App Reviews: Phaze, International Athletics, MouthOff
The main focus of this site is (hopefully) informed commentary, and news we’ve unearthed ourselves. We also like to provide you with in-depth reviews. But, being a mostly volunteer-run site, there’s not enough time to review everything that comes through the door, and personally I have quite a backlog of apps to look at.
So in a series of posts, I’m going to have a quick look at apps that I’ve promised developers I’ll review – ones that I’m reviewing because I thought they are interesting, and either highlighted how powerful the iPhone platform is, or just made me smile.
I’ve already looked at Pixi, Orbital and CalenGoo, and SPB Brain Evolution, iDroidsMania and Copy Share.
For the last in this series of posts, we have Phaze, International Athletics, and MouthOff.
App Reviews: SPB Brain Evolution, iDroidsMania, Copy Share
The main focus of this site is (hopefully) informed commentary, and news we’ve unearthed ourselves. We also like to provide you with in-depth reviews. But, being a mostly volunteer-run site, there’s not enough time to review everything that comes through the door, and personally I have quite a backlog of apps to look at.
So in a series of posts, I’m going to have a quick look at apps that I’ve promised developers I’ll review – ones that I’m reviewing because I thought they are interesting, and either highlighted how powerful the iPhone platform is, or just made me smile.
I’ve already looked at Pixi, Orbital and CalenGoo, and now we have SPB Brain Evolution, iDroidsMania, and Copy Share.
App Reviews: Pixi, Orbital, CalenGoo
The main focus of this site is (hopefully) informed commentary, and news we’ve unearthed ourselves. We also like to provide you with in-depth reviews. But, being a mostly volunteer-run site, there’s not enough time to review everything that comes through the door, and personally, I have quite a backlog of apps to look at.
So in a series of posts, I’m going to have a quick look at apps that I’ve promised developers I’ll review – ones that I’m reviewing because I thought they are interesting, and either highlighted how powerful the iPhone platform is, or just made me smile.
In this first round up of review apps, I’m looking at Pixi, Orbital and CalenGoo.
App Giveaway: iSaidWhat?!
I’ve been meaning to mention iSaidWhat?! for a while. It’s one of those apps that makes you marvel at what can achieved on your iPhone.
It’s really cleanly designed app from Tapparatus that allows you to record voices. There’s nothing new about voice recording on the iPhone, but iSaidWhat?! adds the ability to re-arrange those recordings to make… something new. You can record, then edit those recording into sections, and move them around into a snippet that’s more interesting (or incriminating!).
App Review: 1000: Find ‘Em All
At first glance “1000: Find ‘Em All” from Glu Mobile reminded me of Zelda – A Link To The Past on the SNES – the art and style of the game world is really cute and slick. The world is a traditional 2D pixel art background, whereas the main character is rendered in 3D, which gives him a nice appearance. It also allows a full 360 degree direction of movement.
The controls are very slick. You can either tap a location and your character automatically walks to this point, or you can drag your finger round and control your character’s movement directly. All in all, the actual game engine and controls are a triumph that Glu Mobile can be very proud of. But how does 1000 fare as an actual game?
App Review: Doc² and Sheet²
One of the most useful functions for a portable device such as the iPhone and Touch is as a way to view or edit office documents while on the move. If there’s a reliable way to do that, many people will feel able to leave their laptops at home when travelling.
It’s surprising then, how few apps cover this function. Microsoft has spent decades and tens of millions designing, developing and testing their office applications and they work on high powered desktop computers. So, any developer wanting to make the equivalent for the iPhone has their work cut out.
Byte Squared has taken up the challenge and has an app allowing you to view, create and edit Word documents called Doc² and another that does the same for Excel files called Sheet². Will they allow you to leave your laptop at the office when out on business?
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App Review: CoPilot Live
For someone who spent the formative years of his youth reading maps in the Scouts, I have an unnerving ability to get lost. But so far – and this is especially inscrutable for a gadget freak – I have resisted the lure of satellite navigation. I just didn’t want to have to manage *yet another device* when a map and my innate sense of direction seemed generally adequate.
But a combination of my iPhone, an affordable satnav app called CoPilot Live, and a demand from the Significant Other to end unintended diversions – and I have an opportunity to see what this GPS driving business is all about.
So having ditched the maps for CoPilot Live, did my iPhone get me from A to B?
2009’s Apps of the Year
It’s almost the end of the 2009. This year has seen the release of the iPhone 3GS, tons of new features thanks to iPhone OS 3.0 , and has seen the iPhone’s smartphone market share rise considerably.
But it’s still all about the apps. So to end the year, I asked the All About iPhone contributors to send me their choice of favourite application.
I simply asked, “Which one app has made the most impact on you in 2009?”
The company behind (most of) those in-app ads – Smaato
In-app advertising has become more and more common in the iPhone world – it’s a great way for developers to monetise their apps and games while keeping the app itself free for users. But how does it all work, in terms of putting the right ads in the right apps to the right people? Following on from the Heroes of the Mobile Screen event in London, I tracked down Smaato founder Ragnar Kruse and got to the bottom of iPhone (and Symbian) mobile advertising. And if you’re a developer, Smaato.com is the place to try first for this sort of thing.
Review: Proporta TurboCharger 3400
I’ve had the Proporta USB TurboCharger 3400 for a quite few months now so I’m in a good position to be able to give a accurate account of how the TurboCharger 3400 might fit in to your daily smartphone usage. If there’s one item that has remained underpowered on all smartphones throughout 2009 it’s the battery. For those impatient types, or for those of you who are actively looking for a portable battery backup solution, let me cut to the chase. You need a Porporta TurboCharger 3400. With is 3400 mAh capacity and swappable charging heads, it’s hard to see why you wouldn’t want one.
I’ll give you three common scenarios – all real life examples – that should resonate with many readers.