Although there are a number of smartphones with capable speakers (Nokia 5800/X6/N8 all come to mind), many have loudspeakers which are rather weedy if we're honest. Making podcasting listening around the house somewhat of an ear-straining experience and making music playback almost a no-no. Which is where portable speakers come into their own, especially the Bluetooth variety, giving maximum volume without messing around with wires. I'm reviewing several over the next month, starting with the Jawbone Jambox.
The Toy Soldiers game on the Xbox 360 just got itself a companion application. Boot Camp will talk with the larger game, sharing high scores and data from the mini games that are in both the 360 and the Windows Phone version. It's cute, it works, but I don't think many people will be buying it.
Clash of the Planets does sound like a Japanese anime series with your usual heroic space-soldiers defending against the forces of darkness that are encroaching into a solar system far far away. The great news is that this is exactly what is delivered on Windows Phone from developers ImpressWork. The only disappointment is you're never going to see those anime characters.
With the loss of MetroTube, a number of services and mobile applications have stepped up to fill the gap. Some of them continue to poke around the edges of the YouTube API, while others bring you great video content but from other services (such as Vimeo and their official Windows Phone client). Next up in my applications list is Vevo, and it's one for music fans.
For the record, calling this application "Board Game Clock" and not "Chess Clock" was a smart move. I would suspect that 99.999% of Windows Phone users would have no need for a clock to play chess - but there are far more people who need a timer to keep an eye on two different things, even if they don't know it yet.
By tradition, these games always have a super-long name, but with a Splinter Cell title on almost every platform, it was only a matter of time before Xbox Live would have the running, jumping and standing still genre. If you like your gaming like you like your summer blockbuster movies (repetitive, obvious, with lots of explosions, and directed by Jerry Bruckheimer) then you're going to be very happy with Splinter Cell Conviction. For everyone else, you might feel a bit of a passenger.
The internet has a lot of news out there, and while there are many single sources of news that have created their own applications for Windows Phone (let's point out our reviews of The Guardian and Sky News apps). News360 is different - it's an aggregator, looking at the headlines, stories and popularity, all over the web, and serves them up in this Windows Phone application.
While it's nice to have a name that can fully describe a game, I think there's one bit missing from this title. More apt would be "Chickens can't fly - but they can fall with a huge amount of style." Developers Amused Sloth have a strong fanbase following the first title in this series, the independently released Chickens Can Dream. Now the sequel is an Xbox Live title, I think I'm about to upset a lot of people with our latest AAWP review.
My first impressions of Monster's headphone style weren't good, with some outlandish cyan over-ear cans shown off by the Monster CEO at last year's Nokia World. Happily, the reviewed in-ear equivalents are a hundred times less garish, especially since they're black. There's plenty of photos and comment below, but in short the audio quality is superlative - depending on the playback device. Balancing this, device compatibility is distinctly spotty and the price is.... rather high. Review added to Dec 2012.
Power hungry smartphones are always looking for a recharge. So a car charger is going to be high on the priority for a lot of people. But which one should you get? One option is Nokia's DC-20 unit, which initially draws the eye with its twin USB charging ports. And while USB car chargers are never going to generate much excitement, the Nokia DC-20 is a diamond amongst the rough competition.
