I was wondering what all the fuss was about with Angry Birds, so I decided to try it and find out. Soon enough I bought the full version of the game..

.. and damn it’s addictive. It’s a very simple game where you catapult different types of birds into structures which vary from ice, rock to wood trying to strike out pigs. With some levels there are some mechanics involved where in order to strike out a pig, you need to knock something over or out. The sound effects of the birds are pretty amusing, they do seem angry and ready to go.

Hopefully the game will have it’s graphics updated for the iPhone 4, but I somehow don’t see it happening anytime soon. Update 1.4.2 brings retina graphics!

For $1.19, it’s a fun time passer.

Yesterday’s conversion with a friend of mine went something along the lines of me telling him that I had come back to my roots and got an iPhone. His reply was a simple one, “hahaha, they all come crawling back..”

Sad, but true. But perhaps it doesn’t apply to everyone. In the past I considered myself an Apple Mac fanatic, however my friend which I broke the news to has taken over the reigns in that department. In his case, fanatic would be an understatement – obsessed would be more fitting.

Moving on. So, why did I jump ship back to the Apple iPhone you ask? Well, I guess one of the key things here was friends and family having this device and letting me play with it for a bit. When the iPhone 4 was launched, I wasn’t really phased by it one bit. Steve Jobs went about his way announcing all the features, gadgets and gizmos that the iPhone had and all I had to say was meh. My mind was made up at that stage and I wanted to try the Android platform.. and I lasted about 2 months or so on it.

Apps
I should have realised browsing the Android Market that the Apps were shit – and they are in comparison to the quality of those in the AppStore. Almost every App on the Android platform I came across had ads embedded with a poor UI, or they failed in the usability department. In the end, the AppStore is far superior to the Android Market and I missed the Apps I had on my iPhone 3G, so this was one of the deciding factors.

Display
The display on the iPhone 4 is quite awesome I must admit. I found the display on the HTC Desire very good, but the iPhone’s display is easily a few notches ahead. The text is very crisp and easy to read with the colours vibrant.

Network
This was probably the only thing I was skeptical about. From general use so far, I feel the HTC Desire wins in this department. I was expecting web browsing (although Safari and Androids browsers use different rendering engines) and the AppStore to be faster on the Optus network now that the iPhone supports additional mobile frequencies. But this doesn’t entirely seem to be the case. In general it is much faster than the 3G.

Also, I’m not quite sure what this nonsense about the death grip was. I haven’t experienced any signal problems or calls dropping due to holding the phone in a certain way. Perhaps the Americans have issues with their networks over there. I noticed with the Desire that the data connection would drop every once in a while, the iPhone doesn’t seem to do this at all. I couldn’t find out why the Desire did either.

Camera, Video
I’m not quite sure about this one. In terms of raw picture quality, the iPhone and Desire camera seem pretty on-par to me. What I do like about the iPhone is the HDR setting which makes photo’s just that little bit better. Although I do miss the FxCamera App on the Android which offers some cool on the fly post-processing. With Android 2.2 came “720p video recording” which wasn’t too bad, although I feel the iPhone wins in some environments.

Battery
The iPhone’s battery is kick-ass. So far the longest I’ve gotten out of it is 2 days, 8 hours stand by with 7 hours, 54 minutes of usage which included gaming, phone calls, web browsing and using the AppStore over WiFi/3G. With the Desire, I was lucky to get just over a day with it, it just seems to be a battery hungry thing. Charge times seem to be similar (correction, the iPhone also charges faster here too) between both devices whilst using the wall charger, however via USB the iPhone wins hands down. The Desire could sometimes charge for hours on end, but perhaps I was using some rubbish USB cable?

20 Oct - Taking another look at battery life a few weeks later – On average I manage to get 5-6 hours of mixed usage and 2 days+ standby, — the highest being 5hrs, 3 days standby. This leaves the Desire in dust.

Overall, I enjoyed using the HTC Desire, but I must say my heart definitely belongs to the iPhone, I simply missed it too much. Apple has done a superb job with the iPhone 4, it is a great product.

I came across this game randomly last night whilst browsing the AppStore. Took a look at the screenshots and for $1.19 I thought, what the heck and purchased it. Minigore is a 3D survival shooter about a square headed fellow named John Gore who gets attacked by furry black creatures, our job is to protect him at all costs.

The game is easy to play, humourous and addictive. I find the voice overs pretty funny, a mix between the commando from the original Command & Conquer game and John McClane (Die Hard). The soundtrack is pretty decent, it is a adventurous theme but at the same time keeps the intensity going. However, if you find it too kiddy, you can simply play some music from your iPod library. Graphics are simple and designed in a comic book style way, but are nicely done.

