sprites & bites

Gaming, iPads and a few biscuits on the side…

Category Archives: iphone

iPhone 5

The recently released iPhone 5 has broken pre-order sales records with a whopping 5 million handsets sold in the first day alone.

I never had the previous iPhone 4S as I felt it was not enough of an upgrade from the iPhone 4 to justify it.  However,  I was out of contract when the iPhone 5 was released so ordered for release day and purchased it from Three for only £79, excellent price.

The first thing you will notice about the device is that it is extremely light and thin. So thin that you could put a small case on the phone and it will still be thinner than the iPhone 4/S. It is also the thinnest phone on the market right now. Thin may sound uncomfortable but it really is not, it is very comfortable to use.  It is also slightly longer with a 4” screen.  Some may not want a bigger screen but actually it is a good size. I have small hands and still I am able to use it comfortably.

The next thing you will notice is how fast this phone is. It is incredibly fast and apps load in the blink of an eye. It has a new A6 dual core processor which is double the speed of the previous processor used in the iPhone 4S and the new iPad. Through some magical engineering it also is the highest scoring phone in test benchmarks on the market even beating quad core processor phones including Samsung’s flagship phone the S3.  Everything runs so fast and smooth, from bringing up the phone app to loading the biggest of apps like games.  Multitasking and switching from app to app just flows as it should with no stutter or lag.

The camera is the same 8 megapixel as the previous model but now it has a larger and improved lens –  proof itself that megapixels are not the important factor in cameras, it is the quality of the lens which matters.  Another improvement is in the colour saturation, the 5 has the same retina screen as the 4S (albeit slightly longer) but has higher colour saturation so everything looks brighter and more colourful.  I found this was quite noticeable in the regular games that I play.

Battery life has seen an improvement although not a vast improvement, the improvements are more inside – a faster processor would require a better battery to keep up. I still get through the day with about 80% battery left over. Not bad for a phone range where people think the battery is poor – that is just a myth.

I welcome also Apple’s new earphones which are bundled. Apple spent 3 years designing and developing these new earphones. They are shaped like a weird aliens head but fit perfectly in the ear lobe like they were moulded for everybody.

The one let down which must be mentioned is that they have changed the connector port for charging the phone so if you have old cables or docks you wish to use you would need to buy an expensive adaptor. Bad Apple, the connector needed changing so they could fit in the new components but they could have included an adaptor with the phone, it is not like they cannot afford it.  I want an extra cable for my PC but I am not spending £15-25 on one.

Disc Drivin

Here I  interview iphone game developer Michael Bean from Pixelocity Software who created the excellent Disc Drivin’ game for iPhone and iPad.

Beck: Who are you, where are you and what do you do?

[Michael] – We are Pixelocity Software (www.pixelocitysoftware.com), a Texas based independent game company started by my brother Tommy and myself [Michael Bean]. We’ve been in the game industry since the late 90s, working mostly on large PC and console games like Age of Empires and Halo Wars. Having worked on really big projects for a long time, we had a growing desire to make smaller games and the emergence of the iPhone presented a great opportunity. So we started Pixelocity in 2010 and got straight to work on our first title, Disc Drivin’.

 

Beck: I love Disc Drivin, what on earth gave you the idea for the game?

[Michael] – Disc Drivin’ has several inspirations. First, there’s a physical board game called Pitchcar with a similar theme of sliding discs around a track that is a ton of fun with a lot of people. We’re also huge fans of the Mario Kart series, so we really wanted to incorporate a lot of obstacles and powers to keep the racing exciting. And finally, the inspiration for making it turn-based came from friends and former coworkers of ours at Ensemble Studios, who went on to make Words with Friends. Tie those together with some creativity and polish and you have Disc Drivin’!

Beck: Are you working on versions for other platforms like Android or Windows 7 phone?

[Michael] – We aren’t working on Disc Drivin’ for other platforms at this point. We would rather concentrate on updates for iOS and on making new games rather than porting to other platforms right now.

Beck: Lots of tracks to play already but are there plans for new tracks or maybe even a mirror option to flip over the current tracks?

[Michael] – Yes, there are plans for new tracks. We’re working on an update now that will have new tracks plus a few other surprises hopefully.

