What if... the whole world was USB Type C and 'traditional' USB Type A ports had been long forgotten? Seems very premature, even in 2017, yet many of us only now have USB Type C phones, so why not go all-in on Type C (as Apple did with the 2016 Macbook Pro)? What about your power bank?
I can't believe it took me this long to find Video X Player Pro in the Windows Store. I blame Microsoft - for making (what is now) 'Films & TV' good enough, and the VideoLAN folks for making VLC temptingly good. But the former has a fatal flaw and the latter is fatally buggy (in my continued testing), leading me to look at this old but still updated video solution for both Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 10 Mobile.
I'm always a bit wary of third party web browsers - they're never as efficient and speedy as the tightly coded native alternative (e.g. Edge), unless they pull tricks like content compression and ad blocking. Coc Coc Browser (I'm omitting the Vietnamese character embellishments) is clean and modern but isn't as fast as Edge, confirming my suspicions. However, it's still noteworthy for its fledgling Extension support - with a first party video downloader ('Savior') the headline advantage.
Steve Heinrich and I have been trying out various cases for the new Alcatel IDOL 4 Pro - it's one heck of a droppable phone, so how best to sheath it? The odd camera button positioning, the stereo speakers, the fingerprint sensor, they've all got to be allowed for...
As you may have gathered, it's been a frantic fortnight in terms of Alcatel IDOL 4 Pro coverage. With my review parts 1 (hardware), 2 (imaging), 3 (video and multimedia) complete, plus a comparison with the Lumia 950 XL, it's time for my final review part (for now), summing up the phone's day to day performance and helping you decide whether to actually buy it.
In part 1 of this review, I looked at the IDOL 4 Pro's hardware, in part 2 I looked at still imaging, and in this, part 3, I look at video capture within the phone's camera, along with audio recording quality and multimedia playback. The latter featuring the monster stereo speakers, of course, and amazing headphone output too.
A day or two ago I put up an interactive comparison of imaging on the Lumia 950 XL and the new IDOL 4 Pro - the newcomer did OK, but fell short of the gold standard, of course. To at least partly redress the balance, here's a more in depth look at imaging on the Alcatel IDOL 4 Pro, with some of the best shots I've snapped on it so far and some tips and tricks along the way...
The ongoing saga of keeping a secure database of passwords, serial numbers, reference data, and so on.... on Windows Phone, or, in this case, Windows 10 Mobile. If you've been following over the years then you'll be interested in this latest review, for KeePassWin, a UWP app for Windows 10. It's not yet the real McCoy though, as I shall explain...
So... almost two years after Microsoft's last flagship smartphones (the Lumia 950 range) were launched and roughly a year after HP's Elite x3 became available, we finally have another new handset of note in the ecosystem. Yes, a variant was on limited release, on USA frequencies, late in 2016, but the Alcatel IDOL 4 Pro is here now, and on full 'world' LTE bands. Here's part one of what will hopefully be a stream of review content here on AAWP.
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?
