Author Archive: henry

With new titles hitting the digital shelves each week, it will be an understatement to say that the Apple App store is a huge place. Great games are often overlooked buried under piles of uninspiring MMO’s and stacks of Candy Crush clones. So we decided to spotlight games well worth trying part of this month’s new releases.

The Swords is a fusion of ancient martial arts and Chinese calligraphy, it reflects basically what could happen if fruit ninja’s were transported back to ancient China, bundled into a time machine. The Sword is now as frivolous as Halfbrick’s melon-slasher, yet really appealing and is bound to test players reactions, thankfully never your patience since it tells the unexpectedly immersive tale of a master’s quest for understanding and control.

Prism can be best described as a neo-futuristic, clean-cut take on The Room, it excites as a tactile box of tricks. Prism asks of its players to employ increasingly complex objects in a bid to unlock the probing secrets within. Its simplified concept works perfectly well on mobile, due to precise touch-screens and what really impress about Prism is its twisting, captivating and terrific ambient sound design.

Tomb of the Mask is free with IAP and a game of fast thinking, grabbing power-ups, collecting pills and escaping a retro-enthused labyrinth filled with treacherous foes and traps. It reminds of the popular game called Pac-Man.

Dreii, can be downloaded for iOS, is less of a video game and more of a trendy experiment brought to life via a growing digital medium. The puzzler is bubbly, cheerful and noticeably gorgeous gravity-suspending physics conundrum, the idea of Dreii’s is infinitely more striking than any than any of the game’s features. It’s secret worth unravelling as you will most certainly no the disappointed.

Other releases well worth downloading on iOS includes Final Fantasy IX, The Walking Dead: Michonne – Episode One, Circles and Rayman Classic, an adventure in which players get the chance to turn back time and even through its unforgiving vintage play, pixel-perfect visuals holds undeniable charm. There is absolutely no reason to let this game pass you by.

Generalising from experience, it is safe to say make the bold statement that all Smartphone owners continually strive to extract that extra measure of performance and usability from their proud-to-own, better-than-a-Swiss-army-knife, mobile device. The following lock screen apps provide unique, innovative, and rather major additional methods of improving the functionality and features of just about any smart phone in an area that to date has been completely underutilised.

Cover Lockscreen app automatically detects when you arrive at home, leave for work, or travel somewhere in your car; however, the greatest part is that it will automatically learn all the apps that you tend to use the most often in each of these contexts and locales. This allows the app to pre-load your lock screen with those applications you use the most while your car, which in turn allows you complete access to any of these apps instantly, and directly from your lock screen. Simply put, this automatically gives you immediate access to all the apps you will most often use at home, listed in the correct order of the most used to the least used, as soon as you leave home it will then swap the app list to those you would require while in your car.

It again repeats the process of swapping around to the most often used apps when you arrive at work, it even offers a customisable option for other activities, which could be anything from running, walking, hiking, to gym or whatever you might need to suit your personal habits. It even allows you to jump directly from one app to the next without any additional opening closing and tapping of multiple keys to navigate between apps. The app’s Peek function allows you to see whatever is new in any app instantly from your lock screen, by allowing you to have a glance at your calendar, or check for new updates on social activities. It even launches apps directly from the lock screen with an effortless swipe.

Next Lock Screen is the winner and recipient of Best Lock Screen App for Android award of 2016 from the prestigious AndroidPIT e-media publication. Of all things, it is a Microsoft development and purely at the Android platform that must currently to be one of the ultimate lock screen apps for any busy professional. It assists in protecting your Smartphone of falling prey to unwanted looky loo’s lurking about the office while providing near instant access to apps directly from the lock screen. In addition, it offers fingerprint recognition software on all hardware supported devices, as well as its unique Smart-lock location-based security that detects whether you are at your home or office.

For the next few weeks, the mobile gaming media is bound to be filled with talk about Clash Royale, since Supercell just hosted the official launching of its new strategy tower defence game aimed specifically at the mobile arena. According to all and sundry, the game is loads of fun, with most players enthusing that it is even better than Clash of Clans. However, a number of other just released brand-new mobile games offer significant levels of fun and entertainment that are discussed below.

