Phone Buddy Review
December 25, 2020 by RSS Feed
It’s quite common for users to misplace their smartphones. Perhaps you’ve got distracted and left it behind, or a theft decides to lift your phone from the restaurant table.
Whatever the situation, losing your device can cause a lot of hassle and headache. So Phone Buddy – Phone Lost Alert is a lifesaver A notifier app for Apple Watch, it alerts you when the Bluetooth connection between your watch and device has been lost.
The app features can alert you when you accidentally leave your iPhone behind or if you misplace it. Phone Buddy is very effective in preventing the loss of your iPhone because you will more or less be immediately alerted when your phone isn’t in range.
The Good
We tested the app on a Series 2 Apple Watch and even though it’s an older model the app works perfectly every single time.
And it was more than a few times, as we forget where our iPhone is at least 3 times a day - and each time we received a ping.
Setting up Phone Buddy is easy too. After downloading the app to your iPhone you have to install the app onto your watch by opening the “watch app” on your iPhone. Scroll until you find Phone Buddy and then press install next to it. You can tweak some of the features on the watch, but the iPhone app is where you control most of the settings. You’ll need to established a connection between your watch and iPhone, and this is done through Bluetooth. The app walks you through the steps too, and it couldn’t be much easier to set up.
We used the Phone Buddy for a good amount of time, and ran into no faults or tech issues. Once connected to the Apple Watch you are able to set a distance alert, and this is where the iPhone app shows the current signal strength between your phone and watch.
You can set a distance alert - for example if the signal strength goes below 30% - then you get notified. You are also able to choose how long below that signal strength before you’re alerted.
The app can also keep an eye on your watch battery and alert you when it gets low. For such a simple app it’s packed with features, as you can turn the “watch left behind alert” on and off.
You can set the alert sound to a loud siren or a subtler alarm too, and if you happen to lose your iPhone you can get an alert as soon as you come in range of it. There’s a battery full alert, and you can turn off the alerts easily when charging.
The app even has a hugely useful mapping system so you can visually see where you are and the location of your iPhone. Not only does Phone Buddy alert you that you’ve left your iPhone behind, it also sends an alert to your phone should you leave your watch.
The app certainly rivals Apple “Find My”, because that’s not able to instantly notify you about leaving your phone behind - unlike the Phone Buddy. Because the app requires constant Bluetooth connection it could be considered a battery killer - but we were able to run our Watch and iPhone all day with it connected. That’s about nine hours, and we still had between 20-35% battery life remaining.
The Bad
If you turn off the Apple Watch, the Active Mode will be disabled. When you turn on the Apple Watch again, you have to make sure to open the Phone Buddy app to re-enable the full functionality. If you still experience unreliable Bluetooth connection between Apple Watch and iPhone though, you can restart the watch.
It would also be useful to have a Bluetooth issue alert, as when this happens you. The Bluetooth signal strength can also vary due to a number of different factors and other devices around you.
This really has nothing to do with the app itself though, and down to radio waves that are our of our control. You can use the “Custom Threshold mode” to update your signal according to your environment though, and that negates the issue.
The verdict
At just, $4.99, the Phone Buddy Lost Alert is a nice investment. Once installed you’re far less likely to leave your iPhone behind, and then running back to the cafe in a panic (for example).
From using the app, it’s clear the developer has put a lot of effort in to make sure the user interface and usability are perfect. We wouldn’t be surprised to see Phone Buddy featured in Apple’s top ten paid apps fairly soon.
8.8
OVERALL
User Interface 9.2
Lasting appeal 8.7
iPhone Integration 8.8
Is engaging 8.5
Does it well 8.9
Phone Buddy - Phone Lost Alert
FRE STUDIOS LLC
Source link: http://appadvice.com/reviews
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Popple Keeps You Connected To Those Who Matter
December 23, 2020 by RSS Feed
Reviewed by Sarah Hanlon
If you’re like me, keeping up with friends and family can be a challenge when life gets busy. It’s easy to lose track of texts and phone calls when days go by quickly.
Facebook and Twitter, the typical go-to apps for connecting with people, are not the answer. They frequently inundate you with needless content distracting you from what you really went online to do.
