Microsoft is retiring Photosynth panoramic apps for Windows Phone and iOS

On a day where we gain one 360° solution, we lose another. For those who love Microsoft's panoramic photography app Photosynth, we have some bad news. Microsoft is evidently retiring the apps for both iOS and Windows Phone (it never made it to Android) and the apps will eventually be removed from both stores.

Photosynth.net will, however, remain, so users are encouraged to upload their creations to keep them.

In a post on the Photosynth website, Microsoft states:

"We are doing this because the new Photosynth Preview technology and its cloud processing is a more immersive way to capture a place than the spherical panoramas that our apps produce."

If you have the Photosynth app installed, you can keep it and still use it. However, since the app is no longer supported, any issues the crop up won't be fixed going forward.

The Photosynth app for Windows Phone was last updated this past April to support new Facebook APIs.

Photosynth was a fascinating app although Microsoft never did much to push the technology into the mainstream. It is not obvious if Microsoft will bring back the technology in mobile form anytime soon, which is a shame.

Download Photosynth for Windows Phone (while you can)

Source: Photosynth.net; Thanks, mininv, for the tip

QR: photosynth

Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central. He is also the head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007, when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and watches. He has been reviewing laptops since 2015 and is particularly fond of 2-in-1 convertibles, ARM processors, new form factors, and thin-and-light PCs. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.