Streaming Music for your iPhone

• Developer: Sam Abadir
• Version: 1.2
• Cost:Free
• For: iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPod Touch
• Download URL

With respect to streaming music itself, Flycast offers two modes.  The standard mode, “quick play” aims to conserve battery life and reduce skipping by using an extended buffering system.  However, you can turn off Flycast and launch the radio via Safari.  The benefit of streaming the station from Safari is that you can then stream the music in the background and launch other apps. Beautiful.

The only thing with Flycast (and any other streaming software) is that you’d want to be within wifi or 3G range - otherwise EDGE simply cannot keep up with the stream.  Otherwise as long as you have a good charge on the battery you should have hours of entertainment.

App Review Score: 4.0 out of 5.

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Fun Little Widget

• Developer: MarketWall
• Version 1.0
• Cost: Free
• For: iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPod Touch
• Download URL

I don’t have much to say about this one, since the functionality of this little utility app is pretty basic.  Nevertheless, I really like A Free Level - it’s a clever way to take advantage of the accelerator and show off to your dad.

How useful would an iPhone level be in real life - just a little since you’d have to hold the phone vertical to use.  At any rate, it’s fun to play with and small enough that I keep in the back of my home pages just for the heck of it.

App Score: 2.5 out of 5.

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Blue Skies…Shooting at Me…

• Developer: Rocking Pocket Games
• Version: 2.0
• Cost:Free for Lite version / $5.99 for Full Version
• For: iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPod Touch
• Download URL

To add to the gameplay, you have options of purchasing weapon upgrades, and you have a basic storyline in between levels to complete the package. Okay, the storyline is cheezy really doesn’t add much to game and the graphics are uncharacteristically amateur.  Nevertheless, even the demo is full featured and enjoyable to play.

It’s a Creature-Eat-Creature-World Out There

• Developer: Electronic Arts
• Version: 1.0.0
• Cost: $9.99
• For: iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPod Touch
• Download URL

Back in March when the iPhone 3G and app store was announced, a little tech demo showing a version of Spore on the iPhone was the talk of the town for quite a while.  It was probably one of the most anticipated games for the iPhone for quite a while.  Flash forward to September, and Spore arrived, and as of this post I’ve been playing Spore Origins on and off for about a month now.

Does the game live up to the hype?  From a sales perspective, I’m not so sure.  It quickly disappeared off of the Top Paid Apps in about 2 weeks and haven’t seen it come back since.  In terms of my impressions, the game is beautifully created and really shows off the power of the iPhone as a gaming device.  The graphics - from the multi-layer background to the smooth animation, is visually very pleasing (although my creature is anything but ugly) and the music and sound effects blend perfectly into the gameplay.

On the game itself, the premise is very simple.  You control a little creature of your own design, that swims around and makes its way from primordial goup until it reaches deep water.  Throughout this little journey, the creature must swim through different areas and do two things: eat and avoid being eaten.  There are little colorful tadpoles which you compete with other creatures to eat, the larger of which would also be happy to eat you as well.  As you progress through the different levels, you get larger in size, and creatures that used to take a bite out of you now become part of your dinner menu.  After each level, you also get the option of “evolving” your creature - adding new features such as spikes, teeth, and armor to make you stronger, faster, or easier to capture food.
The app uses the tilt controls on the iphone as used on many games.  However, the controls don’t seem as sensitive as many of the driving games out there, which is a positive - I for one still can’t get used to the highly sensitive controls.

Overall Thoughts

Spore Origins is beautifully done - great graphics, sounds, and controls.  It really shows what a great game system the iPhone can be.  The only negative against the game is the lack of variety in the gameplay - there’s really only 2 things to do, eat and avoid being eaten.  After the 10th of so level, this starts getting repetitive and definitely reduces the replay value of the game.  Recommended if (when) the price drops.

App Score: 4.0 out of 5

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Apple is now requiring users to have actually purchased applications before they are allowed to post a customer review on the App Store.  While there are definitely genuine comments on the iTunes App Store, there’s also too many people that’s decided to use the user reviews as an open discussion forum - asking for reviews, complaining about the price, or leaving advertisements to their websites.

This is a good move by Apple to improve the quality user reviews on the iTunes store.

]]> http://www.miphonereviews.com/2008/09/news-itunes-now-limits-comments/feed/ http://www.miphonereviews.com/2008/09/back-in-business-miphone-20-coming-soon/ http://www.miphonereviews.com/2008/09/back-in-business-miphone-20-coming-soon/#comments Wed, 01 Oct 2008 02:53:20 +0000 admin http://www.miphonereviews.com/?p=237 After a couple of weeks off — we are back in business.  Reviews and news will be coming shortly.  In addition, we’ve been working on “miPhone 2.0″ - complete with a new look, better navigation, contests, and much more. Stay tuned - miPhone 2.0 is scheduled for mid October. ]]>

After a couple of weeks off — we are back in business.  Reviews and news will be coming shortly.  In addition, we’ve been working on “miPhone 2.0″ - complete with a new look, better navigation, contests, and much more.

