Microsoft has released apps for News, Finance, Weather, and Sports on Windows Phone 8.
The apps can be downloaded free of charge through the Windows Phone Store. Microsoft has detailed the apps in a
blog post.
The Bing News app features headlines and videos of breaking news and is customisable, allowing users to track specific story categories, topics, or news sources. It also allows users to rearrange headline clusters to keep news that's relevant to them at the top.
Microsoft has partnered with editorial and news agencies including Associated Press, Reuters, Gizmodo, and The Guardian, among others, in addition to other local and regional sources. In India, the app features NDTV, India Today, IBN Live and Reuters for local news. The app also supports Live Tiles and users can also pin a favourite news source or a personal topic to their Start screen for quick access.
The Bing Sports app offers recent scores, top sports headlines, videos, photos, schedules, standings, statistics and other content across most major sports, including soccer, football, baseball, cricket, racing, tennis, hockey, and basketball.
The Bing Weather app offers up-to-date current conditions including temperature, precipitation and wind.The app also dynamically updates the live tile based upon the user's current location. They can also save other locations to get the weather.
The app offers weather with dynamic maps for cities or regions in a number of categories including satellite, temperature, precipitation, cloud cover and radar. Users can also check daily weather conditions, historical data and view charts for temperature and precipitation through the app.
The Bing Finance app offers financial news, market info, currency conversions, stock updates for the US and customisable interactive charts. Users can set up a watchlist to track their stocks and pin individual stocks to their phone's Start screen for live tile updates. Users can also track performance of a stock, browse news about the company, stock statistics and an overview of the company. The financial info is provided through tie-ups with Bloomberg, CNBC, and Fox Business.
Microsoft had also launched similar apps on Windows 8 in October 2012.