 

Beck: Sometimes I film with my phone my crazy or weird shots to YouTube for others to laugh or cry at. What would be great is an option to upload a previous shot to YouTube. Would this be hard to implement?

[Michael] – It’s not impossible to implement. We actually started on that feature when we first released the game and got it partially working, but had to shelve it for higher priorities. It would be cool to revisit if it bubbles up on the wishlist.

 

Beck: Do you have any other new games in the pipeline?

[Michael] – We’ve started several prototypes and have a massive list of games we want to try making, but we don’t have anything far enough along to talk about yet.

 

Beck: I have a personal statistic of 866 gold medals, 544 silver medals and 17 bronze medals. Are you as good as me? :-)

[Michael] – No, I am not nearly as good as you. But you knew that and just wanted me to admit it in print. It’s incredibly common in the game industry that developers are “the best” at their own game for a brief few weeks after first release.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Check out these two Videos of my favourite shots by me. The first is a weird shot that went wrong, the second is just a good shot.

Weird shot at Disc Drivin

Disc drivin jumping the big gap

 

Poker Pals iOS

Chillingo recently released Poker Pals HD for iPhone and iPad. This is a great little take on a board game mixed with poker. Some reviews have likened it to a hybrid between Poker and Scrabble, this is true to an extent but of course you do not play words, you play Poker hands to gain points on the game board.

Poker Pals supports AI two player, local pass and play but ultimately online multiplayer with a friend or a random person. There seems to be no issues with online and it generally works very well. Myself and a few friends had an issue with the game not notifying on iOS5 but I found the fix for this was to go the the device settings – settings ->notifications -> Pals HD – and change the alert type from a banner to alert box.

Sadly, the game is missing online chat which is a great shame, many good iOS board games have online chat now and it is something that should be added to give a better feel of a social game.

Now onto the real issue I have. After having purchased the game for iPad, I found it was quite addicted so purchased it for iPhone too. The problem is that the second device will not accept my username and gives an error that username is already taken – yes it has been taken, by me!! But it seems that I cannot purchase it for two devices and play it with the same username. This is far from the usual behaviour for iOS games and it is something Chillingo must fix as soon as possible, it seems when they made this fun game they forgot that some people may have multiple devices. I am sure they will fix it, but in the meantime do not buy it again for a second device.

So all in all, a fun game, very addictive but has a few issues and tweaks that they need to resolve. I would like to reiterate though apart from the issue above and the tweaks I would like added, I have found no problems with the gameplay itself. Oh and as a BTW, there is an achievement for beating Difficult Davey, I did it after about 10 tries but I swear he cheats. And speaking of achievements, there seems to be a bit of a bug – I magically unlocked a load of achievements I never actually earned!  :)

 

 

 

Kickin Mamma HD

Kickin Mamma HD was released on the iPad a few days ago and instantly to me it looked like a Peggle clone. This is a good thing as I loved Peggle. But to my surprise, it is actually better than Peggle in my opinion.  Rather than having to get all the pegs like in Peggle, you have to get a set number of gems scattered around the pegs. During the game you are given powerups and extras like fireball to be able to break through frozen pegs so there is a little added variety.

The game is not huge by means of time of completion but there is some replay value to go back and get the gems you missed and aim for gold medals and there is a promise of more levels to come in a future update.  I recommend this game as a short blast of fun which you may prove difficult to put down.  At the moment it is also only £1.49 in the AppStore too, so grab it while it is cheap. Also available for iPhone.

Hidden Object Fun

I have a little secret shame which I am now to air to the world. I have developed an addiction to hidden object games. These are the games where you are tasked with finding a series of objects within a cluttered scene. Sounds boring, yes it is in a way but oh so quite compelling and I have found that the hours can easily pass away and not notice it is very late and sleep should be forthcoming.

There are many variations in the hidden object game genre, some are simply find a list of objects and complete a scene, but the better ones have a proper story attached to them and brain exploding puzzles to really give your mind some exercise. Some of the puzzles may be easy and others are so evil you may find yourself looking for help online.  Hidden object games are always suitable for all ages but some of the ones with hard puzzles in may naturally be too difficult for younger children.  They are also very accessible and can be found on all formats from mobile phones to ipads and PCs and there are even a few on the gaming consoles. And they are great to play if you have only a few minutes or many hours.

