Last night on the DL Show I mentioned a weather app called Eye in Sky Weather. Read on to see what makes this app good enough to be on two of my home screens.

Eye in the Sky Weather (ESW) doesn’t have any standout features that you haven’t seen in a weather app before, but it does combine a lot of them into a beautiful, holo-themed package. For instance, ESW has the option for a persistent weather notification. When your notification shade is retracted you will see the current temperature in your notification bar in a brightened holo blue, but upon opening your notification shade you’ll see the temperature, weather conditions, cloud conditions, and how it feels outside next to a customizable icon that represents current conditions.

When you open the app itself you’ll see the same information you found in the notification shade, but larger and including wind and humidity conditions. At the bottom of the main screen you’ll see a truncated forecast for the current day and the three following with high and low temperature and a a summary of weather conditions for that day (for example, I can expect some sprinkling on Saturday morning and some rain Sunday evening). A swipe to the right shows me the 48 hour forecast. The 48 Hours tab shows what to expect over the next two days in the morning, afternoon, evening, and night in terms of temperature, cloud coverage, and precipitation.

A swipe to the left from the main screen shows the next two weeks of weather. This is an example of a way in which the app shines. A lot of apps show the next few days or the next week, byt ESW shows the next two weeks so you can really plan ahead if you need to. Obviously the further you look into the future the less accurate the weather information is, but if you’re planning a vacation for two weeks and you want to have an educated guess, this app gives it to you. The 15 day (it includes the current day) tab shows the highs and lows for each day as well as the chance of rain.

What Android app would be complete without a little bit of customization options? Eye in the Sky Weather doesn’t leave you hanging. Aside from the option to add as many cities as you want to toggle between, ESW lets you choose between Fahrenheit and Celsius for temperature, kilometers per hour, miles per hour, meters per second, and knots for wind speed, and centimeters, millimeters, and inches for rain or snow measurement. ESW also has twelve different icon sets that you can choose between for in the app, on a widget, and in your notification bar (yes, you can have three different icon sets for each item). The twelve icon sets mostly follow a metro or holo like design language with some coming in monochrome, some in light colors, some in more descriptive colors, and one (realistic) in extreme color and detail. Every icon set looks great and scales well across the different sizes.

ESW comes with four different widget options. The first is Cities, seen above, which shows you the weather for the next few days in every city you have added to the map. To toggle between cities, simply press the arrow button on either side of the widget. Next is Forecast, which is a 4×1 widget showing the forecast for the next five days. The icon widget does what every iPhone owner wishes their weather app could do – show the current temperature and conditions in the icon for the app. Finally, Temperature is an icon sized circle that simply tells you the current temperature. All of these widgets come with optional refresh and edit buttons on the widget, text color options, background color options (including transparency), and location options.

Eye in the Sky Weather has taken over my homescreen. It is my app of choice for accurate weather information not only because it gives me everything I need in a weather app, but because the design is beautiful and customizable to my liking. Android has a history of having apps that are great at giving you information, but lacking in the design department. Eye in the Sky Weather gives accurate information in a gorgeous package. Instead of making all of the design choices for you, the developer, Tim Clark, provides beautiful icon choices to let you have the look that you want.

Eye in the Sky Weather is a free, ad-supported app in the Google Play Store. For $1.91 you can remove the ads. The app is universal so it will work on both phones and tablets and Clark promises a 7-inch version is coming soon. Download Eye in the Sky Weather here.

Review: Eye in Sky Weather for Android is a post from: Droid Life

Choice in browsers has been an integral part in the history of computing. Mozilla has been at the heart of the push for choice in browsers from its inception out of Netscape to the introduction of Firefox in 2004. Since 2004, Mozilla has been dedicated to giving users a choice in browsers not only on the desktop, but on mobile.

The latest version of Firefox for Android, available in Google Play today, comes in the midst of heavy competition in browsers for Android with Dolphin HD, Opera Mobile, Opera Mini, and Firefox each having been downloaded more than ten million times. Perhaps even more dauntingly, Google is in the process of making Chrome the default browser in Android. Chrome made headlines in the last six weeks as it surpassed Internet Explorer to become the most used browser internationally on desktops. Mozilla is keenly aware that by developing Firefox for Android they are competing with Google in a way that is much less obvious on the desktop.

I had the opportunity to ask Jonathan Nightingale, Senior Director of Firefox Engineering, some questions about Mozilla’s vision for Firefox on Android. Despite the risks of competing with Google on their own platform, Nightingale remains optimistic:

“It’s important for users to have choice. Web use on mobile devices is growing at massive rates, and the values that drive our investment in building Firefox as a desktop browser apply just as readily to mobile. Competition and choice in mobile browsers is deeply important to the health of the mobile web.”  

When Mozilla first released Firefox for Android way back in 2010 (then called Fennec) it went through several evolutions. Through each evolution Mozilla seemed to struggle with finding a balance between offering something that was powerful like a desktop browser, yet simple enough to use on a phone. Mozilla seems to have hit their stride with this latest release.