Popple – Stay Connected is a very well-designed app that focuses on you. It will gently remind you to keep in touch with those who matter.
Whether it’s those who are close to you, customers, or anyone else, this is a great way to make sure you don’t lose touch with anyone you care about.
Concept and Functionality: 
Popple, from Circles Manager, is incredibly easy to set up once you’ve downloaded the app. All you have to do is grant permissions for the app to access your contacts. Once that’s completed, simply choose which contacts you’d like to add to your notification group.
Once you’ve selected your contacts, you can add them to a circle to help keep everything sorted and organized. Then choose your preferred contact method: text, phone call, or email. Finally, set how often you’d like to be reminded to reach out to your contact.
The layout of Popple is very clean and easy to use, which means your list of contacts won’t get cluttered and disorganized even if you’ve added many contacts to keep up with. The main screen sorts contacts by when you need to reach out, too.
Popple was obviously designed by folks frustrated by the apps currently available and with a passion to improve how we connect.
Features:
Popple iPhone App
Popple is a pretty simple app to use, but that doesn’t mean it’s not clean and refined. There are a few extra features worth highlighting, mainly little things you didn’t think would be important but certainly help.
For example, you can even add birthday information and special event notes to a contact so you can be reminded to send them a greeting or give them a call on days that truly matter. Talk about winning extra points!
You can also quickly contact people through the app using message shortcuts or make a note that you’ve contacted a person outside of Popple, therefore resetting your notification schedule.
It’s also worth noting that you don’t have to set up an account with Popple in order to use the app – everything stays local to your device for added privacy and security. Bravo!
Value:
Popple is available to download from the App Store for free and currently does not include any in-app purchases. However, the developer has noted that a previous version of the app is possibly arriving in the future.
Overall, Popple is a fantastic tool for keeping in touch with the people who matter to you. This can be especially challenging when it’s so easy to lose track of time, but with Popple you’ll never fall out of touch or forget important events.
Popple requires iOS 12.0 or later and is compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
TheiPhoneAppReview’s rating:
Source link:https://www.theiphoneappreview.com/popple-iphone-app-review/
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Wakeout! is Apple’s App of the Year 2020
December 06, 2020 by RSS Feed
Reviewed by Jimbo
We’ve all had our spurts of trying to be good to our health, be that regarding our diet, exercise, mental state or any combination of the three. Plus, we’ve all seen our best intentions fade over time, much to our chagrin.
Is there any hope?
Wakeout! is an incredibly well designed app that assists us just enough to be totally useful in encouraging us to achieve our goals.
Concept and Functionality:
Staying fit is pretty important when it comes to being healthy and doing things you love. This is especially true if you’re working at home. Wakeout!, from Andres Canella, helps you keep on track and feel good about doing it.
Ease of use is key if you’re going to stay with it, and Wakeout! won’t slow you down.
In a true testament to Wakeout!’s overall high quality and effective UI design, all options and features are easy to find, and the layout is visually beautiful. No wonder this app is at the top of the list.
While playing around with Wakeout! I noticed that I was enjoying using it and a big part of that is that it’s designed for easy viewing.
Features:
A showcase feature of Wakeout! is the ability to initiate “Quick Breaks” that encompass 4 movements and take just a minute. Sweet.
Wakeout! iPhone App
Perhaps one of my favorite things about Wakeout! is that the app is not only so easy to use, but the way it breaks down staying fit you know that you can do it. There’s no major mountain climbing effort, just little things that you can easily do.
For most of us staying fit is hard, we get lazy, we get distracted, we do anything but what we know we should be doing.
The creators of this app are psychology masters, they make it as easy as possible for anyone to start on the road to building positive, even life changing, habits.
Value:
Wakeout! is available to download from the App Store for free and, as I mentioned above, you can choose to stick with the free version or select an IAP for additional features.
When it comes to using Wakeout! as a free app, you can’t go wrong with so much that it has to offer.
I definitely recommend downloading it to see if it can help you begin forming positive habits that will stay with you long after Covid is in the rearview mirror.
Wakeout! requires iOS 13.0 or later and is compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
TheiPhoneAppReview’s rating:
Source link:https://www.theiphoneappreview.com/wakeout-is-apples-app-of-the-year-2020/
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Guardian Chronicle Review
November 27, 2020 by RSS Feed
If deck-builders like Hearthstone and Magic: The Gathering leave you cold, you’ll be glad to know that there are simpler and more accessible ways of building a deck than the traditional CCG or RPG routes.
