Outrageously (way beyond fashionably) late to the party, Candy Crush Saga has arrived on Windows Phone. Trailed by legendary tales from friends and colleagues on iOS and Android who have had their lives ruined by getting addicted to this 'delicious puzzle adventure'. It's freemium, of course, so let's see how it balances out on Windows Phone. Whatever happens, it's another of the high profile apps and games that was apparently missing and is now present and correct, so colour me happy(ish) and time to unwrap another celebratory candy...
My usual confession before reviewing football games is that I'm not really into football - I mean, I take a casual interest in world level games and kick a ball around in the park, but I'm not a super-fan. And yet Stickman Soccer is.... fantastic, it's perfect. It's utterly believable in the way players move and slide and shoot... The best football game ever on mobile? This has to be a contender. Heck, it's a contender for the best game, full stop...
File this game as something of a guilty pleasure - the idea here, in this recently updated driving game, is that you're in a police car, chasing down the bad guys, and the way to take them out is to check with your superiors, then phone ahead and arrange roadblocks to drive as fast as possible and crash into them as heavily as possible. Yep. Cue the scream of tortured tyres and torn metal. So not that realistic but enormous fun!
Yes, yes, technically in 'beta', but Microsoft's betas on Windows Phone are usually very stable and I had no compunctions at giving Movie Creator the full real world experience. As the name suggests, it's a way of stitching your own captured media (in my case on the Lumia 1020) together to create something professional and, hopefully, wonderful. And yes, I include the result of its rendering below for you to scrutinise.
It's fast, it's glossy, it's polished 3D... and it's very, very wet. Released earlier today, I've put on my futuristic competition wetsuit and headed out to see if the new Riptide GP2 is worth its purchase price (summary: it is, but the price isn't the whole story!) It's by the people who brought me Beach Buggy Racing a few days ago, though, so I'm hugely optimistic.
Increasingly, especially with the decent cameras onboard and super HAAC microphones, Windows Phones are becoming good all-purpose capture devices. We've seen a barrage of video editors, it only makes sense that we'd now see some decent audio editors too. Wave Master is fully featured and well worth a look, below.
Launched at IFA 2014 and available for just over a week now, here's my review of the new 'Nokia Lumia 830' - if you look very, very closely at the small print, there's mention of 'Microsoft Mobile' (expect future Lumias to have Microsoft much higher in the mix though). Billed as an 'affordable flagship', the 830 does get most of the way to fulfilling this claim, perhaps only falling short at the moment because the software that enables much of its main USP is currently missing in action.
With devices as large as the Nokia Lumia 1520, a flip case, flap and all, makes a lot of sense, providing protection, comfort and, hopefully, a desk stand as well, for viewing media. You’ll remember that I reviewed the Nokia CP-623 a while back, concluding that it was ultimately too flimsy - well, in search of higher grade alternatives, I got two more Lumia 1520 flip cases in for review. One of which turned out to be the cheapest and most cheerful - but the best of the lot in real world use.
Launched at IFA 2014, the Lumia 735 is the new lower-mid-range handset from Nokia (actually Microsoft Mobile now, of course), with the marketing tag of being all about 'taking better selfies'. Regardless of this specific angle, it's a very capable Windows Phone that could be picked up quite inexpensively. And yes, the camera's pretty good (for the money). Following on from Ewan's first impressions, here's my more detailed review.
Downloading YouTube videos - we all do it once in a while. That documentary or that music video or that comedy routine, any or all of which you'd like on your phone (or tablet or whatever) because then you could watch it when you like without worrying about using up cell bandwidth. Or, in my case, having videos to hand when out of coverage - in the UK countryside, on a train, on the tube, on a plane, etc. Which is where YouTube downloaders come in, a specialised breed of utility, exemplified by the rather nice AllTube Grabber for Windows Phone here. As a bonus, it also works with three other video streaming sites.
