Handheld Now » Reviews

Why I Was Wrong About The Microsoft Kin

Kyle — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 04:44:46 +0000

When I wrote the pro-KIN article back in April I had not used or seen the phone. Still to this day I have not, but I have watched several videos of people using them. I don’t need to say that they suck, because the world already knows that.

Microsoft only sold 8,810 units. Ever. To put that into perspective with other recent releases – iPhone 4 had 600,000 pre-orders and Evo 4G sold 150,000 its first weekend. While the KIN is just a feature phone its all time numbers are nothing compared to the rest of the markets first weekend.

I read about the KIN when it was first announced and I agree that the turtle shaped KIN ONE was garbage, but I did fancy the KIN TWO. That is until I actually saw how slowly it ran. It is slow. Slow slow slow. The status updates looked cool, but not when it takes over 30 seconds to load all the information every time you unlock the phone.

This phone seems great for middle school aged kids. They left out one killer feature for this young market. All the kiddies love AIM! There isn’t an instant messaging client for the KIN! Not even for Microsoft’s Live Messenger. I have no idea what they were thinking.

They did do one thing right though – Zune player. The best mp3 player in my opinion is definitely Zune. Microsoft thought it would be a great idea to add it into KIN. From everything I have seen, it was a flawless implementation. This gives me hope for Windows Phone 7, which also sports Zune’s sexy UI.

To conclude, I made a huge mistake. You live and you learn right? Be sure to let me know what an idiot I was in the comments!

Bank Run Is The Most Fun You Can Have On Your iPhone

Kyle — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 04:18:43 +0000

This iPhone app is a game, but the game sucks. It is just a side-scrolling, 2d, action game, and is currently available for free in the App Store.

What makes this game unique is the videos that create an interactive movie experience. If this were a movie released in theaters, then critics would complain about the sub-par acting and poor writing, but an exciting film for action junkies.

The better half of the game is actually online. It is like a choose your own adventure like movie. I say like because the plot is extremely linear and you can die if you choose incorrectly.

The game froze quickly on my iPhone 3G, so I would not recommend it to anybody who owns a 2G or 3G. Play it online though, it does not disappoint.

Apple App Store Reviews

Great video and sound! Lots of Fun

by DigitallyBranded
I’m amazed at the production value given this app’s selling price. The video is so vibrant and beautiful. It really pops on the iPhone’s screen. And the music/sound is great! Good to see it didn’t go overlooked. I suggest wearing headphones for the best experience. The game portion of the app is a lot of fun. The elevator scene is nice and challenging. I urge everyone to give this experience a try. It could be the first in a new genre. I can’t wait for their next release!!!

Great fun! Cool concept!

by SammySRF4
I’ve never seen a game like this before. Looks really cool and has a fun elevator mode that gets pretty tough.

In a league of its own…

by finger.jockey
This game is truly in a league of its own. Graphics, fun, innovation and most of all price!!! When the big boys out there want to charge you 5 bucks for friggin scrabble, I have no idea how this was developed and sells for less than half the price!!! Unbelievable fun! You wont be let down…

Sprint HTC Hero Review

Kaitlin — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 23:41:24 +0000

I have mixed opinions about the HTC Hero. In theory, it’s amazing. In practice, it can use a little work.

The phone, of course, comes without a physical keyboard. The on-screen keyboard is decent, though a little more cramped than that of the iPhone. Basically, it would be disastrous without the predictive text. With the predictive text, it’s actually pretty good. With one word, I typed every letter wrong and it still knew what I meant. Impressive, right?

Then there’s the messaging. To me, messaging is the most important function of any phone. It’s all I do every day. It’s somewhat of an improvement over my last phone, as the messages are grouped together into conversations where instead of viewing one message at a time, you can see a whole thread of them. It also allows you to send messages that are more than 160 characters. There is also this really cool feature where the phone tries to guess when messages you received were sent, and insert them in the correct place on the timeline. For example, if someone sends a message a minute before you but you don’t receive it until after send yours, the phone will insert it before your message. Unfortunately, sometimes this messes up and it can be confusing because the phone will show someone answering your question before you actually asked it.

The phone includes a 5 Megapixel camera. Although it does not have a flash, it takes beautiful pictures outdoors and indoors, as long as there is enough light. This camera has autofocus, which helps eliminate blur. Sometimes the camera will bring up an error and refuse to open, but usually all you have to do is restart the phone and it will start working again.

The Hero has multitask capabilities. You can have many different programs open at once, though as other reviewers will tell you, it will start to lag if you have too many programs open.

Lag is a major problem with this phone. Even when you only have messaging and mail open, it will sometimes start to lag. Generally turning it off for a few minutes will fix this too. Most problems on this phone can be fixed with a restart.

