Windows Phone App Review: 30 Day Challenge

Does your photography need a little motivation? Or maybe you just like taking pictures and are looking for a challenge. Whatever the reason, if you like taking pictures you need to take a gander at the Windows Phone app 30 Day Challenge.

30 Day Challenge presents you with a new photography challenge each day. Such as taking a picture of something geeky to taking a picture where no ones feet are touching the ground. Challenges range from people to places to things. 30 Day Challenge is a fun app that can spark new life into your camera or keep it from getting rusty.

When you first launch 30 Day Challenge you will be prompted to create a username and password. You will also be presented with your settings options that include online sharing, using a clear background, and automatically saving your photos to your Pictures Hub.

30 Day Challenge is laid out nicely in panoramic fashion. Your main page offers you the challenge for the day along with buttons to access your camera, the app's calendar, settings, and the traditional about/review/contact pages.  30 Day Challenge does offer a calendar feature that allows you to set appointments but it does not interact with your Windows Phone calendar.

Swiping to the right you'll find additional pages to view your photos for the month, a listing of all the challenges in the thirty day period, any pictures uploaded online (you have to turn this feature on in the settings), your past photos by month, and a twitter feed page.

When your ready to tackle the challenge, just tap the "Take Photo" button and snap your picture. Once captured you enter a description of the photo and location where it was taken. Once you've entered all the details you get to preview your photo before saving and/or uploading.  Any photos uploaded can be commented on by other 30 Day users and rated.

Once saved the photo will appear on your photos for the month page where you can pull it up to full screen or save it via Facebook.   You don't have to share photos online. If you're simply looking for a little motivation for your picture taking, you can simply tackle the challenges and keep your photos in-house.

I like the concept behind 30 Day Challenge but I have a few reservations. The app lacks a Help/How-to section to help you along the way. It takes some time to figure things our and a Help section would get you taking pictures a lot quicker.

30 Day Challenge also lacks the ability to delete photos from the app or from those you've shared online. If you submit a photo in error, there's no way to delete it and start over.  Lastly, (and this isn't too big of a nit) while 30 Day Challenge requires a user account, there is no way to log out. As is, the only way you can log out is to uninstall the app.

Again, I like the concept behind 30 Day Challenge and while recent updates have helped the app, there's still room for improvement.  The app is nicely laid out and is a nice motivational tool for your photography.  30 Day Challenge is a free, ad-supported app that you can download here at the Windows Phone Marketplace.