Stay tuned - miPhone 2.0 is scheduled for mid October.

Let’s cut to the chase.  The 2.1 firmware is out and now available for download on the iTunes store.   Unlike the previous upgrade, which provided such descriptive info as “bug fixes”, the release notes provide a lot more info:

iPhone 2.1 Software Update

iPhone version 2.1 contains many bug fixes and improvements, including the following:
•  decrease in call set-up failures and call drops
•  significantly improved battery life for most users
•  dramatically reduced time to backup to iTunes
•  improved email reliability, notably fetching email from POP and Exchange accounts
•  faster installation of 3rd party applications
•  fixed bugs causing hangs and crashes if you have lots of 3rd party applications
•  improved performance in text messaging
•  faster loading and searching of contacts
•  improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display
•  repeat alert up to two additional times for incoming text messages
•  option to wipe data after ten failed passcode attempts
•  Genius playlist creation

I’m installing it right now and see how it goes!

A well designed game with a smart pricing strategy

• Category: Games
• Developer: IUGO Mobile Entertainment
• Version: 1.1
• Cost:$3.99
• For: iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPod Touch
• Download URL

Game developer IUGO promised “intuitive touch and tilt controls, physics-based game play, and platform action mixed with puzzles” in iphone game Toy Bot Diaries - Entry 1; and they delivered. If you are looking for a game that requires both your knowledge of physics and puzzle solving skills, and at the same time deliver cute characters, you don’t need to look any further.

Toy Bot Diaries is one of the rare iphone games out there that truly uses iphone’s tilt function naturally. In fact, tilting your iphone left and right is the basis of movement in the game. Game play is heavily physics-based. In addition to tilting, you move Toy Bot through the 4 levels (with sub stages) by touching metal objects on screen to trigger grappling hook and magnet boots. The controls are so well done that I forgot I was playing a game on an iphone. I hope this would set the minimum standard of game control for iphone games for the next little while.

Back to the actual game: - you aren’t provided with a lot of instructions, so you need to figure out most of it through game play. At the same time, you are also figuring out how to navigate the different obstacles each stage. After all this app is also a puzzle game. Be prepared to get a little frustrated (or a lot) when you are stuck and not know what to do next. It happened to me a few times, but I am the type to persist through challenges. Some may feel so frustrated and just abandon. Dying means going back to the previous savespot, and there are many throughout. If you get really stuck at a spot, you may find it quite repetitive as you perform the same action again and again to make it through to the next savespot.

Game controls for Toy Bot Diaries, as mentioned above, is first class. The game has also got some pretty good graphics and music to go with it. One of my complaints is its lack of indication whether you may be falling into a tunnel to death or onto the next level. Another maybe the length of the game.

The Scoop
This game is part 1 of a series of episodes. It takes an average of an hour to finish the game. For $3.99, it is a fun little game for the casual iPhone gamers out there. But don’t look for a lot of replay value here.

App Score: 3.5 out of 5

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Cheap.  It’s from Dealextreme, what did you expect?

When I bought my car last year, the only one available at the end of the year came with an iPod interface with an MSRP of $300.  I didn’t really want it, with an mp3 player in the CD deck that would’ve been good enough for someone like me who doesn’t typically like to listen to my music collection  if it’s older than a year.

Forward 8 months - my iPod nano got misplaced (I swear it was stolen!), but I got an iPhone 3G.  Plug it into the car… the charger is not compatible.  Alas, with the battery life of the iPhone, I needed a car charger for emergency use.  I first looked at the Griffin options, which came to about $20.  but after doing some research, and because I am cheap, I decided to give this little deal a try - a $3.79 charger from DealExtreme.com   If you haven’t heard of DealExtreme before, cheap prices + free shipping worldwide is their game.

While all the basic features are there - i.e. if you plug it into the car, there’s a little light that tells you there’s power, and yes it does charge - you can really tell that this is a cheap product. Maybe because it’s very light, but it just feels cheap. Charging performance is pretty average too - after a half hour drive, i only got about a 20% charge. Good enough to get you home, but not enough to have your phone charged up and good-to-go for a day out.

A cheap alternative for emergency charges
This thing is dirt cheap. And since I only plan to use this in an emergency, works great for me.

Review Score: 2.5 out of 5.

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Your One Stop Shop for staying connected - no matter what your friends use

• Category: Social Networking
• Developer: Yahoo
• Version: 1.0
• Cost: Free
• For: iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPod Touch
• Download URL