Two big-name apps, Duolingo and Wolfram Alpha, arrived today for Windows Phone to match their Android and iOS counterparts. You can download both now directly from the Windows Phone Store: Duolingo and Wolfram Alpha.
If you’ve never heard of it, Duolingo is a free language-learning and crowd-sourced translation app. The Android and iOS versions have over 50 million users as of October.
The Windows Phone app supports Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, and English. Like its Android and iOS counterparts, you lose hearts for answering incorrectly, advance by completing bite-sized lessons, and track your progress with shiny achievements. A Duolingo spokesperson told VentureBeat that some small features are still missing in the Windows Phone app, but “the Coach” is available on launch even though it hasn’t arrived on Android yet.
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“In keeping with our mission, the app is 100 percent free, with no ads, hidden fees, or paid ‘premium’ content,” Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn said in a statement. “Instead of simply porting our iPhone or Android apps, we worked hard to make a truly native Windows Phone experience — it’s fast, smooth, and feels like Windows Phone :)”
Wolfram Alpha is a “computational knowledge engine” developed by Wolfram Research. It helps power some searches in Microsoft’s Bing, DuckDuckGo, Apple’s Siri, Samsung’s S Voice, and the voice control software on BlackBerry 10.
Like on Android and iOS, the Windows Phone app will set you back $2.99. The app covers some 30 domains, ranging from Mathematics to Colors, and their subdomains. Full Wolfram|Alpha Pro capabilities, including file upload and personal analytics, are not yet available.
Most popular apps on Android and iOS are now available on Windows Phone as well; Microsoft has been working hard to close the gap. Yet new apps are still released on Apple and Google’s platforms first, and news like today’s is a stark reminder that Microsoft’s platform is in far-off third place.
The release of Duolingo was first spotted by Windows Central, and the release of Wolfram Alpha was spotted by WMPowerusers.
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