A browser may have great animations and special features, but if it can’t load web pages quickly then those fancy features are for naught. Nightingale noted that following the release of “the first version of Firefox for Android, we heard from users the things they wanted most were Flash support and better performance, so we redesigned the product to deliver a better experience.” To test the latest version of Firefox against eleven other browsers I used a GSM Galaxy Nexus running stock ICS on the same WiFi network. Below you’ll see the average time it took for the twelve different browsers to launch and how long it took to load Droid-Life with the fastest load times on top:

Though the new Firefox doesn’t top either of these lists, it’s no slouch either. It’s clear that Mozilla still has some work to do, but overall these slight differences in load times is indistinguishable in regular browsing. In fact, it’s in general performance and usage that the new Firefox really shines.

Manipulating web pages is an area where Firefox exhibits definite superiority over Browser and Chrome. Scrolling is smooth, especially on the desktop view of websites, whereas both Chrome and Browser scrolling can be a little jittery. More importantly, Mozilla has done a great job replicating text zoom levels that Safari for iOS offers. While Browser and Chrome simply blow up an area when it is double tapped, Firefox, like Safari, zooms in to make the text below your taps centered on the screen. This may seem like a little flourish, but it actually makes a significant difference in the user experience.

In the same way, pinch to zoom works better in Firefox than it does in Browser or Chrome. Don’t get me wrong – pinch to zoom works very week in both Chrome and Browser, but Chrome and Browser have the occasional stutter, especially if pinch to zoom is initiated right after scrolling. Firefox, on the other hand, is able to consistently pinch to zoom smoothly, even after scrolling through a web page.

Like Chrome, Firefox syncs your bookmarks and your browsing history between your phone and desktop. Unlike Chrome, however, Firefox does not differentiate between websites viewed on the desktop versus those viewed on your phone. This decision wasn’t because engineers were lazy; it is a manifestation of Mozilla’s vision of one Firefox across different screens. Mozilla believes that it can provide the same great experience across all three screens in your life.

When I asked Nightingale about the difficulty in providing a desktop-class experience on a mobile device, he emphasized the importance balancing both expectations. “We work with our designers and UI engineers to build a user interface that is simplified, and well adapted to the mobile experience. We build that on top of the same Gecko rendering engine we use on desktop, to ensure that our users on Android are getting a complete, mature, and modern HTML5 browser.”

Part of extending a desktop experience to mobile meant bringing extensions to Firefox. As of this writing there are only four extensions available, but Nightingale assures me that like Firefox on the desktop, Mozilla expects the community to develop extensions that help create a truly personalized experience. The extensions available don’t create a personalized experience as much as they augment an already great browser. URL Fixer, for example, gives suggestions to the user when common typos in URLs are present before loading the page while Phony lets users impersonate other browsers to get web pages to load differently.

The Start Screen has been overhauled to show frequently visited sites and tabs from your last session. Unfortunately, while the new Start Screen has indeed been overhauled, it is not a huge improvement over the previous iteration of Firefox. Instead of focusing on the most important data when starting a browser, the new Start Screen tries to do too much. Add-ons are not something that I want to see every time I start Firefox. Instead, it would be nice if Mozilla finished its copy of Chrome’s launch page and just showed me the websites I tend to visit the most.

Mozilla’s decision to use the same layout as Chrome wouldn’t be a bad thing if they hadn’t tried to hide it with the curved layers lining the top of the browser. While the colored layers fade in well on the start screen, they rarely match the look of the website you’re actually viewing. Hopefully in a future release Mozilla will simply use the faded black used for the menu button across the top to make the UI look much cleaner.

One of the most frustrating parts of the Start Page is the URL bar (what Mozilla calls the Awesome Bar). Entering a website is simple enough (especially with URL Fixer), but Firefox only populates the Awesome Bar with websites you’ve already visited as suggestions. While this is fairly normal for most browsers, Chrome has set a new standard with Google Instant. On Chrome, as soon as I start typing Google begins suggesting search queries and websites. This feature is a huge time saver, but more importantly, it makes browsing on a mobile device much less reliant on precise typography.

Managing tabs in Firefox hasn’t evolved much. Taping the plus button next to the address bar gives the user three options: Top Sites, Bookmarks, and History. Once several tabs are loaded they can be accessed by tapping on the number that replaces the plus button. Tabs load in the background and the preview in the tab view refreshes live so it’s easy to check if a website has updated with new data or finished loading. That said, I still prefer Chrome’s borrowed card metaphor to a drop down list.

The latest version of Firefox still has the option to save pages to PDF, which can be shared or used to browse pages offline. While the feature certainly isn’t a replacement for Pocket or other offline readers, it does provides an option to save a website at a fixed point in time. Mozilla may not want to compete in the offline reading space, so perhaps Mozilla should add support for offline readers right in the browser (i.e. not through a plug in). Being able to long press on a link and send it directly to an offline reader in one press is a fantastic feature.