Peter Panic is now in the App Store and it features a fast paced bunch of mini games, with original songs and Broadway’s best talent. Players will assume the role of Peter who is an up-and-coming young director wanting to return theatrical performances to his charming hometown, in the process you may accidentally worship a couple of demons, but some peanuts to save the theatre in this totally original musical on mobile. Players will need to complete dozens of demanding minigames to persuade the local freak show to join your cause.

The road to Be King also just arrived in the App Store and the challenges players to explore their kingdoms in an epic adventure where they will need to avoid hordes of evil creatures and hazardous traps.

Adventure to Fate: Quest to the Future is one of the latest JRPGs also already in the App Store where players will face their biggest fears that have become reality. All defences of the interdimensional ports have broken down allowing an evil power to lay waste to your guards, which subsequently allowed them to pull through the dimensional portals with little or no resistance.

Train Conductor World: European Railway, another new addition to the App Store allow players to control the switching of tracks, conducting trains, manage rail and train movements to see your network growing. Players will require steely nerves and the ability to think quickly on the fly, to work up and apply snappy strategies in order to contain the ever-threatening chaos. Near miss collisions, explosive crashes, and split second decisions are just part of the dangers you will be faced with

The current mobile gaming arena consists of a vast multitude of gaming categories, but most of those can be summarised into just two types, the first type would be time wasters one would enjoy while waiting for a client or a friend to turn up for a meeting. While the second type would be engaging, interactive, entertaining, and require loads of skill and focus to be on good at. Immaterial of which of these two types you would prefer playing upcoming gaming releases always raises high level of expectation, because the next new one might just be the one that once again grabs your attention. The games discussed below describe the upcoming episodic deliveries of more of these endless anticipatory possibilities.

Tesla Tubes from the developers at Kiloo will arrive on mobile on 17 March, which also happens to be St Patrick’s Day, which also really has nothing to do with this game! Tesla Tubes delivers another totally free puzzler with no in app purchases required. Gameplay is extremely reminiscent of the highly addictive mobile puzzler called Flow, Tesla Tubes is simply an extensively beefed up edition in a similar style. Gameplay is colourful and filled with obstacles, where the puzzler mechanics will require you to connect an endless number of batteries by placing connecting tubes to create paths. Players will focus on connecting matching colour entries with their counterparts across a grid style game-board. In order to be successful players may need to map longer routes since crossing paths with other corresponding tubes remain disallowed. Each level is made progressively more difficult with the addition of a large variety of obstacles including bridges and bombs to name just one or two of the problems that need to be solved. The product is the collaborative effort between, the co-conspirators responsible for Subway Surfers, Kiloo and a tiny games development studio called Vooney Games.

Injustice: Gods among Us delivers hangers-on of the blockbuster Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice with a new update. The Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice movie will launch on 24 March and to the hype surrounding this film the mobile game will now also receive a brand-new version update to its PvP mobile game, Injustice: Gods among Us featuring newly added superheroes and environments.

Anyone that has ever broken the seal to un-box their shiny new Android smart phone knows that incredible feeling of awe when you get your first glimpse. You finally get everything pieced together and turn it on; but fortunately, you find not too much happening immediately with regards to useful apps. New smart device equals much desired new apps, this is where a discerning list of new free apps come in very handy and with Android being the cultural and financial landscape has become over the years many of the very best apps are available for free. The free apps summarised below represents a one-stop shop containing the qualified best in class apps that won’t cost a cent in 2016 and all are absolute must haves!

Letgo is an app that makes it much easier for users to purchase and resell used stuff in their local area. The list of goods and categories include all kinds of smart phones and their accessories, cars, coffee makers, furniture and loads of others. It assists in redistributing items people don’t require animal to other people that will still find good use in them. Users can simply scroll through its categorised item list that will allow them to see which items are for sale, whether located and who they would need to contact to purchase them. You can also make an online offer via the app, or contact the person to ask any possible questions you might have. If you are looking for something specific and are not interested in browsing, you can make use of its built-in search filters to narrow down your results of potential items you might be looking for.

