The successor to the wildly popular Hitman GO, Lara Croft GO takes many of the same turn-by-time strategic moves in isometric 3D, and adds lashings of moveable scenery, monsters, and creepy atmosphere, all lovingly created with the same professional touches as in Hitman GO. I've been returning to this on journeys and other instances of downtime and it's just as addictive as its predecessor.
The flow of really rather handy emergency chargers into AAWP Towers never seems to stop. I couldn't resist taking a look at this one, since it promises metal (which I like), very high capacity (ditto) and compact size (ditto again). And it delivers, you can charge two smartphones at a time (e.g.) at 1.5A each, several times over from scratch. All from something that fits in a jeans back pocket...
I have one beef with quality smartphone headsets like the Rock Jaw ALFA - they've ruined a lot of my music collection. I'll go into more detail below, but once you've heard all the defects in your compressed files, the defects that are masked by deficiencies in cheaper headsets, including those shipped with many Windows Phones, it's hard to 'un-hear' them. Which means more work, re-encoding the culprits! This is the new, redesigned ALFA from the UK company and it's top notch in every regard.
Fancy weaving from side to side and running over zombies? This is the zombie/driving hybrid game that everyone's been talking about. And it's on Windows Phone too. But is Route Z any good, how does the freemium pitch work, and what about the implementation on Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile? Here's my full review and verdict.
This review will have to remain relatively short for a very good reason - the unique selling point of the 'Choetech Portable Power Bank' here is that it's 'Quick Charge 2.0'-compliant. And we don't yet have any Windows Phones that work with this intelligent charging standard (though the rumoured Lumia 950 devices will come with it for sure). However, you may well have someone in your family with a suitable device, plus you can use this in traditional fashion to supply charge into any smartphones or tablets up to a whopping 2.4A.
Having played with 'solar charging' accessories for smartphones a decade ago, I'd kind of written them off for serious use, but it seems that the technology has improved markedly in the intervening years. The needs of a smartphone (or tablet) have risen too, though matched here by the size of the panels themselves in this hard-wearing polyester, tri-fold, waterproof design. Provided you're guaranteed some sun, this is a terrific greetings card-sized accessory (when folded) and worked brilliantly in my tests.
Getting the right 'moment' on camera has always been tricky, whether it's your kid's sports day or a birthday party. It's so easy to miss the moment, especially on camera-centric devices like the Lumia 1020, which is why shooting 1080p video and worrying about extracting the perfect 2MP 'still' later on is an attractive alternative. I've previously covered Vid2Pix, but that has some serious bugs that come back, erratically, to annoy. Instead, give Frame Grabber a try, it's potentially much faster and seems more stable in doing this most difficult of jobs - deconstructing MP4 video!
There are quite a few Qi charging pads on the market these days - it takes something different to get my attention. And, more the point, to tear my Lumias away from their beloved Nokia DT-900 pad, which has served me faithfully for well over a year now. But the Choetech pad here did just that, albeit with a quirk or two. It's a premium accessory at a modest price (£18) and comes recommended.
If there's one category of application that really shouldn't need to exist, it's music playback, since every computing platform includes this functionality out of the box. However, time spent with music, as well as ways of indexing and accessing it, is a very personal thing and there are a number of third party music player for Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile, each attempting to add their own 'spin' (pun intended) on the genre. In this case, Loco Music Player, with a wide choice of themes and lightning fast track indexing.
Bluetooth keyboards have gone into and out of fashion over the years, but they're definitely in vogue at the moment, thanks to the use of tablets and 'phablet'-style large-screened smartphones, where a wireless full size keyboard can turn the device into a mini-laptop. Microsoft's new offering is ultra-premium and rather quirky, not least because of the early state of Windows 10 Mobile, but has a few unique features and is worth a look if the price doesn't put you off.