Is Firefox the best browser on Android? In my opinion Firefox is slightly better than Chrome, though it’s a close call. Chrome lacks any offline reading mode (despite the fact that Browser includes it), doesn’t support Flash, and offers few customization options, but it still starts the fastest, loads pages the fastest, and is integrated with Google Instant. Though Mozilla claims that Flash is a commonly requested feature, I find Flash less and less necessary and often more frustrating than useful.

All things considered, Firefox is a very competitive browser, but the sloppy, borrowed design, lack of Google Instant, and Chrome’s use of the card metaphor to manage tabs keep Chrome in the number one spot in terms of design and UI. Mozilla is right about one thing, though – Firefox can be and certainly is a force for innovation in the browsing space. The performance of Firefox compared to most other browsers on Android is incredible. For most users Firefox will provide a fantastic experience on Google’s platform, rivaled only by Google’s own browser.

Review: Firefox for Android is a post from: Droid Life

Yesterday we reviewed Simple Text. What did everyone think?

Now, in between keeping up with all of the give away goodies, I think the app Bubble is something everyone should take a look at. How many times have you caught yourself saying, “there was something I wanted to tell you but I forgot what”? Well Bubble is like your pre call assistant. You assign bubbles to any contact with a question or statement. When you call that contact, the bubble(s) pops up on the screen and reminds you of what you had assigned to it. It seems like a simple concept and it is, yet I have found that it’s just plain handy. If I have a thought about something I wanted to ask someone on a future call, I just go in and type up a quick bubble instead of having a note in my pocket or trying to remember what it was. It has a very simple UI and is easy enough to use.

Video and free market link below.  

Click here to view the embedded video.

Market Link

*Today’s Amazon App Store free app is: textPlus GOLD+. It is normally $2.99 and has a current AAS rating of 2.25 stars.

App of the Day: Bubble (Non-game) is a post from: Droid Life

Saturday’s App Of The Day was Timeriffic. Hope everyone had a chance to take a look at it.

Today, I am writing up an app called Simple Text. This app is for users who are looking for a change up from standard icons or for those of us who like minimalistic styles (Kellex). To use the app you do have to have LauncherPro,  ADW, or Go Launcher. (In the pictures above I am using LauncherPro Plus.) The app is about as straightforward as they come. There are two words you can edit. One is on top (see “SIMPLE” in pic) and the other is on bottom (see “TEXT” in pic). Just type in any word you want for top and bottom then customize size, scale, position, color and font. Save the icon and apply it to the launcher icon of your choice.

Here are his exact instruction per market:

How to use with ADW Launcher or ADW Launcher EX:
1. Long-press an app icon
2. Select “Edit”
3. Tap on the app icon
4. Select “ADWTheme IconPacks”
5. Choose Simple Text
6. Create your icon
7. Press Menu, then “Save Icon”

How to use with other Launchers ( LauncherPro, GO Launcher… ):
1] Run Simple Text in your application list
2] Create your icon
3] Press Menu, then “Save Icon”
4] Use your launchers specific change icon option and browse to your images ( stored in /sdcard/Simple Text )

Market Link

*Today’s free paid Amazon App Store app is: Aces Bubble Popper.

App Of The Day: Simple Text is a post from: Droid Life

Yesterday we took a look at TweetCaster from AAS. How many jumped on that one?

Thursday, while I compulsively scanned twitter, @droid brought this app to my attention:  Timeriffic. We touched on this app over a year ago, but I think it’s worth repeating to our readers. Since that time the developer has been featured at I/O 2011 and was a top developer in 2010. So let’s give him another go round.

This little doozy of an app is pretty slick. I should mention that this app was created by a high school student looking for a way to maximize the hours in his day and spend as little time in his phone settings as possible. Queue Timeriffic. Who doesn’t want to basically get that little green robot a bit more automated? Heard of profiles, like back in the day when you had settings for “outdoors”, “sports”, etc? Timeriffic is kind of like that concept, but on steroids.

You can set up multiple profiles for multiple events in your life. Work? Sleep? Party? This is your app. You can set up literally every setting on any event within any profile that you want. Or do individual events. And what these events do is the bread and butter. You can assign the event time then direct the phone to do what you want done in that time. Silent? Vibrate? All loud? Media only? WiFi on/off? Any combination you want for the time frame is yours. Just set it up and let it go. Now you can forget about that untimely alert going off in a meeting, missed call because you forgot to turn the ringer up again, or even that battery drain from Wifi search when you forgot to turn it off. All can be done automatically now based on your schedule. And it includes a nice, crisp, and easy to use interface. Oh, and it’s free.

*A note to those of you on any Gingerbread leak – you’ll have to change your fingerprint back to 2.3.340 to find some of these apps. I’m pretty sure this one will read any print, but wanted to give you a heads up as some of the future apps I have in store won’t read the 588-595 prints.

Market Link

*Today’s Amazon App Store free paid app is:  Baseball Superstars.

For all of you gamers out there, this app is normally $4.99. I installed it but haven’t had any time to actually play around with it. It has an AAS rating of 3 stars currently.

