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.
Another day, another top notch UWP client for a major Internet property. In this case, Flickr, the photo hosting and sharing service. I've been a Flickr fan for half a decade now and getting involved with it on a Windows Phone has always been a bit up and down in terms of first and third party applications, with titles coming and going. Fliky is a new UWP client that looks good for the near future anyway, and with only a small gotcha or two on the uploading side.
I certainly didn't expect to discover another top notch YouTube client for Windows 10 Mobile so soon after the myTube! revamps. Yet here's Awecome Tube, rather cutely sub-titled 'YouTube to your heart' - and it's possibly the best of the bunch. Credit to Google for making YouTube's APIs so open, and full credit to developer Chococode here for an amazing application.
This has been around for a while, but I'm just catching up with some side projects of major UWP app developers. Photo Shader sounds like a fairly ordinary image adjuster/filter package, but there are numerous ways in which this shines - literally. It's a full UWP app for phone/tablet/desktop/Continuum and works faster than anything except Microsoft's own Lumia Creative Studio. For which this is excellent competition - and also actively supported. See below for my full review and some examples of Photo Shader's capabilities.
You've seen brain-bending, mind-mangling puzzles before. But never this hard, never this eye-boggling, never this enjoyably frustrating. Inspired by the famous optical illusions of MC Escher, nothing in the block puzzles here is quite what it seems. Beautiful puzzles, beautiful music and no time pressure make this the perfect mobile brain-training geometrical puzzle.
I've always been a huge fan of Lunar Lander style games - balancing retro rocket pulses with gravity and wind shear, avoiding obstacles in order to land upright on a trickily-positioned pad. And 'Landing Confirmed' here is a new Windows Phone game in the genre, having been ported from Android, combining classic Lunar Lander concepts with outrageous mechanisms and layouts. It's insanely hard - and addictive. And best of all, seems to be completely free. What are you waiting for?
It's easy to tell a labour of love when you see it - and Power Planner (UWP) has been crafted to within an inch of its life, all within the Windows 10 environment. The idea is that a student has this on their Windows 10 Mobile phone, on their (W10) tablet and, potentially on their (W10) laptop too - and all their classes, scheduled items and notes get synced seamlessly. Never miss a class again, etc.
Now here's something you don't see every day - a third party 'Continuity'-style system for passing information between specific applications on different devices. Think browsing a web page on your PC and then 'handing it off' to your phone for further persual on the go. Does it work? Kind off. Is it all smooth sailing? No - or at least not yet. But Hand Off (UWP) here is still under fast and active development, so it can only get better, right?
The GO series of deluxe, immersive puzzles from Square Enix effectively reaches its peak with this, Deus Ex Go, using the basic framework of the 'Deus Ex' franchise, characters and locations, but with a new hexagonal grid system for character movement and all-new powers, obstacles and techniques. Is it all too much, too complex? Yes. Is it enormous, brain-straining fun? Oh yes again.
