Author / Henry Hunt

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Posts by Henry Hunt

Med student at Glasgow University, will write reviews and the like for Digixav and maybe the occasional rant on my own site if I haven't deleted it already
by Henry Hunt

WP7 AOTW: Rainbow Rapture

This weeks AOTW is Rainbow Rapture by Kindling Games. This is the first game to appear as my AOTW, and for a very good reason. It’s just about the most random, weird, trippy and truly fantastic Tiny Wings rip off ever.

Yes, it is yet another game where you slide up and down hills trying to get as far as possible. However this app deserves an AOTW not for originality, but for the fact that it has taken an old idea and made it different. The whole basis of this game is that you are a rainbow/cloud/god thing that helped to create the world and all its beauty. The humans, however, have taken your world and turned it grey and boring. Because of this, you have decided to destroy them.

By eating them.

There are three main power-ups in the game. these are car, oil and blimp. The car gives you a speed boost, the oil allows you to slide across the ground and the blimp makes you suck up people as you fly over them.

Have a look at our gameplay demo (filmed in our office) in the video below.

See? Get it NOW!

Rainbow Rapture, Windows Phone 7, Free or £1.29

Download from the Marketplace or visit the website

by Henry Hunt

WP7 AOTW: Smart Tile

This week’s AOTW for WP7 is called ‘Smart Tile’.

This is essentially an app that allows you to pin a note to your home screen. When you enter the app you are faced with four lines in which to write your notes. These notes will then appear on a live tile when you pin the app to your home screen. The idea of this app is great, I find it especially useful for things such as writing down my prep (homework but for private/boarding schools) and reminding me when I have music lessons.

The amount of customisation that is possible on the live tile makes this a very good app. You can change the colour of the tile to any of the theme colours on you WP7 device and a few additional ones such as slate, cherry and camel. It is also possible to change the background image to things such as a light bulb and an exclamation mark.

Smart Tile, Windows Phone 7, Free

Download from the Marketplace or visit the website

by Henry Hunt

WP7 AOTW: MegaTile

This weeks App Of The Week for Windows Phone 7 is MegaTile.

This app allows you to create custom tiles to pin to the Metro UI home screen of your Windows Phone. This tile can be customized to fill a number of different functions from linking to a specific web page to acting as a speed dial for a single contact. This app is made even better by the fact that you can use a picture from your photo album as the image on the tile. In addition, such images can spread over multiple tiles relating to a single topic.

This is a great app which is a must have for all WP7 users who yearn for that extra bit of customisation.

MegaTile, Windows Phone 7, £0.79

Download from the Marketplace or visit the website

by Henry Hunt

WP7 AOTW: Torchbear

From now on I will be doing (roughly once a week) a post on a good Windows Phone 7 app and what I think about it. For the first post I am going to do a free app called Torchbear.

Torchbear is a ‘social game’ in which the users create a torch which can be passed on from player to player via their phone’s location services. A torch can be passed on to any player within 1.6 km and each player can only carry one torch at a time. Each torch must be given a description of what it is for. The first torch that I created contained a link to this blog but others are created to spread a message, promote a cause or for people to post pictures on the torch on a specific subject.

The only problem that I have with Torchbear is that there are not enough users for passing on a torch to be easy. In order for me to pass one on I have to travel 9 km into Brighton.

Torchbear is a fun app that, if you have a Windows Phone, I recommend you download.

Torchbear, Windows Phone 7, Free

Download on the Marketplace or visit the website

by Henry Hunt

Nokia Lumia first impressions

The two new Lumia phones both look very good. The Nokia Lumia 800 for a start looks fantastic. With a 3.7 inch AMOLED display, a huge 1.4GHz single core Snapdragon processor and 16GB of internal storage (along with the 25GB of free cloud storage that comes with all WP7 phones via SkyDrive) it can compete with most other smartphones. It also has a 1GB RAM and a wonderful 8 megapixel camera with 720p HD recording and Carl Zeiss optics. The Lumia 800 is looking to be a great phone.

The Lumia 710 is the mid range Nokia WP7 device but in spite of this it still seems to have impressive internal hardware. With the same display as the 800. The camera is a decent 5 megapixel, and it also has the same 1.4 GHz procesor. However from the pictures we have seen the 710 looks quite cheap and tacky compared to the sleek look of the 800. However the idea of the swappable covers is good and the fact that Nokia are making them the same colours as the tiles on the home screen for Windows Phone is pretty good too.

Both Lumia phones look to be successful in my opinion.

by Henry Hunt

Two Nokia Windows Phones leak AGAIN (Update: A dubious third one)

Two new Nokia smartphones have been leaked just hours ahead of their expected announcement at Nokia World in London tomorrow. These are the Lumia 800 and the Lumia 710, both appearing to run Windows Phone 7. The recent teasers that have been adorning British TV have clearly been showing the Lumia 800, while the Lumia 710 appeared earlier this week code-named Sabre.

Continue reading →

by Henry Hunt

Windows Phone 7.5 Mango review

First things first, this review will be from the point of view of a Microsoft enthusiast and will largely include my opinions and hatred of Android that all writers on this website share.

I’ve had a Windows Phone for around a year now and I love it. Last year for Christmas I received my HTC HD7 and it was the best thing I’d ever been given. The UI amazed me, the fact that it had Microsoft Office was so cool that I could hardly put it into words. I even wrote this epic review on the 4.3 inch The best bit of all was that it connected to my Xbox Live account and my games got me achievements. However after about a week usage I began to notice a few major flaws in the first version of WP7.

However it was announced within a month or two that NoDo, the first big update to be announced for my new phone, was to be released in March and that Angry Birds (the main reason that I had wanted a smartphone) was to finally be on Xbox Live. I was very excited as all of the things that made WP7 inferior to Android and iOS were going to be fixed. In reality all we received was copy and paste. And Angry Birds was not released for another four or five months.

After this series of let downs when Mango was announced I was not expecting great things but I looked on the WP7 website and liked what I saw. Groups seemed like a good idea. And the social network integration looked like something that I would use. On the October 15th I finally downloaded Mango. It was one of the best things I’ve ever done. Read on past the break to find out why.

Continue reading →

by Henry Hunt

Motorola RAZR first impressions

First things first, why have a Kevlar back on a phone. Now I’ve got that out-of-the-way, I can get down to the actual phone. the first thing you notice about the phone is that it is incredibly thin, just 7.1 mm in fact. This makes it the undisputedly the world’s thinnest smartphone. The specs for this new phone are very good. With a powerful dual core 1.2 GHz processor and 1GB of ram it can handle most of what you can throw at it. It is also equipped with a Super AMOLED screen of qHD (960 x 540) resoluion and an 8MP camera capable of 1080p HD video. Also you can stream music, films and more from your computer from anywhere using MotoCast.

Continue reading →

by Henry Hunt

Hi. I am Henry.

Hi. I am Henry Hunt, the chief reporter for this blog. I will be doing reviews and the occasional rant about how bad Android/Symbian/RIM is and how brilliant iOS/WP7 is. I am a Microsoft enthusiast with a secret love of Apple.

More from me soon.

Henry