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Microsoft shows off the new Bing Maps app at MWC 2015

Microsoft has updated their Bing Maps app and showed it off in MWC 2015. The biggest update towards the app appears to be more under-the-hood than anything else, in that it appears to have been built in a way that utilizes Microsoft's "universal app" approach: a single app that can be installed and shared across different platforms -- in this case it was limited to the Desktop and Windows Phone, but can be extended to even the Xbox and other Microsoft platforms.

The demo involved showing the Bing Maps app working on the Desktop with searches being performed on restaurants and checking out directions and so on, and then the app was closed and the demo moved on to accessing the Bing Maps app on the just-announced Lumia 640 smartphone. On the Lumia, given that it's the same app and the user would be signed in on the same account, the Bing Maps app had a very similar display and also synced across the search. A user is able to 'favorite' restaurants and other locations of interest, as well as make searches on one device, and then have that information instantly synced across to another device.

This new Bing Maps app speaks to the direction Microsoft has been wanting to go in for some time: a unified set of apps that run across tablets, smartphones desktop computers and maybe even on the Xbox. More importantly, since everything is synced, the user ends up with a seamless experience across multiple devices. The seamless experience is not just visual in terms of how the app is designed, but also regarding the content in the apps as well.

This isn't the only app they showed off at the conference: Microsoft also showed off Project Spartan - the new Internet Explorer - on Windows 10 for Phones. You can read about that here.

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