Here is a little rundown of my favourite hidden object games on iphone or ipad, which with the touch screens are perfect for hidden objects. Be wary when choosing though, some are really short about an hour or so long and others are 4-5 hours or more.  The selection below are all fairly lengthy games except for Nick Chase Detective HD which I felt was a great story anyway so deserved to be on the list.

Antrim Escape 2 HD

Awakening: The Dreamless Castle

Awakening: Moonfell Wood

Drawn: The Painted Tower

Flux Family Secrets

Mushroom Age

Nick Chase A Detective Story HD

Treasure Seekers 1

Treasure Seekers 2

 

Most of the games are of a decent length and took me at least 4 hours to
finish. They also have a good mix of hidden object finding and brain bending
puzzles to vary the action. Antrim Escape 2 is extremely hard so if you are
new to these games this one is best avoided but may I suggest starting with
Flux Family Secrets, it is not too easy but has a good balance between not
too difficult and giving your brain cells some action.

 

iOS Airprint

Apple’s latest OS update 4.2 was released last month and it supported printing to wireless printers within apps which added the feature. The official list of printers which support Airpint so far are only some HP printers but unofficially other printers work too.  Seeing as I needed a new printer anyway I decided to go for one of the HP printers listed as officially supported so lessens the risks of incompatibility, but more printers will be added to the official list as time goes by.  I opted for the HP e-AIO Premium printer which has an RRP of £189.99 approximately but Comet had a sale on and I snapped it up today for only £89.99

The printer itself is excellent with a large array of features which you would not usually see on printers.  It is web app enabled so with a touch of a button you can print out graphs, calendars, soduko puzzles, colouring pads and much more.  The printer also has it’s own email address so people can send emails to it and it will by itself print out the emails and any attachments.  If you choose to use this feature though be sure to register the email on the HP website and lock out unauthorised email printing otherwise you may come home to a pile of printed porn. It is easy to lock out unauthorised users via the website.

I don’t want to harp on about the features much as a better review is posted up on the TECHRADAR website here.

Moving onto Airprint.  The printing is extremely easy to use on iOS devices.  Printing is supported in Safari, Mail and Camera Roll, so go into the item you want to print, click the arrow (normally used for reply/forward/etc and select print. Choose your printer from the list and print, it is that simple. It is extremely quick and printing signal from phone/ipad to printer was only a second. The printing functionality does lack a few features, the only option is to select how many copies you wish to print. There are no other basic options like selecting the orientation of the print. I had my ipad in landscape mode and a Google page printed in portrait mode so it seems it is portrait only for now.  One thing useful (or not) is that it formats web pages quite well.  As a test I printed a page from the BBC News website. As you know BBC is full of links, images and everything they can cram in but it printed only the story with no photos or extra rubbish so ink and paper waste is reduced.  I note that this is a good thing but in some circumstances you may want everything printed including photos so for some it may be an annoyance.  I am sure future updates will bring extra printing features but for now, it is one tiny step closer to making the ipad a laptop replacement, well for me it is anyway.

A list of apps which feature Airprint so far can be found HERE CLICKY HERE

Is the iPhone 4 Antenna Problem Software based?

The iPhone 4 was released today and it was soon evident there was a problem with the signal dropping when people were holding the phone. Many videos showing the evidence have been posted up on various forums and video sites proclaiming a mass manufacturing error. @ghalfacree has duly noted to me that this is likely to be an OS4 related issue and a fault in the displaying of bars rather than a fault with the phone, like Apple claim.

So I thought I would test my iPhone 3GS model loaded with OS4 and voila I could replicate the problem. Within 20 seconds of holding the phone, my signal went from 5 bars down to one. I did this process 3 more times to rule out a fluke and the same happened. Some people have shown videos to show calls dropping on the iPhone 4 but as Gareth states, if the phone thinks it has a low signal it will drop the call. Now I am no scientist or a technical buff, I leave that to the experts, I can only tell you that this happens on the 3GS too on OS4 so it is highly likely to be a software issue. I await a patch from Apple to fix it.