News written by Petteri Pyyny (August, 2018)

In case you're one of the few remaining Windows Phone users, you might want to consider changing a platform soon. Or to upgrade your device to Windows Mobile 10, if that option is available for your phone.

Microsoft just announced several important deadlines for Windows Phone 8.1 operating system.

First of all, developers wont be able to add new Windows Phone 8.1 apps to the Windows Store after 31st of October, 2018. So, after that date, no new apps will arrive to Windows Phone. Ever.

Furthermore, the existing apps cannot be updated after 1st of July, 2019. Also, downloading of existing apps becomes impossible, effectively shutting down the app store for WP8.1 users.

The last important date is set to distant future: Microsoft will stop all the support for WP8.1 on 1st of July, 2023. The date is so far away in future that it is highly unlikely that there will be any WP8.1 users left by then.

These dates don't affect Windows Mobile 10 users, who will be able to use app store and to get support. So, if your WP phone is one of those that can be updated to use Windows Mobile 10, you're strongly recommended to do so. If not, you might start looking for alternative options.

OnePlus has been one of the most rapidly growing Android manufacturers in the World. OnePlus has followed its own, pretty unique path and has typically just one phone model available at the time. OnePlus models are praised for offering the flagship phone features, but with almost half the price of those of big name manufacturers' flagship phones. But until now, company has had hard time conquering the U.S. market, where most phones are sold via carriers with the monthly contract.

Now, it seems that OnePlus is finally getting a carrier partner in the U.S. According to CNET's article, the upcoming OnePlus 6T model that is expected to launch in October, will be backed by T-Mobile in the United States. T-Mobile will get short-ish period when it will be the only operator to have the OnePlus 6T available. After that period, OnePlus will release an unlocked model to be used in other U.S. operators' networks.

Most important thing for OnePlus is to get to T-Mobile's selection that it will offer to its existing customers when they change phones. Enthusiasts have always managed to get unlocked OnePlus devices if they wanted to, but due the fact how economics work in phone business in the U.S., those sales can't be very big.

Google has just lost a court case in Finland. The Supreme Administrative Court of Finland decided today that the search engine giant has to remove search results from its index that include the personal details of a convicted murderer.

The case was brought against Google by the Finnish Data Protection Ombudsmand, the government entity that enforces privacy regulation in Finland. The Ombudsman's office asked Google to remove the results back in 2016, but the search giant refused, citing public interest and freedom of speech.

At the core of the dispute is a murder case that happened in 2012. The man in question was found guilty of murder but was also deemed to be mentally unstable. He was jailed for 10 years but was released last year.

In today's decision, The Supreme Administrative Court decided that the ability for anyone to find details of this person's medical history and illness on Google was detrimental to his life, extending beyond the prison time he served for his crimes.

Google now has to remove all search results listed on the court case from its index. Obviously, the information itself will stay in the Internet, but Google won't show links to those pages anymore.

Free open source alterinative to Microsoft Office, LibreOffice, has been updated to v6.1. The office productivity suite was originally born as a spin-off project from OpenOffice suite. Both, OpenOffice and LibreOffice resembled each other quite a lot for many years, but since then, LibreOffice has become the de facto open source office suite for many users and vendors.

The new LibreOffice v6.1 is mostly a minor improvement over v6.0 branch, but has interesting changes in it. Most importantly, the image management system of the entire suite has been revamped and is now easier and smoother to use, especially when editing files originally created in Microsoft Office.

So, if you're looking for a free Microsoft Office compatible suite, you might want to give LibreOffice a test.

You can download the latest version directly from AfterDawn's software section:

LibreOffice v6.1 for Windows (64-bit)

LibreOffice v6.1 for Windows (32-bit)

LibreOffice v6.1 for Mac OS X