The menu buttons need a bit of polishing in my opinion, they look a bit too bland but I’m assuming v1.0 is just an early release and things will improve. Also, the game play can get a bit boring as there is only 1 included level at the moment, but hopefully with future updates we’ll see new characters, voice overs and levels. Check out a game play video.

While I’m far from an expert, here are some of my tips:
- Always keep moving, don’t stop or you might unexpectedly get crept up on.
- Keep away from bushes and trees as you won’t see a furry sneaking up on you.
- Save the 3rd green clover leaf for when you really need it; hover around it in case you start becoming overrun.
- Further into the round, keep shooting the furries from a small distance whilst moving in a circular pattern.
- Never move into a corner; if you get stuck in one, try to get out as fast as you can.

My highest score so far is 16891 on expert mode.

I admit it, I’m an iPhone game junkie. So today when I had a browse through the AppStore, I came across iBomber, which is an arcade styled bombing game based in the Pacific Ocean during 1943 where you are tasked to bomb key targets.

I initially watched the game preview on YouTube and was intrigued by the style of game play. From there I proceeded to immediately press the purchase button in iTunes. This game doesn’t disappoint in my opinion. I love the graphics and animations, the style they remind me of is the XIII game → from a few years back which I thought was unique at the time. The loading screens are cool too, very WWII style. The soundtrack is enjoyable, a mix of military style with a touch of funkiness similar to the Great Escape movie tune.

The game play takes a bit of adjusting to.. a whole, I dunno.. 5-10 minutes? After the first mission you’ll get the grasp of it all. You can speed up or slow down your bombing runs, upon destroying specific objects you get various bomb power-ups which all require a different speed to accurately hit targets, so this makes it challenging. My only gripe so far is the controls/movement in relation to the iPhones accelerometer position. Sometimes you really need to be at an awkward angle to pull off a manoeuvre, unless I’m just holding the phone wrong. Hopefully a setting will be added in the options menu in a future revision.

I’ll be looking forward to further missions and power-ups in the future. You can grab iBomber on iTunes

Do you remember playing that epic plane fighting arcade game, 1942 as a little kid?

Well, if you do.. a company by the name of EpicForce has released a similar style game for the iPhone entitled iFighter →. They initially released a lite version which had 1 playable level but lacked a real soundtrack. Regardless, it gave a good indication of what the final release would be like and it looked very promising.

Today I was browsing the iTunes store and saw iFighter in 4th position for Top Paid Apps. For the introductory price of $1.19 I was sold.

This game does not disappoint. The addition of soundtracks for levels has made the game much more enjoyable. The power-ups are pretty good, you get 2 different gun fire bursts and you can also get 2 wingmen for support which help immensely. I’m looking forward to additional levels and power-ups in future updates.

Grab iFighter from the AppStore →

I was browsing the AppStore this afternoon and surprisingly came across Catcha Mouse 2, one of my favourite games for the iPhone. Less than one minute and $1.19 later, I was enjoying the Ahhh, a wise guy eh? sound the mouse makes whenever I get the best of him and pass the level. I can’t help but laugh every time I hear it.

Whats the gameplay involve?Quite simply, there are holes placed in various locations on the map and you need to block the mouses escape by laying down mouse traps. It’s a fun and addictive.

Grab Catcha Mouse 2 or try the original Catcha Mouse → from the AppStore.

I can’t stand GPS devices and refuse to use them in general, why? Well, my reasoning is pretty simple. If you have lived in Sydney more than a couple of years, you should be competent enough to know what main roads connect to the major suburbs and have a general sense of direction.

If you don’t, you should be on public transport in order to free up the roads a bit and prevent possible accidents whilst you are staring at your GPS device, and believe me I’ve seen more than a few clueless drivers gazing at their GPS.

In saying this, I actually downloaded xGPS → for my iPhone over the weekend as I was going to pick up something in a suburb I don’t usually travel to and it was a significant traveling distance. xGPS is a GPS application that feeds off Google Maps → and quite well at that. Best of all, it’s free from the Cydia application repository if you have a Jailbroken iPhone.

The set up of the application was quite easy indeed, I think it took a total of 2-3 minutes. There are also lots of other settings you can adjust, for example: automatic map rotation, adjustment of route if you’re going the wrong way, night mode, prevent iPhone sleep mode and many more.

Best of all, I found out that the developers of xGPS also have a desktop application → available for both Windows and Mac which allows you to download areas of maps that you select from Google Maps and sync them to your phone, this is great as it saves you a few Mb (I downloaded a total of 143Mb which covers all of Sydney in high detail).

Issues? For one, some streets weren’t accessible as indicated on Google Maps (left or right turns that were blocked off by median strips) and the voice directions aren’t loud enough, hopefully this will be adjusted with future versions. The desktop client also has a few issues with downloading large maps from Google.