Guardian Chronicle takes the core deck-building concept - acquiring units with different abilities and using them to create balanced teams - and applies it to the gloriously arcadey tower defense genre.
There are plenty of units - or Guardians - to collect and level-up, plenty of tiers and types to manage, plenty of busywork to do between rounds. But the combat itself is unusually fast, frenetic, and addictive.
It works like this: you’ve got a camp to defend, at the end of a long, snaking trench. Monsters march along this trench in waves, with bosses thrown in too, and you need to hold them back for as long as you can - or at least, longer than the other guy.
The battlefield is divided up into segments, into which you can drag your Guardians whenever you’ve got enough Lanic - the game’s energy system - to deploy them. For every monster you kill you earn a bit more Lanic, meaning you’ll always be able to get Guardians onto the battlefield as long as you’re killing monsters.
Guardians appear randomly in a line across the bottom of the screen, and the one at the front is the one you deploy.
Whenever you have two Guardians of the same kind and level on the screen, meanwhile, you can fuse them together - but instead of becoming a higher tier version of the same Guardian, they become a tiered up version of the next Guardian in line.
This obviously has major tactical implications, since different Guardians do different jobs and, if you’ve been playing properly, they’re where they are for a reason.
You soon learn that it’s not always best to go for the tier upgrade straight away - though fusing Guardians also lets you change the composition of your defensive array in useful ways sometimes, such as when a boss is heading towards a weak section of your defenses.
Guardians come in four different types - defensive, attacking, support, and growth - and there are dozens to collect. You can have five in each deck, plus your Master, and five decks in total, giving you plenty of scope to build decks for every conceivable situation.
The Good
Guardians Chronicle is more accessible than most deck-builders, and that’s straightforwardly a good thing as far as we’re concerned. While all the usual genre components are there, such as summoning, claiming rewards, earning achievements, completing quests, levelling characters up with gold, and so on, the main event is the short, sharp tower defense rounds.
Each match tends to be fairly close, too, giving you plenty of motivation to drop back into the lobby after a defeat, level-up everything that you can, see what rewards you’ve got waiting for you in your inbox, tweak your deck, and jump back in for another try.
Guardian Chronicle isn’t basic by any means, but it leaves you to discover its depths at your own pace, as you poke around looking for ways to tip the scales in your favor.
By the time you find yourself memorizing the relative merits of Aqualop versus Icing, you’re ready - and you got there at your own pace.
As such, this would be a great gateway game to the card-battling world.
The Bad
Like countless smartphone strategy games before it, Guardian Chronicles suffers from limited screen real-estate. However spindly your fingers, and however keen your eyesight, it’s tough to keep track of the Guardians you have in the field when the action starts to heat up.
In desperation, we frequently resorted to just holding a finger down on a Guardian to see whether a fusible counterpart would light up, which undermines any illusions we had about our tactical supremacy.
The lack of single-player is also a downer. While we were always able to find a game in both Competitive and Co-op modes, if you can’t get online you can’t play the game. It’s hard to see how that’s a good thing.
The Verdict
Guardian Chronicle is a promising prospect if you’re a tower defense fan, or a relatively casual strategy gamer on the lookout for a fresh take on the genre.
There’s a nice, brisk rhythm to Guardian Chronicle’s gameplay, and it can be very difficult to put down when you know you’re just an upgrade or a reshuffle away from victory.
It might not appeal to die-hard fans of Hearthstone and Magic: The Gathering, but if you’ve never seen yourself as a deck-building enthusiast this could be the game that proves you wrong.
There are four classes in Guardian Chronicle - defense, support, attack, and growth - all with different specialties. Attacking guardians are powerful but rare, so defense guardians will make up the bulk of your fighting force. Support and growth guardians help the other types, with growth generating Lanic to help you deploy more guardians.
To thrive you’ll not only need to position your guardians with care during battle, for instance placing units that slow enemies down near their spawn points, followed by attack or defence guardians, but you’ll also need a solid, well-balanced deck.
