With this being exam season for many people, I'm all for learning aids. And, in this case, something rather unusual and designed to help someone learn a text off by heart. Perhaps so as to be able to quote sections in an exam paper, perhaps to deliver on stage, perhaps just trying to keep the ol' grey cells stimulated. Memorize It! is unusual and effective and I'll even forgive the Americanised spelling of the name....
At first glance, Pocket Tanks is unimpressive. The old 'Artillery' title from the 1980's, where you guess at angles and power in order to hit an enemy on the other side of a big hill, but just compiled for Windows Phone? Well, this is indeed what it is, but don't switch off, since it turns out to be a lot of fun and quite addictive. In part due to the nature of the original classic, but also because of the imagination of the developer in terms of the weapons at your disposal.
Yes, yes, Pocket Casts does indeed arrive into a very crowded genre on Windows Phone, yes, it's still early days, there are some rough edges and there's no video podcast support yet, but I've been using it exclusively for the last week and have been pretty impressed overall. It may not have all the bells and whistles of Podcast Lounge, but for pure and fast, straight down the line audio podcast listening and management, Pocket Casts is hard to beat.
Back in the midsts of time (2011) I reviewed International Snooker, giving it a rave write-up - but ever since have still been eyeing up the more modern 'Pro' version, effectively a re-write, over on Android and iOS. And now the new, full game is on Windows Phone and I'm expecting great things. Summary: I wasn't disappointed, though do see my caveat in bold below!
Microsoft's own reviewer's guide for this, the Band, talks about it being 'the first device powered by Microsoft Health', and this is the key to understanding the accessory itself. Introduced initially in the USA at the end of last year, there was a feeling that it might never reach the rest of the world in that form, since the Band was quite clearly a 'version 1' and with many flaws. That it has made it to the UK in late April 2015 is handy because it means we get to play with it - and appreciate it, but don't be fooled that the Band is attempting to be a serious mass market product yet. Wait for 'Band 2', slimmer, lighter, tougher and cheaper.
What's a reviewer to do when faced with a trio of official Lumia headsets but to review them? They range in price and purpose too, thankfully, giving me something to get my teeth into - or at least my ears. The one sentence summary if you're into audio quality? Pass on the Comfort and make a beeline for the two Coloud accessories - they're of higher quality in several ways.
Even though we reviewed the more unusual and unique Lumia 640 XL first, don't be deceived - it's the vanilla 640 that will receive the lion's share of Microsoft's marketing and the lion's share of the resulting sales. It's cheaper, more normally sized, yet still has decent components and is just about everyone's idea of a "'my first smartphone' that doesn't suck". Which sounds rather dismissive of the 4xx and 5xx series of Lumias, but the 640 is a cut above these devices for not that much more money on the High Street.
The lengthily titled 'My Memories Interactive Slideshow' does essentially what it says in its name but it's not just another photo browser - this one comes with optimisations that help solve a very common family use case: "Can I look through your photos?", asked by a five year old and followed by them getting very confused at family snaps interspersed by boring 'grown up' stuff.
With one eye on Asian phablet-loving markets and the other on business markets in Europe, Microsoft has very carefully tailored the new Lumia 640 XL to appeal to both sets of users while keeping cost as low as possible. In the process, with remarkably few compromises and impressing at almost every turn, the 640 XL just became the de facto phablet for anyone wanting to spend £200 rather than £600.
So there I was, responding to a reader request to do a round-up of Flickr apps for Windows Phone. And then it dawned on me that a) there are really only two (thus making it not so much a round-up as a comparison!) and b) we'd never covered Flickr Central on AAWP before. So, in advance of an upcoming head to head comparison, let's start with a full review of this free application. The summary? It works well on the whole, trailing the better known Flickr Booth only by virtue of a few quirks and a little lack of 2015 development.
