this go Discover -> Saved Searches -> Tap … on the search of your choice).
  • When searching your timeline, queries are no longer case sensitive.
  • Multiple refresh fixes.
  • Fix for potential issues when favoriting and retweeting the same tweet multiple times.
  • Fixed error reporting to help me quickly fix issues in the future.
  • Xbox image sharing supported.
  • Updated Autosuggest UX.
  • Easily toggle any filters on and off from the settings page.
  • Fix for filters being expiry date causing them to be removed prematurely.
  • Give your filters a name to easily identify them.
  • Improved refreshing on DM page.
  • Updated translations.
  • Added Greek, Norwegian and Indonesian languages.
  • Fix an issue with image timelines showing multiple save buttons.
  • Application bar will now take on your chosen tint color.
  • Added Instagram Video support.
  • Added Xbox Image sharing support.
  • Fixed some issues with Vimeo media not playing in app.
  • Background functionality – option to enable background refresh per account (this will keep your cache up to date for offline reading), if you have live tile enabled this will also ensure you always have fresh information on your tile.
  • Background notifications – Ability to enable background notifications per account. You can filter it down to mentions, direct messages and retweets currently.

Grab ‘Aeries’ from Windows Phone Store below

Type – Paid (US $4.49 or INR 235)
Size – 3 MB
Version – 2015.227.1559.4270
Works with WP8.1 (512MB RAM supported)
Publisher – Brad Stevenson

Aeries for Twitter on Windows Phone