App of the Day: Timeriffic (Revisited) is a post from: Droid Life

One of the things that’s always frustrated me about Google Tasks is that it’s mercilessly tethered to other Google services. You cannot access it by itself; it’s either present through Gmail, Google Calendar, iGoogle or throwing https://mail.google.com/tasks/ig into a Chrome application window.

This carries over to Android; while there’s no shortage of apps that support Google Tasks, finding one with polish that has Calendar functionality was pretty difficult. However, Total Agenda is fulfilling my needs beautifully; it’s useful, stylish and has replaced Google Calendar’s default app as the premier organization tool on my phone.  

What sets it apart is its emphasis on streamlining the task creation and editing process; I’m definitely as fan of this, as I prefer to do as little typing on my phone as possible. Tasks can be created quickly by hitting the “add [checkmark] button beside the day you want the task to be associated with. As explained by the middle screenshot above, most of the screens that would be traditionally accessed by a “properties” menu inside an individual task listing are instead shunted to the front. This minimizes the amount of clicking around a user has to do in order to manage their tasks.

The app also has the primary “calendar” functions, such as reminders and repeatable events support. This app is primarily made to be used with Google Calendar, so things sync both ways nicely. My only complaint so far is the unintuitive nature of the time-and-date sliders, as pictured above. It’s very difficult to input a precise time on your first couple tries, and definitely needs patience to work around.

Total Agenda is still in Beta, which makes me cringe a little. However, the developers at least have the decency to release their app for free with no type of advertising involved [update: the newest update has brought some ads]; this gives us a clean product to work with until they finalize everything.

Total Agenda is a free download from the Android Marketplace, and is worth your time if you use your phone’s calendar for any stretch of time.
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Matt Demers is Droid Life’s app guy, and needs to start using this app a little more rigorously in his daily life. You can follow him on Twitter for more musings.

Review: Total Agenda is a post from: Droid Life

Even though I’ve upgraded my aging Milestone to an Atrix, I still don’t use my phone that often for gaming. Aside from a  few puzzle games, there just seems to be a lack of titles that hold my interest. I’m not the type that likes to play games for long stints – just when I’m waiting for something or need to kill time on the subway.

Usually those games aren’t very graphically-intense, either; this isn’t a bad thing by any means, but I’ve been looking for something that both delights my eyes as well as my synapses. SpeedX happens to do both quite well.  

SpeedX is a game where you are travelling down a long tube and steer by tilting left/right. Your mission is to avoid blocks. You score by simply moving forward, and the game ends when you die. Along the way, the playing field shifts from a tube to a flat plane to an inverted tube and back again, taking your eyeballs along for the ride with it. It’s quite the simple premise.

Click here to view the embedded video.

But then again, DDR had a simple premise. So did Audiosurf. We all know what happens to games we think are simple; they usually surprise us with their ball-busting difficulty. SpeedX is no different; as soon as you get comfortable with the level you’re at, it throws curve balls (like color shifts and gravity wells) into the mix, screwing with your perception and making it all the more difficult to stay out of the way of those blocks.

This isn’t a bad thing. It makes the game extremely fun. It also keeps the game from getting stale; Feint integration takes care of any lingering boredom the user might have otherwise.

What surprised me the most about this game the most is how it kept my attention; by coincidence, I found that playing music overtop of the default soundtrack (not bad in its own right) makes for a whole different experience. I want to beat my high score in SpeedX. I want to unlock the powerups and game modes. I want to burn whoever thought the “install sponsored apps to get in-game currency” model was a good idea (looking at you too, Gun Bros!)

But more importantly, I want to give props to developer HyperBees for making a game that I want to keep on my phone. And it’s not just me: HyperBees’ Twitter is reporting that SpeedX has been played over 15 million times, with 200,000 players each day. If that’s not a sign of success, I don’t know what is.

You can pick up SpeedX on the Android Marketplace for free, or pay $1.40 for an ad-free and unlocked version.
—
Matt Demers is Droid Life’s app review guy, and recommends listening to “Waters of Nazareth” for the full trippy effect. Or just for the Jesus. Wish Matt a Happy Easter by following him on Twitter!

Review: SpeedX on Android is a post from: Droid Life

The Internet’s given us a great many things, including a boatload of Flash games with which to waste our time. Last year, when there seemed to be a bit of a lull with them in favour of Facebook games like Farmville, one glorious product emerged: Robot Unicorn Attack. This game took the Internet by storm, and introduced a whole new generation of gamers to the wonders of 80′s synthpop and its infinite trippiness.

What started off as a Flash game on Adult Swim’s site migrated to the infinitely more profitable markets of Facebook, iOS and now Android. Robot Unicorn Attack comes in at a cool 99 cents (I’m assuming, as it shows as $0.94 due to Canadian price adjustment) and, from what I can tell, it worth just about that. Just-less-than-a-buck seems to be the magic price for a lot of apps, as its not so much that it provokes a huge decision, but not so little to not make any cash.