Battery life is about as to be expected for a smartphone. If you use it heavily (such browsing YouTube for six hours straight), you might have to recharge it when you get home from work or school. Otherwise, you should be fine if you plug it in to the charger nightly.

Overall, it’s a pretty good phone. It’s multitouch and multitasking, with a beautiful camera and a fairly intuitive interface. Unfortunately, it likes to lag to the point where it takes 10 seconds for the text message to catch up to your typing. I’ve yet to decide if the delay is worth all the things it can do.

Camera Test

DonutGames’s Rat on a Scooter XL for iPhone Review

Kyle — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 21:26:29 +0000

While browsing the App Store today I came across this game. I’ve played a lot of DonutGames’s free iPhone games and thought I would try this one out. So I purchased it for $0.99. After playing it for a minute, I realized that it was just interminable monotonous jumping on a scooter. While I realized this was the concept of the game, I thought it would contain a little more.

Their game Rat on the Run contains the exact Rat Scooter game, and it’s free! The only difference is that there aren’t different “gametypes” for the scooter like on Scooter XL. These “gametypes” are just different items you have to land on to score points, so all of them are essentially one in the same.

To sum up, the Rat on the Scooter XL game is mildly fun but is not worth paying anything for. Just download the free Rat on the Run game that contains a Rat on Scooter game and two other minigames.

Video Review by MrKangarooBill to show gameplay

A Christmas Santa Review Plus Hidden Missions

Kyle — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 18:14:40 +0000

A Christmas Santa is one of the top applications currently in the App Store and warrants a review. It only costs $0.99, which is well worth it for this entertaining game.

There is a short plot explaining why Santa is flying. Apparently the reindeer do not want to fly anymore because Santa cannot afford to pay them, so Santa has decided to fly alone and has 45 days to learn how to fly.

If you have ever played the flash game, Learn to Fly, then you have played this game.

The graphics in the came are cartoony and reminded me of South Park.

There are several hidden missions in the game that give you extra money.

Hidden Missions

Fly 0-1 Mile
Wait 15 seconds before you fly
Slam into the snow with a rocket
Long slide in the snow
Fly exactly 777.77 Miles

Overall I would recommend this game to anybody. Anything packing at least an hour or two of fun is definitely worth a buck.

Quick Review of the Palm Pixi

Kyle — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 20:19:16 +0000

First off let me say this, I have always been a major fan of webOS. The GUI is absolutely gorgeous, and the way it handles multitasking is lightyears ahead of the rest of the market. The Pixi comes preloaded with the latest build of webOS and with it comes Yahoo integration.

I had to go to a Sprint retail store since Palm is unreliable with their review units. We received an email shortly after the release of the Palm Pre from Palm’s marketing department letting us know that they would be sending us a unit to review ASAP, but to this date we have still not received it.

The Pixi is extremely tiny. As you can see in the picture, my hand dwarfs the entirety of the device. While having a small device might seem convenient and appealing at first, you should know that the keyboard is way too cramped and the screen is hardly manageable with its 2.63-inch multitouch screen with 18-bit color, 320×400 screen resolution Sub-HVGA display.

While it lacks WiFi, Sprint’s network is very capable of handling most of your data needs. The web browser on the device is in my opinion second only to the one found on the iPhone. Like the Pre, it also features over-the-air backup, restore, remote erase, and software updates.

Applications are all the rage these days. The App Catalog found on the Pre and Pixi is still quite undeveloped when compared to other devices. With that in mind, their new Ares SDK has just left private beta testing and now is in public beta. Hopefully this will breath some life into the App Catalog and catch it up to par.

All in all the device really is not that bad. My only faults with it are its small screen and cramped keyboard. I am extremely bias though because I am used to the iPhone with a bigger screen and have never really liked keyboards. I would recommend this to a first time smart phone user or somebody who is in love with webOS’s brilliant GUI and maybe just does not want a slider phone (Palm Pre).

Why You Shouldn’t Get the Droid (Motorola)

Kyle — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:36:52 +0000

Verizon is really counting on the Droid to steal some of iPhone’s massive market share. For a while now we have seen Verizon’s iDon’t commercials. The truth is that all they hype that has been built up ended with a big letdown.

Multitouch is a feature that is just expected on most capacitive touchscreen phones these days. Many of the Droid’s key applications lack this feature. For example the onscreen keyboard does not offer multitouch. This is a big deal for typing accuracy for onscreen keyboards. Another application that does not have multitouch is the web browser. You can zoom in by double tapping though, which is a new feature for Android 2.0.

The hardware keyboard is a complete failure. The keys are very hard and are not contoured at all. Also the keys are very cramped and not separated at all. Also while having a D-Pad is nice, it was not implemented well in this device. It caused the keyboard to be off center and making it feel less natural to type on.

