Poll results: favorite apps and interviews of 2014

During the holiday season, we published many stories looking back at 2014, and a couple of them asked you to partake in a poll. Well, let’s look at those results.

Favorite apps of 2014 from the Windows Phone Store 

In this story, we didn’t even scratch the surface of all the apps that were released last year and instead offered 26 of our favorite apps for you to vote on.

In first place with 16 percent is Office Lens, an incredibly useful tool for digitizing notes.

By taking photos of whiteboards, documents, receipts, or even business cards, Office Lens can straighten images and save them to OneNote for future reference. You can also convert images to Word (.docx) or PowerPoint (.pptx) files that can be automatically saved to your OneDrive.

Securing 13 percent of your votes is Files, an app that helps you to manage the files on your Windows Phone.

Whether you’re creating new folders within your phone or SD card, copying, moving or deleting files, or looking for that PDF document that you vaguely remember downloading months back, Files is a really useful app.

If you’re into photography and simply must tweak your photos before uploading to the “cloud,”Adobe Photoshop Express is a vital app in your arsenal. With 10 percent of your votes, this came in third place.

Adobe Photoshop Express makes it easy to make basic edits such as cropping, straightening, rotating and flipping your images.

If you’re looking for a one-touch solution, the auto-fix button works wonders. For the more experienced among you, manually control the slider bars for vibrancy, exposure and contrast options.

Oh, and no photo editing app would be complete without the addition of filters. There are plenty to choose from, both free and with optional paid add-ons.

To see how the other apps/games fared, check out the results panel below.

Now, time for our second poll of the holidays.

Lumia Lights: Our favorite interviews of 2014

As well as bringing you news of devices, accessories and apps, we also interviewed people from within Microsoft, our partners, and even third-party app developers.

“Meet Phil Galloway, Most Valued Connector and most amazing Lumia artist” was the favorite interview for our readers last year, scoring 23 percent.

Phil calls himself an “aspiring” artist, but his creative paintings really show him as a man at one with a paintbrush, albeit a digital one, for Phil also uses his Lumia 1520 and the Fresh Paint app to create his inspiring masterpieces.

“On assignment with Stephen Alvarez in Africa” is your second-most favorite interview of last year, with 19 percent.

National Geographic photographer Stephen Alvarez, has taken several Lumia smartphones into the field on numerous expeditions to capture the world in great detail.

In this interview, Stephen can be seen sitting beside a cheetah, up against the Rainbow Falls at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, and much more, all with his Lumia.

While the photos he shares are always incredible, Stephen’s tips and tricks as well as the insight from a professional photographer are always inspirational.

In third position, “Lumia 1020: under the photomicroscope” collected 14 percent of your votes.

The Lumia 1020 has a remarkable 41-megapixel camera that’s capable of capturing immense detail, which is one reason why Dr. Mark Li-cheng Wu and Dr. John Paul Graff have claimed that the Lumia 1020 is the perfect tool for histopathology–that’s the study of changes in tissues caused by disease.

Their scientific paper describes why the Lumia 1020 could (and should) be used as a photo microscope, and in our interview, the duo tell how they’ve used it in the real world to detect disease in patients.

For the rankings of the other stories, see the results below.

Thanks again for taking part; we’ve started 2015 by learning a little bit about what you like the most!