The game is essentially simple; it’s got a button to jump and a button to dash. Your job is to get as many points as possible in three lives. Throughout the entirety of the app, you’re treated to “Always” by Erasure: YouTube it. You won’t be disappointed.  

With such a simple premise it’s hard to review; I mean, the app does its job and replicated the experience on the Android platform well. However, the only complaint is that until the game starts up, I get the black bars (pictured above) on my Atrix; I’m not sure if this is a resolution problem or if it shows up on other phones. You guys will have to help me out in the comments.

The game offers two control schemes: one with on-screen buttons and one based on gestures. The gesture controls, while a bit interesting, don’t necessarily allow for accurate play at the game gets faster and faster. I’d recommend sticking to the button controls unless you want a challenge after the ticker rolls past 10,000 points.

Feint integration, which I’m usually not a fan of, adds some much-needed replayability to a game with such a simplistic concept. I don’t have many friends on it (feel free to add MattDemers), but score competition could definitely keep this game from getting stale.

You can download Robot Unicorn Attack from the Android Marketplace.

—
Matt Demers is Droid Life’s app guy, and will be stepping up the review production now that school’s over. Follow him on Twitter for more updates!

Review: Robot Unicorn Attack is a post from: Droid Life

A few weeks ago I reviewed a Blackberry Messenger-a-like called Beluga. Within the review, I noted that because Beluga’s features were too similar to RIM’s own Blackberry Messenger, it was not released in the Blackberry Appworld; applications who do try to pass themselves off as an alternative are usually sniped down, like Toronto-developed app Kik.

BBM is a heavy advertising point for RIM, and a reason why a lot of users haven’t abandoned it; rumours of BBM’s transition to a multi-platform software posed the question of whether people would still buy Blackberry hardware if they were able to get the same experience elsewhere.  

While we haven’t heard anything in the rumour mill in the last little while, another app has stepped up as a catch-all solution for the instant messaging conundrum. LiveProfile is an offering that’s available on all platforms and uses many of the standard BBM features, like address book integration and contact sharing by a PIN number.

Users can also pull in contacts from Facebook, which is crucial to its success: upon doing so, you can let your wall know that you’re using LiveProfile, which encourages others to do so, as well. It also does the same with your phone contacts; however, this depends on whether a user has included their phone number in their LiveProfile.

Like Beluga, it looks to be a one-stop shop for instant messaging; the difference between the two is that people actually seem to be using it. The user base has been increasing steadily since launch, prompting server upgrades and some nice stats: even during its downtime, the LiveProfile team is reporting as many as 16,000 people signing up per hour as its reached 5 million users in 5 days. Even if you depend on SMS for a lot of your communication (like I do) there’s a good chance someone you know is using this app.

This is a big deal, as trying to convert users away from any established system is a chore in itself; these numbers are indicative of either a boredom with Blackberry’s current software or very successful marketing as the IM app of the future.

But the question remains: is it worth the download?

I’m going to say yes. Even though I’ve never seen the point of BBM in a practical sense before, the fact that most of my friends are now using this is actually getting me off my butt and chatting. I can imagine this being like the early days of Facebook; most people were on MySpace, and it only took a decent amount of friends using a decent product to sway most people who wouldn’t use it otherwise.

LiveProfile does its job extremely well, despite some hiccups that I’ll go into. It integrates its notifications quite well, and the chat interface works a lot better than some SMS apps out there. It also features media messaging in a simple-to-use package, which is par for the course when compared to BBM. However, group chatting or broadcasting is curiously omitted; this might be something included in new updates.

However, what I’m hearing from a lot of people (and experiencing myself) is that developing for multiple platforms is taking its toll on the development team. There are multiple clear-as-day bugs in the application, such as profile pictures not updating or embedded videos not being viewable.

This might not seem like a big deal – what app doesn’t have bugs, right? – but it might turn out to be a danger for LiveProfile. If too many people believe the application not to be worth the trouble, they will not use it. In turn, the friends of those people won’t have a userbase to interact with and they won’t use it. This danger, coupled with a slow release cycle (due to the management of three different apps) may make things complicated in the long run if LiveProfile wants to be successful.

In order to “kill” BBM, a company would have to provide a free service that makes it easy to share and chat with contacts, and just works. BBM has loyalty because it is a corporate-level software, not a startup – RIM is held accountable for every screwup and hiccup. Being used to this quality might make users unwilling to wait for improvements in quality, and spell LiveProfile’s doom.

We can only really watch and see; for those curious about LiveProfile, it’s a free download on the Android market. Check it out and feel free to share your PINs in the comments below if you want to chat with other Droid Lifers.
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Matt Demers is Droid Life’s app guy, and writes reviews thrice weekly. If you like his work, you can follow him on Twitter or visit his portfolio; he likes hearing from fans.

Review: LiveProfile looks to take BBM’s IM crown is a post from: Droid Life

It’s not often I tackle two apps in the same review. However, today’s a bit different: the apps I’m looking at, Catch and I Journal, are meant to be used together. Catch is note-capturing tool similar to Evernote, while I Journal is a journaling tool that uses Catch’s engine and tagging system in order to function.

