Last week saw my full review of Avion Flight Simulator 2015, which I was really impressed by, interstitial ads notwithstanding. Happily, for the follow-up simulator, Seven Summit Studios went down the commercial game route, with Rail Road Train Simulator 2016 costing just over £2 in the UK Store, but with the same idea of working your way through many steam engines and accomplishing various missions/tasks. It's not quite as awe inspiring as 'Avion', but as a steam fan anyway, there was still plenty here to find interesting.
Yes, yes, it's true that the game's name includes '2015', but look past any worries over the title being 'old' because it's certainly not. Avion Flight Simulator 2015 is the most challenging flight sim game that I've played for ages on a phone. With a choice of three flight models and surprising variety in terrain and weather, the 'just one more challenge' gameplay is absolutely addictive. NB. This is a 2021 re-review, since I've been playing - and enjoying - it all over again!
Available for all variants of Windows Phone and also Windows 8 and 10 on PCs and tablets, Belgian developers Image-Line appear to be expert in their trade. The 'FL' in the name stems from FruityLoops, a sequencer-based music application on the desktop that I remember reviewing for the PC back in the late 1990s - and here we are, almost twenty years later with a full music studio in the palm of your hand, in my case tested on a HP Elite X3, whose stereo speakers show off FL Studio Mobile 3's capabilities pretty well. As a commercial application, is it worth £12? You bet it is, with only a couple of caveats.
'Why on earth would anyone want to run programs written for DOS on a phone in 2016?' I hear you ponder. And you'd be right, the whole idea is somewhat crazy, yet there might just be a classic game or a specific utility written for DOS (so we're talking about 1980-2000) that you'd still like to have on hand. In which case run, don't walk, to this supremely well implemented DOS-on-Intel x86 emulation, complete with support for audio, games controllers, plus mouse and keyboard. It's newly updated for Windows 10 Mobile and comes highly recommended.
Yes, this is a new UWP application, but it also exists for older devices in Windows Phone 8.1 form, so hopefully this developer has got all bases covered. There are a number of utilities for accessing the various Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile hardware reporting APIs - PhoNetInfo being one of my favourites. But we're now seeing UWP applications come along that bring the same (and more) functionality. Here, Specs Analysis not only reports on everything within your Windows 10 Mobile smartphone but also tests most of it too.
It's great having the likes of Audible on Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile, serving up audio books in an automated (though paid for) fashion. The new version of 'Audiobooked' is also rather interesting though, in that its new version is a full UWP app, in the same way as Audible. But unlike the latter, the idea here is to handle audio books that you source yourself - perhaps paid, perhaps free, perhaps even home-grown.
Once every couple of months, I rave about a new power bank as the best thing since sliced bread. However, I justify this by pointing out that technology moves on and power banks have been adapting at each stage. I'm very picky about what I accept for review, and this Lumsing gadget has both microUSB and Type C input, plus USB-A QuickCharge 2.0/3.0 and Type C output, all in a compact and robust metal body with terrific internal capacity. What's not to love?
I know what's you're thinking. a) There's never a good time to review a sniper game, since there's always some nutter in the news, plus b) this is freemium-fantastic, so surely Steve is going to hate it. However... this is really, really well done. OK, so the lowest freemium IAP is probably the 'real' price of the game, but Sniper Ops 3D is slick, fast and fun.
Wondering what to do with your spare time on a train or plane journey? Wishing you could be a little creative? Why not brainstorm a new logo for your venture or club? That's the idea with Logo Foundry anyway, with the basics of a powerful little graphical tool - let down by some unfortunate UI misteps.
It has been a while since we mentioned BringCast on AAWP, but I've been keeping a very close eye on the podcatchers scene in terms of developers bringing forward old Windows 8.1 applications into 2016 and in full UWP app guise, ready for optimised use on Windows 10 Mobile, Continuum and beyond. And, with last night's beta, I think the time has come to recommend BringCast, joining Grover Pro in the top tier.
