Vine was launched in January 2013 by Twitter, and since then it has racked up users, videos, infamy, and a few third-party Windows Phone clients. Vine's official client for Microsoft's mobile platform arrived in November, has had a few updates, and now Ewan asks if the app is ready to record your six seconds of a close-up.
If you can get over the compression artefacts in the music, smartphones are really good devices to listen to audio on. Radio stations are slowly catching up and providing online streams for their mobile fans to listen to. The UK Radioplayer's self-titled application brings you a huge number of UK based radio stations to your handset, but does the industry's solution deliver? It certainly manages on the audio front but the app does have a few issues.
There are certain games that should be regarded as staples for any computing platform. Just as every Christmas you'll find an orange at the bottom of your stocking, just as every student party there is a bottle of absinth nobody will risk opening until 3am, every smartphone needs a decent version of Solitaire, Minesweeper, and Mahjong. Just after Christmas (great timing there...) Microsoft released these three titles under the Xbox Live brand, and I'm going to start off the reviews by looking at Mahjong.
The Lumia 1020 makes a great Windows Phone flagship but there's arguably one major feature left out - Qi wireless charging, as featured in the Lumia 920 over a year ago. The Qi coils add about a millimetre to a phone design, which is presumably why they were omitted on the 1020, but as I've enthused before, wireless charging utterly transforms the way I use my smartphone, which is why I was very glad to get my hands on the official 'Wireless Charging Shell' and bring my 1020 well and truly into 2014.
The Rabbids franchise (which is a spin-off from the Rayman series) has never fully established itself in popular culture in the same way as characters like the Angry Birds. It never had a signature genre of game, bouncing around various ideas from strategy and arcade, to puzzle and simulation. Released just before Christmas, the XBox live title Big Bang saw it take on interplanetary travel in a physics based game that mixes arcade reactions with puzzling depth.
Capturing good HDR (High Dynamic Range) photos on Windows Phone has never been simple, with some of the best requiring lots of processing time and extreme effort to get anything useful. 4Blend HDR is a new, free application that leverages Nokia's new Imaging SDK to produce HDR that's quicker to use and generally more effective and flexible. Yes, it still helps enormously to have a tripod or a wall to rest the camera phone on, but I was much happier in 4Blend than any previous HDR offering in the Windows Phone world.
While Windows Phone's email application does handle Gmail in a way that fits in with the UI, there are some areas where it can be lacking (including label support, filtering, and multiple accounts). Does the third-party client MetroMail address these issues and, if so, is it worth Googlers switching to it? That's a finely balanced decision.
Nokia's DC-19 Universal Portable USB Charger provides an easy way of topping up your phone's battery when out and about. That's something that seems to be an increasingly common requirement, a result of integrated batteries having become the norm, and the reality that most smartphones need to be charged at least once a day. There are a large number of portable battery charging products on the market, so is there anything that makes Nokia's latest entry in this category stand out from the crowd?
Sometimes you just have to seize the moment. After our review of Angry Birds Go (which liked the basic idea and implementation of the game, but noted the sheer destructive power of the freemium options), the developer of Poppy Kart got in touch with the AAWP team to point out an alternative. And very nice it is too.
Popping up just in time for Christmas (and giving Xbox Live a new release at this critical time of year for Windows Phone) is the sequel to one of the most well known infinite runners. With more curves, more moves, more obstacles, and more adventure, it's time to check out Temple Run 2 for Windows Phone.