Transit App: Real Time Tracker is one of those must have apps for anybody that travels often or makes use of public transport on their daily commute. Most transportation schedules are difficult to access at short notice from your mobile device and may require a variety of different apps to plot your route for all the different transport options to get your required destination. It is always difficult to get an accurate idea of your arrival time due to transportation schedules changing because of delays or cancellations, which at times can prove ruinous to your daily itinerary planning. Transit App: Real Time Tracker provides exactly that, real-time information regarding the schedules on subways, buses, ferries, Uber and loads of others allowing you to stay one step ahead.

As one of the greatest innovators in the mobile app arena, Google just launched its latest attempt at making in-store smartphone payment methods even simpler with their new app called Hands-Free. One of its most innovative features is the fact that once the app is downloaded and installed users will not even have to remove their cell phones from their pockets to affect a payment. The new payment system is currently already available to both iOS and Android platforms, but is still in a testing phase in San Francisco’s South Bay area.

Hands-Free makes use of facial recognition software as well as your phone’s location as two of its identity authenticating features to ensure it is actually the correct user requesting and authorising payment for their own purchase. It works simply by informing the store assistant or cash that you wish to pay via Google, where after they will request your initials, which he or she will then enter into the terminal. The cashier will then be able to view a list of users currently in this area, each with an identifying photo displayed next to the initials.

The cashier will then match the photo to the real-life person in front of them and ring-up the necessary payment. Despite the current version still in its testing phase, Google is simultaneously testing a more fully automated version featuring a camera attached a system equipped with facial recognition software. In this fully automated version the real-time camera image is then matched against that of your on file photo. Amidst the current furore around personal security, Google assures all photos captured by these hands-free in-store cameras face instant deletion on completion of each transaction.

In what is currently still a rather lacklustre roll-out speed, WhatsApp launched an updated version of its app, featuring a capacity that allows its users to send files directly via the highly popular IM app. Subscribers already privy to the benefits of this new updated version reported spotting a server-side switch that enable users to share their PDFs, which is currently the only supported file type.

Since it is not a widely publicised topic, most smart phone users will be unaware that they too can freely contribute towards the advancement of a number of noble scientific causes to further aid humankind. This is made possible via Cluster Computing or Hive Computing software technology currently available as android apps that allows users to contribute the vast reserves of processing power available in their mobile devices during its idle times.

After installing the necessary software on your mobile device this much-needed additional processing power can then assist underfunded researchers in numerous academic disciplines by providing them with an increased number crunching capacity. This in turn would then speed up the delivery of results on their research. The software enables your device to network with other hardware devices with similar apps installed to construct a global supercomputer; scientific researchers may then harness the immense additional processing power when required to further the course of research for the benefit of all mankind.

DreamLab free on Google Play, is the direct result of a collaborative effort between the Garvan Institute of Australia’s researchers and cellular network giant Vodafone. The app is focused at supporting research done into curing a number of cancer types, and once the app is installed the user can choose from a variety of specific cancer research fields they may wish to support. Once the selections have been set the device’s processing power during idle times will be utilised to assist in finding cures. Vodafone customers are assured that all mobile data used for these purposes are free.

Folding@Home is free from Google Play, is the brainchild of a joint venture between Stanford University scientists and leading mobile device developer, Sony Mobile. The Stanford team focuses their efforts on discovering more about mechanics driving a multitude of horrific diseases. This app also makes your mobile device’s free idle time processing power available to perform numbercrunching exercises to further research in the field of protein folding, which is a process found in numerous cells throughout our bodies to aid in forming their final development shape. It also requires no additional costs to be carried by the app user since it only starts to function after your device is fully charged and it must be connected to a Wi-Fi source before it will start performing its operations in the background.

Not all Android mobile devices are created equal, no not even the top of the range models, many suffer badly from the lack of a proper, full featured, robust file, and storage manager. The latest devices have proven that even on an extensive diet of Marshmallow the file manager still remains fairly lacking, and this is where Android as an OS shines brightly, since it users can pretty much do whatever they wish with just about any file type that may at some stage find its way inside your phone. In order to rectify these file manager shortcomings of the stock Android system a number of the best file explorers offers components such as the automatic sorting and display of any of the user’s content via categories that include music, downloads, photos, as well as other files or alternatively sort them by file types like JPEG, or PDF et cetera.

