When I wrote earlier this week about Flickr's lack of support for Windows Phone, I suggested that the space was open for another service to step up and become the social app of choice to show off your photos. Could 500px be the app of choice?
Readit brings you the same feature set as you would find on Reddit (reddit.com), but wraps it up inside an application instead of an HTML-based page. That allows the Readit designers to work with Windows Phone 8 and create a much richer experience to read, navigate, and interact with. It's one of the best looking Reddit clients on Windows Phone, but are these good looks backed up by smart and usable code?
Let's get the jokes out-of-the-way now, because I'm not going to check every single word in this review with the app (and in any case I would blame it on transcription errors if you found a mistake), but Dictionary.com is a handy app to have on your phone. It's not just for writers, thanks to the inclusion of some cool connected features. It's nowhere close to being an application that you would buy a Windows Phone for, but it is an app that you can keep coming back to, day after day.
How do you get music onto your device? You could use the Windows 8 software, the Mac OSX client, or drag and drop over the USB cable. Codeceptive Studios has another solution. Open up the Windows Phone 8 client on your smartphone when connected to a network, point an HTML5 browser at the address, and you can upload to your phone from any desktop. It's an elegant solution, and even with the rough edges on show here it's a winning idea and a workable implementation.
Phonos offers a third party client for Sonos music systems, designed to spread your music throughout your house, but how does Phonos fare compared to the official clients on other platforms - read on to find out!
Beyond navigation and route planning, the promise of location-based smartphone apps is still an area in which developers can make their mark in the Windows Phone store. Social Scout steps up to take 'where you are' and 'what's around you' (with a bit of Facebook in the mix) to see if it can deliver.
The Windows Phone Design Language (oh how I wish it was still the far easier to type 'Metro') is a good interface for personal use, but there are areas where it can be a bit more awkward than normal to use. One of those areas is when you are driving in your car and need to use the handset. Sure, the live tiles and large fonts can just about cope with that, but Car Dash from RWI goes a step further. It crafts a UI which will open up when your phone goes into the car holder, and allow you to navigate vital functions with large friendly buttons and clear text.
Here we go, it's another application to help you browse and read through your RSS feed. Pheeb works with the Feedly common platform, is brightly coloured and well laid out, but falls to make the grade for frequent use.
In the early days of Windows Phone, third party camera applications were the saviour of the determined snapper, offering far more than the Microsoft-written default application. Yet most Lumias now have Nokia Camera, with its truly pro-level interface. Begging the question: "Do we still need third party camera apps?" In truth, nowhere near as much, but ProShot here does have some unique tricks up its sleeve that might well endear it.
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.
