Microsoft's 'successful' Nokia slurp kills off Lumia photo apps

The debacle that was Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia's mobile phone business continues to unravel, with Redmond turning the end-of-life gun on a bunch of Lumia applications.

In the kind of announcement that could have been put together by the marketing division of Sirius Cybernetics, Microsoft cheerily told the world that it planned to “sharpen its focus on our core Windows 10 Camera and Photo apps”.

To do that, the company will end support for the old Lumia Storyteller, Beamer, Photobeamer, and Refocus apps, along with the Lumia Panorama and Uploader video apps.

If you were a heavy user of Lumia Storyteller – a kind of “Vine-for-Lumia-owners” – your online videos will be lost if you don't download them to save somewhere else before the cloud service is turned off on 30 October.

As of 4 September, the apps were withdrawn from the Windows 10 store, and support will end late in October.

It's perhaps a relief to know that Redmond apparently won't be reaching into your phone and deleting stuff without permission. If you already have the apps, they'll still be there, but with no support and no cloud services.

Channelling Douglas Adams again, the Microsoft post explained that the change was being made because:

Our goal is to provide experiences that work really well on all Windows devices. In order to do that, we need to focus on making our Windows 10 core Photos and Camera apps great.

Many of the Lumia features are already included in the Windows 10 Photos and Camera apps. While we can’t promise that any particular feature is coming back, we’re committed to providing a great photo and camera experience in Windows across devices, and we’re listening to your feedback as we continue improving our apps.

Phew! ®