Photosynth On Windows Phone Releasing Alongside Mango

For those wondering why Photosynth still isn’t available on Windows Phone, some information has shown up thanks to monsmartphone.net. Photosynth is a photo application developed by Microsoft used to create 360 panoramas of any images captured on a mobile device. Released a few months back only on the Apple iPhone, users of Windows Phone have since questioned Microsoft’s actions. David Gedye, Photosynth Group Program Manager provided some information on the matter.

Yes – we’re working on a version for Windows Phone 7 now. You can definitely communicate this info to your members.
We can’t make any commitment about ship date though, except to say that it’s our top priority.

David.

David Gedye
Photosynth Group Program Manager
Microsoft.

The above is an email response on the matter to monsmartphone.net, after a member on their forums stated that Microsoft cannot have Photosynth on Windows Phone with the current SDK. There is no ship date, simply that Photosynth on Windows Phone is a top priority. When Photosynth released on the iPhone earlier this year Microsoft chose to release it on iPhone only, as they felt it was a worthy device. Monsmartphone.net then searched for a real reason as to why Photosynth is missing on Windows Phone, besides simply being under development. David Gedye then gave a much clearer answer:

The answer is simple.
Windows Phone 1.0 didn’t have the video-mode API’s to allow us to provide the capture experience that everyone loves about our app. Neither did Android. Only IOS did at that time and we (correctly I think) judged that a great capture experience was essential to lots of usage.

Mango appears to have the right APIs. We are working with them now.

There you have it, we can calmly expect just one more great thing alongside the Mango release later this year. It’s disappointing to see that Microsoft’s own application isn’t worthy of the Windows Phone at the moment, but hopefully it’s ten times better once released over any other mobile version.