Why does WP7 save GIFs as JPGs?

Question

When I save GIFs -- especially animated GIFs -- from a web page to my phone, it always saves it as a JPG. This means that the animation is lost and only the first frame is preserved in JPG format. Is there a way to get my WP7 to save GIFs as GIFs without messing around with the format (ie animated vs. non-animated)?

Answer 1

Windows Phone (both 7 and 8) uses Silverlight to decode different image formats and until the Apollo update for Windows Phone 8, WP did not support .gif file types unless developers used a third party library such as .NET Image Tools to decode animated gif types.

So to answer your question, saving an animated .gif from Internet Explorer on to your phone will (at this point anyway) result in you losing all frames except the first.

You're not the only one who faces this issue though: there is a feature request that has been made on the Windows Phone User Voice site to allow for this capability. Check it out.