Reviews

Do you have an email that you send on a regular basis from your Windows Phone 8 device? You know the ones that seem to repeat week after week, month after month?  You may want to give Email Templates a try.

The Windows Phone 8 app Email Templates is an easy way to create these emails. From monthly meeting reminders to re-occurring social events, Email Templates could save you a little time while your on the go.

Collapsticks is an addictive Windows Phone game that you may find hard to put down. 

The puzzle game has you collapsing stacked match sticks in an effort to drop a set number of matches off the bottom of the screen. But the fall isn't exactly straight forward and with each puzzle, the match sticks has to be dropped in a particular order. Otherwise you're stuck with too many sticks.

Graphics and animations are nice, game play challenging and the only downside may be that you'll eventually run out of levels to play.  But with 120 levels, that may take some time.  Collapsticks is a nice addition to the Windows Phone gaming library.

Ultimate Cartoon Quiz is a trivia game for your Windows Phone that is designed much like Logoarama. With the Logoarama you're given a brand logo and you have to identify the associated product.

With Ultimate Cartoon Quiz you are given a silhouette of a cartoon character and you have to name that character. Ultimate Cartoon Quiz is a decent trivia game just a little short lived.

Sketch is a Windows Phone app that converts your photographs into pencil drawings. Sketch can convert existing photos into drawings or launch the camera app and capture new photos to convert.

The Windows Phone photography app has twenty seven drawing styles to choose from, each having the ability to be fine tuned. Add sharing support for Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr and Photobucket and Sketch isn't too shabby of a photo effects app for your Windows Phone.

Windows Phone has a little problem for those of us outside the USA, it will not allow subscribing and downloading podcasts from the handset. Like any problem it has spawned a solution, when it comes to podcasts ‘many’ solutions. One of the latest to tackle this issue is Podcatcher, it has been on the market for only a short while but since its release it has been the subject of many rapid fire updates.

As of yesterday the app had been bumped to version 2.0 and with it comes a long list of changes and improvements. We thought it was time we took a closer look at this podcasting newcomer to see how it stacks up. Could this be your ultimate podcasting solution? Read on..

Last year’s free Sudoku game provided a nice little bit of logic puzzling for Xbox Windows Phone gamers, but it hardly had any staying power. The randomly-generated puzzles failed to instill much replay value, as players could easily just finish off the game’s Achievements in a matter of hours with no reason to keep playing. Plus its sparse Metro-style visuals left much to be desired. As such, Microsoft’s mobile platform lacked a logic game with real meat on its bones.

This year Capcom of all companies has stepped in to turn things around. Their first Windows Phone game KenKen provides a very Sudoku-like experience that players won’t finish all in one day. Well, maybe you could beat it in a Martian 36 hour day, provided you don’t have a psychotic episode. The question is: does KenKen justify its relatively lofty price?

QONQR is a popular massive multi-player online game for your Windows Phone that is location based. You join one of three factions and as you travel about, you claim and battle for control of certain areas of the map. All totaled, there are three million zones in 250 countries to conquer.

The developers recently released a companion app for Windows 8 and Windows 8 RT that will help you keep track of the global battle as it unfolds. The QONQR Command Center offers you a nice birds-eye view of all the activities going on in the Windows Phone game.  While you can't battle from the Command Center, you can scroll around the map to monitor recent shifts in power, the leaderboards for a zone or area, and find pockets of enemy occupation that may be ripe for the taking.

If you prefer your camera controls up front and in plain sight, you may want to take a gander at the Windows Phone 8 app CameraPro.

While the native camera app tucks the settings up under the three dot menu, CameraPro places them on either side of the screen. On top of that, CameraPro also adds a healthy selection of features that goes well beyond what the native camera app offers.  CameraPro is a nice addition to the Windows Phone photography app lineup.

Slowly but surely, Nokia and Electronic Arts continue to pump out Nokia-exclusive Xbox Windows Phone games. These titles also include games from Chillingo, a popular mobile publisher owned by EA. The latest Chillingo-published exclusive iBomber Defense comes from Scottish developer Cobra.

Originally an iOS game, Cobra’s tower defense title has since branched out to other platforms like Steam and Windows Phone. Fans of the genre should be thankful for that, because other than some performance issues and rough Achievements, iBomber Defense is the best traditional tower defense game in the Xbox lineup.

The Ventev Dura-Gel Case is a rubbery shell case for the Nokia Lumia 920. It is constructed of thermal formed, advanced thermoplastic polyurethane.

The Ventev Dura-Gel Case does offer a decent amount of protection for the Lumia 920 with regards to minor dings and scratches. The Dura-Gel won't offer much help from falls but it does offer a decent grippable surface that may prevent accidental drops. The diamond pattern may not appeal to everyone but the Ventev Dura-Gel Case for the Nokia Lumia 920 is a decent option if you're looking for a simple case.

HDR Photo Camera is a Windows Phone 8 app that gives your Windows Phone camera the capability of creating HDR (High Dynamic Range) images.

HDR images have a high dynamic range between the lightest and darkest areas of the photo than what you would see in standard photos. Typically HDR images are created by taking several photos of the same subject at various exposure levels and merging them together to create the HDR image. The end result creates an image with more vibrant colors and greater dynamic range between the lighter and darker areas.  It's a great technique for landscapes and scenes that have a nice blend of dark and light areas.

While you could use the exposure compensation setting on your Windows Phone camera, bracket several photos and merge them into one image with post-processing software, HDR Photo Camera does it all for you in a simple, straight forward package.  It's a nice camera tool to add to your Windows Phone photography app library.

Okay... it's obvious that the Windows Phone game Pencil Blade is a Fruit Ninja knock off. But that doesn't mean it's not an enjoyable knock off.

Game play with Pencil Blade has you slicing pencil sketched fruit with your razor sharp pencil. Along the way you'll need to avoid slicing the drawn out bombs. Pencil Blade has three game modes and customizable pencil colors, backdrops and theme colors. It shares Fruit Ninja's addictive quality and the pencil sketchings give Pencil Blade a unique feel.