For those who have never used a cloud-based note system, Catch is definitely a great tool for organizing your thoughts. Using its system, you can store text, voice, photo and notifications to a cloud-enabled account, letting you access it from both your browser and your phone. This is obviously a big help if you’re the creative type that has ideas often and doesn’t have the memory to back it up.

The main appeal of Catch is this cloud functionality; it’s a great way to easily share and store photos as well as quick notes. I have a few concerns about it being able to do any heavy lifting, but I’ll get to that later in the review.  

Catch’s partner in this review, I Journal, is based around concepts outlines in a book called “The Happiness Advantage.” I’m not going to shill for the book because I’ve never read it; instead, I’m going to approach the app like I would any other.

I Journal uses Catch as storage for the journal entries it makes; it automatically marks posts created through it with “#Ijournal” and other tags for easy identification. Within the creation process, users can mark whether an entry is one that relates to “Gratitude,” “Exercise,” “Meditation” or “Kindness,” which in turn will add more tags. This allows for easy sorting and reflecting, especially when coupled with a “rate your day out of five stars” query.

I’ve always liked journaling; part of why I write opinion is that I like to open myself up to other people. However, I’m a bit skeptical about Catch as a way to do this. Like my problems with tablets, I take issue with that fact that it’s very unwieldy to enter long-form writing on a mobile screen. I don’t like typing on my Atrix for any extended period of time: I don’t write Droid Life posts on my phone, and don’t see myself journaling with it, either.

However, I could see myself using Catch like I do Evernote – for quick review and offline reading. Since syncing stores an offline copy of notes on your phone, Catch is useful when you absolutely need access to something you’ve stored there; as long as you’ve synced recently, things should be alright.

Catch and I Journal’s usefulness is really dependant on the individual user. They’re very well-implemented systems, but it’s difficult to blanket whether they’re “good” or not based on the fact that I already have apps that do the same job. I mean, I could easily use Evernote to do the exact same things as Catch: however, I Journal’s specific purpose makes it easy for people who are looking for that experience to get into it.

It’s like when I reviewed ActionComplete a couple weeks ago: it’s an app specifically tailored to the Getting Things Done system. I could have easily use Astrid to do the same things that ActionComplete does, but since the latter is specifically tailored to my my needs, I’m obviously going to use it.

Who knows? Maybe these apps are something you, the reader, needs. Both Catch and I Journal are free downloads.
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Matt Demers is Droid Life’s app guy, and kind of misses journaling. The next best thing is his Twitter and Tumblr, which are updated daily. Check them out!

Review Double Shot: Catch and I Journal is a post from: Droid Life

One of the things I’ve enjoyed about my new Atrix is the ability to play more games at full blast, so to speak. There’s a distinct difference between my overclocked-to-hell-and-back Milestone and this dual-cored beast, and it really shows when you run some apps. Meganoid, however, is a game that works amazingly well no matter what phone you have. A mix of old-school platforming and new-school mechanics, this OrangePixel offering is quite impressive.

The premise is simple: your character “Hero” must traverse a number of increasingly-difficult levels, collect gems and avoid the numerous one-hit-kill hazards that stand between him and the level’s end. As you play through the levels, medals are given at the end of each based on how many gems you collect and whether you beat the level’s timer or not. It’s very similar to games like Super Meat Boy or VVVVVV; simple mechanics, but a difficulty that ramps up quickly to keep you hooked.  

The Hero can double jump and pick up crates to throw at aliens; that seems to be the extent of his skill set. Everything else is left up to the player to see whether he survives or not. This, however, is kept relatively non-frustrating by the slick controls at your disposal. The game has a number of control schemes, including on-screen buttons (my preference) and tilt controls. I haven’t been able to get my hands on a WiiMote to test out its remote controller functionality, but I can imagine it adds a new layer to the “old school” gaming feel. I’ll definitely be trying this out as soon as I can.

While this might seem weird to say, the game feels very complete. The controls work amazingly well, and are easy to pick up. The challenges are laid out well, and feel rewarding to achieve: beating the timer and getting all the gems for a level unlocks the “Sarge” version of that level, where you play as a different sprite but in a drastically more difficult layout. This is similar to the “Dark World” of Super Meat Boy in the sense that gamers who don’t want to play the levels can skip over them entirely, but the masochists in us can try them out if we want. There is also OpenFeint support for those who like those shiny achievements, but I usually skip over them.

I only have a couple complaints about this game, and they’re related to the mechanics. For instance, you only have a three life limit for each play session: if you die three times quickly, it’s back to the main menu for you. For particularly hard levels, this is frustrating; other games that can kill you instantly at least have the courtesy to let you spawn infinitely. Another quirk is that the countdown timer does not reset when you die; if you’re hoping to beat the time on particularly difficult levels, you better hope to get them done on your first try. While this doesn’t seem major, it kind of punishes players who want to meet that goal and die.

