DECEMBER 2019 PCWorld 115your phone, Your
Phone’s Photos
makes it available
to you for sharing
or editing. You’ll
see a matrix of up
to 25 photos and
screenshots within
the Your Phone
Photos tab, which
you can copy,
share, or save from
within the tab.
Frustratingly, you
can’t directly edit
them using Photos
unless you save them to your hard drive, then
edit them with Photos.
Messages
In this context, Messages is merely
shorthand for SMS/MMS text messages, not
any specific app on Android or anywhere
else. As a result, it’s a bare-bones summary
of the text messages you and your contacts
have exchanged, nothing more. Most
messaging apps, including Skype, offer a
“call” option, and usually a video-chat
option as well. Messages does neither,
although you could argue again that the
bare-bones approach is necessary to
maintain flow.
The Settings option to download
images sent via MMS texts automatically
needs some clarity. For one, when I
specifically toggled it on, a test photo sent
to me via text didn’t save to my PC—though
my phone isn’t configured to automatically
save photos sent to my phone. (The photo
appeared inline as a text message, though,
as it should have.) It would also be helpful
to know exactly where MMS images are
saved, and if they’re automatically backed
up to OneDrive. This is why people use
Snapchat, after all.
Unfortunately, Messages still shows any
message threads that you’ve archived on
your phone, including automated texts of
one-time passwords that a web service may
send you for two-factor authentication.
(Keep in mind that it’s more secure to use an
authenticator app for 2FA instead.)Messages displays both SMS and MMS messages, though without the additional
calling options offered by native phone apps.