ES File Explorer has for many years remained as the go-to app of choice acting as the Swiss army knife of file explorers for android. It offers a genuinely all in one solution, that has however sadly become a tad bloated as of late interface starting to show its age. Do however definitely not discounted since the floor represents one of the most powerful storage and file managers in the mobile market. It offers a full feature set that includes wireless transfers, FTP, including an inbuilt cloud storage management option to cater for the latest hardware devices.

Gira Mobile’s File Manager app delivers a good-looking no-frills file management tool, designed with a light resource footprint that remains speedy and easy to use. File Manager delivers options such as cut, copy, paste, delete, move, find, rename, compress, explore, as well as serving as an extractor to a number of major compressed file formats. As with ES, users can now also continue managing a multitude of the more popular cloud-based storage accounts from directly within the app.

File Explorer from NextApp delivers all the required basic management functions together with a well organised clean interface that also features additional options such as its FX Connect that allow users to transfer files directly between phones via Wi-Fi direct, as well as a very handy root explorer.

More apps and APK’s in locations where most of us never think to look. Most of us choose to just use the Play Store or Google play to find the apps we want, even though we do not always seem to find what we are looking for, but have you ever considered Android APK’s? Actually, there are already exists a complete list of highly capable apps, which might just contain everything you ever wanted and/or needed to complete your standby list. Here are a few apps that are brilliant, but not available on Google play or the Play Store.

VideoMix is one of the best video streaming software options available, it offers users the capacity to stream movies and TV shows to your mobile device. Simply find the show or movie you would prefer watching and tap on it, the software will find the various options to make available for streaming and simultaneously offer a variety of compatible media players available for use. Be sure to look at the streaming copyrights for your country to ensure you do not land yourself in unwanted trouble.

Videoder is a video-ripper that offers the capacity to download from YouTube and other media platforms. The software allows users to choose various video formats, sizes, and quality up to 1080p, with MP3 formats also being an option, but these are still in Beta-testing phase, meaning they might give problems on the odd occasion.

TubeMate is very similar to Videoder and subsequently provides numerous similar options. Users will have the ability to download in various formats and video sizes from just about any video network.

The CyanogenMod installer is best for those users wanting to mod their devices. The software was briefly available on the Google app store, but subsequently received the boot off Google’s virtual shelves after only 2 weeks due to the possible encouragement of voided warranties. Google stated that the software does not fall within its regulations, which was the main reason for its removal.

The software is still available on Androids APK, allowing users to activate an ADB, which is a debugging tool allowing further modifications.

In current times, the cultural climate demands that developers use a soft-soft approach in the presentation of their fitness apps. Not so with Carrot Fit, whose developers clearly think nothing of delivering a clean, swift, accurate kick up the butt whenever it may be called for to get your potbellied backside of the couch and duly oblige with its recommended fitness routine.

This delivers a very handy tool to those feeling that they could withstand a little tough love to improve their fitness levels and general health, Carrot Fit certainly fits the bill on all levels. The app has been on the market for a couple of years and may be, but will not necessarily have to be taken completely seriously. In contrast to the greater multitude of serious fitness apps out there, this one is meant to provide a bit of fun along with tons of abuse to kick your fitness levels substantially higher up through its army style boot camp training regime.

If you’re extremely serious about your training then this one is not for you, despite the fact that it will deliver the goods with aplomb. In it the average couch potato will find something that will have them moving and shaking, losing fat, while improving their general health through a dollop of nature’s very own best medicine called laughter. If you need a bit of humour each of the couch give this one a definite whirl. The app is currently only available on iOS, downloadable for free from the Apple Store, with a number of in app purchases.

Fooducate, delivers a friendly, for more serious, virtual weight-loss coaching program that utilises every possible opportunity to maximise its efforts in helping its user make positive changes in their lives. The app UI offers crisp, clean, sleek lines with beautiful aesthetics, available on both Android and iOS. Fooducate delivers a complete package that allows a heavily customisable goal setting routine, with precision requirements that allow its users to learn a massive amount along the way, it covers topics that include MSG’s, allergies and a number of other subjects.