Otherwise, I can’t really find a reason to not recommend this game. It plays well and all the parts fit together nicely; it even wins some points from me because there doesn’t seem to be an iOS port. I feel that there isn’t enough Android-exclusive games with polish in the Marketplace, and hopefully Meganoid will inspire some developers to step up in terms of quality.

Meganoid is a free download in the Android Marketplace.
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Matt Demers is Droid Life’s app guy and is surprised how often he picks this up just to play a level or two. If you like his work, you can find him on Twitter and check out his portfolio.

Review: Meganoid for Android is a post from: Droid Life

Previously, I had a lot of different tools to do what ZDBox does all at once; I’d use 3G Watchdog to keep an eye on bandwidth, Battery Indicator for battery percentage in my notifications bar, Advanced Task Killer if the situation arose, etc etc. While these apps are all great, it’s sometimes good to consolidate, especially if the quality of the replacing app is high enough that it doesn’t bring any problems when it comes to functionality.  

ZDBox is a toolbox that combines many different apps’ purposes into one easy-to use package. Within, one can find a battery meter, task killer, app manager (with batch move-to-SD and uninstall capabilities), 3G traffic monitor, Do Not Disturb timer (for silencing/airplane-moding your phone at certain times) and an App Lock. This last one was a bit interesting, as it sets up a barrier to access an app with a PIN number, but on a per-case basis. Want someone to be able to pick up your phone to play Angry Birds, but not browse your texts? App Lock is the thing to ensure your privacy.

These apps actually work quite well, and I got the feeling that some real effort was put into making sure that they all meshed together into one product. The interface is slick and easy-to-use while not being overly cutesy or complicated. This wins it some major points. However, it’s the ability to make all this information available quickly that really makes this app stand out.

Upon installation, ZDBox adds a notification bar icon while gives you a summary of most of its information when you drag your tray down. This is great, and can be customized to a certain extent: disabling services in the settings menu bumps up the next-running service to the top icon. However, there doesn’t seem to be a way to remove the icon at all; this can be a bit of a deal-breaker for those of us who like to keep their notification trays clean. [Update: you can turn off the notification icon via settings; I'm not sure how I missed this. Thanks, commenters!] I mean, it bugs me enough that I have to plug my phone into my computer in order to take screenshots with my Atrix; those “Connected with USB” icons stick out like a sore thumb.

ZDBox gets a big thumbs up from me because it consolidates a lot of other apps without losing functionality and does it stylishly. Definitely worth the free download from the market.
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Matt Demers is Droid Life’s app guy, and so happy that he finally has a phone with a bit of oomph to it. Playing games without fearing my phone will explode is a good upgrade. Follow him on Twitter, his personal site or e-mail him.

Review: ZDBox for Android is a post from: Droid Life

This past Friday was pretty confusing for app reviewers; while scoping out new releases to examine, I came across a large number of media outlets reporting that Color, released March 23, was going to be the newest thing in social sharing. It touted a number of features that both amazed and confused me, particularly its main function: photos taken in a geographic proximity to each other (such as at a concert, office or party) would be grouped automatically together for viewing and commenting.

Users would take a picture of themselves to furnish a profile, which, in turn, would be viewable to anyone who happened to be in range. Naturally, since it was reported on heavily, users scrambled to download Color en masse; after all, how much bragging rights would they be entitled to if they were among the first to use such an amazing and revolutionary app?

Color is an interesting concept, and provoked a number of questions, like “What if people didn’t want every photo available they take at a party made public?” “What happens when someone wants something deleted?” and “Do people actually take party pictures with the frequency the FAQ image would suggest?”

It would have been great to answer some of these questions, had the application not been a buggy piece of garbage.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So that’s how it’s supposed to work…

I’m honestly quite disappointed. On paper, Color should have been an interesting take on the Instagr.am “social photo stream” fad: it had received $41 million dollars in pre-release funding from venture capitalists and had taken the time to secure two large domain names (color.com and colour.com, respectively.) That much effort and potential shouldn’t have yielded a bad product. Any company with so much media hype and investor confidence has to be good, right? Sadly, users didn’t see it that way, slamming the app’s market page with harsh review after harsh review.

But were those users right in doing so? I mean, Color applied the “beta” tag to the title. In theory, that should absolve it from fault when it:

• Failed to work at all on any number of phone models.
• Looped force-close after force-close when the user tries to do any number of basic app functions, such as attach a user image, or take photos, period.
• Forgot to teach the user how to use the app in the first place, due to a lack of any FAQs, tutorials or information whatsoever.

I would list more, but that was all I could get Color to do on my Motorola Milestone, which is barely a year old. Not everyone has access to horribly high-end models, and should be able to expect that something as low-fi as a gallery should work quite well. But these flaws in basic operation are alright; I mean, it’s in beta, right?

I would fully expect Color to try to take advantage of that “beta” status to save face, saying that its obvious lack of quality control or testing was all “part of the plan”. After all, it was the glorious users who alerted them to the problems, so the beta must have done its job. It’s a pity that what was once a term that had a valid point in a development cycle of an app is now being used as a licence to ship something completely nonfunctional.