Droid packs a 5.0 megapixel camera with autofocus and dual LED flash. On paper that sounds quite nice but in use the camera does not perform very well. Launching the camera takes a somewhat frustrating amount of time. Also after taking one picture it takes a bit to save it and let you take another picture. It is just overall slow and not the amazing.

This is a matter of personal preference but I have never understood the purpose of soft key buttons. The main benefit of having a touchscreen is that you don’t need to have dedicated space for controls. You can still have hard keys at the bottom for things like call and end functions though. These aren’t dynamic like the screen is, so they do not offer anything special by being touch sensitive rather than physical. Personally I believe it is a downgrade compared to physical keys.

To be fair I have never been a fan of Motorola’s phones. They don’t ever seem to hold up to the rest of the market. I am however a huge fan of Android. Android 2.0 is an excellent operating system and I can’t wait to see it on more capable devices.

Camera Genius iPhone App Review

Kyle — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 18:51:37 +0000

The current top selling application is Camera Genius. It is right above Camera Zoom and will put it out of business instantly since it does so much more than simply zoom. Camera Genius packs zoom, anti-shake, timer, and along with other things a very innovative feature called sound capture.

I have been using Camera Zoom for nearly a month as my primary camera app and wasn’t too happy with it. What I liked about it though was the fact that I had the choice to digitally zoom and touch anywhere to capture the photo. Now I am not stuck with such a limited camera.

The zoom is much like the zoom in Camera Zoom. During the testing I discovered that the quality was virtually identical. Genius’s version only had the option to have a lower resolution photo, whereas with Camera Zoom there was a choice to have a higher resolution picture.

Sound capture is a pretty innovative feature. Basically instead of having to tap the screen to take snap the picture, you merely make a noise or just say something. In testing though it wasn’t all that practical. I thought it would be a good idea to test it by leaning it up, stepping back, saying cheese, but ran into a problem. Since the mic is located on the bottom of the phone it, there was a decent amount of noise when I set it down. This of course caused the phone to take a picture.

If you have the iPhone 3G or the original iPhone, then chances are you get some blurry pictures from time to time. Camera Genius contains an anti-shake feature. All this does is take a picture once it senses the phone is still using the accelerometer. You only notice a slightly clearer picture if you have a steady hand, but the best part is it assures you that you will not waste your time with a blurry photo.

Like many other applications, Camera Genius gives you an option to tap the top three quarters of the screen to take a picture. The reason it doesn’t extend the rest of the way is because you would get some accidental pictures taken when trying to slide the zoom bar. I have had this happen on many occasions using Camera Zoom so this is a much appreciated feature.

People that like their preview screen split up into sectors to assist them with positioning photos will enjoy the guides added to this application. Personally this is not a feature I plan on ever using but I’d rather have too many features than not enough.

The default camera app is so basic that it doesn’t even include a timer. Many other apps in the App Store have this feature as well as many of the others, but this one has so many features all in one. All you do to change the timer time is tap the number to cycle between 2, 5, 10, 15, and 30 seconds.

The one thing I never thought I would see in this application was manuals on how to take good pictures. They are actually very useful tips for beginner to intermediate photographers. Using them can maximize the effectiveness of the iPhone’s built in camera and photos in general.

Some other things that are worth mentioning is Camera Genius remembers what settings you had on the last time you closed it, so when you open the camera back up they are still set to how you want them. Also it counts how many pictures you take while the app is open and displays that number in the upper right hand corner.

To summarize, you should buy this app now if you want some much needed features for your camera. It only costs $0.99 USD for a limited time. Go purchase it on iTunes now or go to CodeGoo.com for more info.

iFPS Online iPhone App Review

Kyle — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:34:34 +0000

This is one of the first decent FPS games for the iPhone. You can either play survivor mode against AI bots or play FPS locally or online. The online multiplayer requires either a wifi connection of 3G. This means you can actually play this game on the go as long as you have 3G reception.

The controls are actually decent. There are two virtual joysticks that control your movement and looking. Also there is a fire and jump button in the center of the joysticks. Your screen also auto-centers which makes things a lot easier. There are also three different control schemes.

There is limited chat in multiplayer games. On the bottom of the screen is five buttons. Each of the buttons can be programmed to say dozens of predefined phrases.

As far as weapons go you are very limited. There are only two that I have found, but I read somewhere that there are three.

The game inlcudes three maps that will mix up the arena a little.

For only $1.99 you can buy this 3D FPS Multiplayer game on the iTunes App Store today.

Memory Info iPhone App

Kyle — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:10:12 +0000

Memory Info is a $0.99 iPhone App that lets you free up your memory on the device. Since the iPhone doesn’t have any task manager built in, you either have to download an app like this or reset your phone if you need to free up memory. This is a much faster option and as an added bonus you get a battery percentage which is fairly accurate.

Buy this app