What's this? A review of a smartphone that doesn't run Symbian on AAS? And that doesn't run Windows 10 Mobile on AAWP? Actually yes - it's my first look at the new Nokia 6, running Android. And it's here because it's the return of the classic Nokia brand that I've written about so many times on these sites. The personnel behind it are mostly different, the OS certainly is, but is it worth casting a look in the 'new' Nokia's direction?
One of the annoyances of exercising while listening to music on a smartphone - for me at least - is stopping the headphones falling out of my ears, constantly pausing stride to poke them back in properly. Which is why these caught my eye - grippy outer-ear sports headphones with 'fins' that wedge into your auricle(!) to keep the 'phones in place, and that are Bluetooth, so a limited amount of heavy cabling pulling out the buds.
Something for the weekend, sir? How about a Windows Phone game/app that shows you in gory animated detail how to make dozens of surprisingly realistic aircraft designs out of a sheet of paper? As someone who has a bit of the child in me still, and who sometimes has to entertain small relatives, this mobile app turns out to be a star turn.
I have to wonder why it's taking Microsoft so long to implement its much anticipated 'cloud clipboard' - but then I review something like Connected Devices and the complexities start to hit home. You may remember that I've already reviewed Hand Off UWP, from a different developer, which had everything but clipboard operations sorted. Clipboard copying here mostly works, plus you get local file sharing, which turns out to work well too, and Connected Devices is absolutely free. What's not to love?
Guest writer Gilbert Schwaab brings us a review of (and tutorial for) GeoMeterPro 10, a UWP mapping and navigation application that I'd not heard of before, but which looks comprehensive, with extensive plugins. There's an older 8.1 version too, so no one need feel left out!
Word games are a bit of a guilty, time-wasting pleasure for most of us - they certainly keep the old grey matter chugging away and while away tiresome waits when needed. And Equal Words is beautifully constructed and pitched, almost the perfect mobile game, with just the clumsy cross-platform port that lets it down.
Do you ever get frustrated by the sheer number of messaging and social clients online? I do (rant here, from 2015). So what if you could have just one application that brought all the various services 'under one roof'? This is the aim of Harvester Messenger UWP and it's a nice idea, though the reality of just wrapping each site's mobile view ends up being less than compelling.
With the demise of the old Windows Phone 8.1 (Silverlight) Flightradar24 application (though you can probably get it back by using this technique), an alternative and equivalent UWP application for Windows 10 is very welcome. Don't get too excited yet, mind you, as Flights Radar UWP is still at the 'preview' stage and is prone to crashing, but there's enough here to be worth supporting - when it works, it works very well indeed.
Guest writer Esben Dalsgaard reviews Microsoft Teams, the chat based collaborative workspace that Microsoft released in late 2016 to take on the very successful Slack service. I reviewed the Slack application for Windows Phone recently, so in that context it is very relevant to look at Microsoft’s competitor.
It's been a week of major service UWP applications, though not from first parties - we're talking thrid party here (mainly Chococode) - but don't let that put you off. If YouTube, Tumblr, Flickr and - here - Pinterest don't think it's worth producing their web content in Windows 10 UWP app form then here at least is a great third party alternative.