“Beta” used to imply that a piece of software was close to completion, had all its features in a row and just neeed some last minute tweaking by a small group of users who understood that they were getting an unfinished product. While Color hits some of those points, it utterly fails on others: it is nowhere near “feature complete” if, as a social app, it cannot run on a great number of phones.

It is even worse if the control group of users who are testing expect that it is complete, regardless of the label attached. As we’ve seen, the Android userbase is quick to chew up and spit out anything that fails to deliver. Does this mean we, as users, are going to be wary of the beta tag in the future? Will we be more likely to forgive developers who hide behind its shield?

Will we insist that an app actually be worked on until it’s fit for mass consumption, instead of being pushed out to generate and satisfy hype?

These are questions to think about while you’re mashing that “download” button in the Marketplace.
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Matt Demers is Droid Life’s app guy, and has missed writing these kind of articles. You can follow him on Twitter and through his site, and e-mail him with tips.

Color and the death of “Beta” is a post from: Droid Life

Ah, it seems like it’s been awhile since my last game review. I got knocked on my ass by a pretty serious case of the flu last week, so I apologize that my reviews have been sparse.

This week I bring you Hextacy, an oft-discussed game that’s hit the Android market and making quite a splash. At its core, Hextacy is a very simple tile-matching game; you match hexagons of three or more together in order to eliminate them from the playing field and score points.

Matching is done by dragging your finger along strings of tiles in a row, and the elimination is completed when you release contact. This presents an interesting game mechanic: you can’t go over the same tiles twice. It emphasizes a decision to be made: which tile decision will lead to further combos?

As move options deplete, tiles are replaced until there are literally no moves left; rinse, repeat. It’s puzzling action in a very bite-sized format that I’ve found works best when played in short bursts. Unlike previously-reviewed puzzler Runik, there aren’t many powerups to extend game life; they don’t appear often, and are usually a last resort to get some more tiles to work with.

This forces the player to be strategic, which I enjoy; not only are players rewarded for thinking ahead, that action is needed for their continued survival. I think Runik coddled me a little bit in expecting more ways “out” of bad decisions. With Hextacy, bad choices are just met with a simple “Game over. Try again, sucker.”

I threw together a quick gameplay demo, to those who want to see how the game works.  

Click here to view the embedded video.

I like Hextacy better than Runik because there is simply a way to lose. There has been many times where I sit and try to play Runik, only to be frustrated that I’ve never posted a high score. The game simply gives you too many ways out, which rewards lazy play. Hextacy, on the other hand, smacks you with a hammer if you’re dumb. I commend this.

The game also runs extremely smoothly, even on older phones like my Milestone; this is great, considering the concept doesn’t exactly scream “graphically-intensive.” Definitely give Hextacy a download: its free version is arguably the best (see below) and you won’t really miss on out anything by refusing to pony up.

Its paid version gives you access to the “hardcore” and “pure” game modes, which removes hexagon chains greater than three and powerups, respectively. These aren’t big losses, as the default mode will keep you entertained for a good long while.

Hextacy Lite is a free download on the Android Market.
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Matt Demers is Droid-Life’s app guy, and is happy to finally have killed the cold. You can contact him on Twitter or via e-mail; he also is taking Paypal donations for an upgrade to his FlipHD camera.

Review: Hextacy on Android is a post from: Droid Life

A couple weeks ago I reviewed a Geometry Wars lookalike called “Pew Pew,” which was fun, but I had a few complaints about. I’m generally not a fan of games like it, which try to emulate game controls on-screen. Coupled with the fact that the play area was a bit on the small side, these joysticks blocked my field of play to the point where it was frustrating.

However, yesterday I came across another Geometry Wars clone which solved most of the problems I had with PewPew. Instead of relying on on-screen controls, Tilt Arena does everything via your phone’s accelerometer. By tweaking sensitivity settings found in the menu, users can fine-tune their steering and speed and blow up shapes to their heart’s content.

The graphics are beautiful and emulate the Geometry Wars experience a lot more closely, right down to the screen flashes when enemies die. This is a recent change, and one that can be thankfully turned off. The game also manages to zoom out a little bit, giving the player a greater view of the battlefield they’re playing on.

What really got me was how well it ran on my aging Milestone; not many games that involve a lot of action and particle effects do. Tilt Arena was smooth, responsive and the opposite of frustrating, which wins it major points. To give you guys an idea of how it plays, I whipped together a quick gameplay demo.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The only thing I find lacking with this game is its lack of depth: PewPew may have been a bit more annoying in gameplay, but at least it had a lot of variety when it came to play modes and ship selection. There’s really no replayability here except for a high score table, which is a bit disappointing. However, apparently this is Priority Interrupt’s first effort at a game: hopefully more updates are coming.

Tilt Arena is a free download

Source: Reddit
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Matt Demers is Droid Life’s app guy, and is sick as a dog. You can hear it in the video. You can wish him well via Twitter or e-mail.

Review: TiltArena > PewPew is a post from: Droid Life