Each deck has five slots, and you can have up to five decks saved. Guardians, meanwhile, come to you through summoning and opening chests. You’ll get gems, gold, summoning tickets, and more by completing quests, bagging achievements, and so on.
The other way to get gold is by playing rounds, and you can spend this on upgrading your guardians and your masters.
The routine of alternating between tower defense rounds and doing the all-important reward-claiming busywork and managing your deck gives Guardian Chronicle an enjoyable rhythm, and rounds are so quick that it’s difficult to resist jumping in for another go.
There are some minor niggles, such as the small size of the units on the screen, which can make it difficult to work out what’s happening when the battle heats up. We frequently found ourselves holding a finger down on guardians just to see whether a matchable guardian was available as a glowing beacon, as it wasn’t easy to tell at a glance.
And the lack of a single-player option leaves you at the mercy of the servers whenever you want a game. We never encountered any problems finding a partner or an opponent, but if you find yourself offline for any reason you’re stuck.
But that’s not a deal-breaker. As long as you’re online, it’s hard to be disappointed with Guardian Chronicle. It’s free, fun, intuitive, addictive, and deep enough that it’ll quietly keep you busy for a long time.
8.3
OVERALL
Replayability 8.5
Game Controls 8.1
Sound/Music 8.3
Gameplay 8.7
Graphics 7.9
Guardian Chronicle
LINE Games
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Visit Surreal Dreamscapes in Ruya, a Charming Puzzle Game
November 22, 2020 by RSS Feed
Ruya ($0.99) by Miracle Tea Studios is a tranquil puzzle game that is perfect to unwind with after a long day. If you enjoyed recent titles like ERMO, Campfire Cooking, and PUSH, then you will love what Ruya has to offer.
I tend to think of myself as a person who gets worried and stressed out over almost anything, so you can only imagine how hectic life can be. When I'm feeling overwhelmed, I like to just sit down and play some video games. My preferred cup of tea for iOS games are puzzles, of course, because they're relaxing and stimulating. So when I saw Ruya, I knew that this was something I had to have. Needless to say, this one does not disappoint.
ERMO
Giuseppe La Torre
Campfire Cooking
Layton Hawkes
"PUSH"
Maciej Targoni
Visually, Ruya is beautiful with a simple and clean design. Everything is rendered in 2D, but the artwork seems to pop thanks to the subtle backgrounds. The setting of Ruya takes place in a world of dreams, so you get to see a variety of surreal landscapes. The color palette in Ruya ranges with a nice mix of soft pastels and bolder hues that provide nice contrast with the darker background shades. The ambient soundtrack is packed with tranquil nature sounds, such as rainfall, snow, and wind, so it's the ultimate atmospheric experience. The sound effects as you connect the pieces together are also soothing.
Like many other puzzle games, Ruya is level-based. There are eight chapters, with eight levels each. In the beginning of each level, you get to see a memory of Ruya's, so a story unfolds as you make progress.
Each puzzle must be completed before players can move on to the next one, so it's fairly linear. There are no hints either, but the game does not require any, as the entire experience is designed to help you relax.
The game does not have a star system, points, or even impose a time limit, so you can play at your own pace. The only restriction are the number of moves you're allotted per stage, but even this is not a big deal. The puzzles can get challenging, but they can all be solved within a few attempts.
So how do you play? Every stage features a different layout on the grid, and there will be some colored pieces to start with. If a piece is in a bubble, that means it takes two matches to clear it out, and the bubble nets you some extra moves, which can be rather helpful. At the bottom are colored characters to match with the game pieces on the board. A number on them indicates the amount of colored pieces you need to complete the puzzle.
At the top, Ruya appears and can add more colored pieces to the board if needed — just tap on an empty space for her to add a piece (this doesn't count as a move). There's also a specific pattern shown that you need to match when you connect like-colored pieces together for it to count. To connect the pieces together, just use your finger to trace a line through the pieces you want to use.
If the board fills up and there are no possible moves left, you lose a move and the board gets reshuffled. More moves are added if you pop the bubbles that pieces are in, and those don't count until they're popped, adding to the challenge.
Ruya is a fantastic gem of a puzzle game for those seeking a zen-like experience.
The Good
Ruya is a fantastic gem of a puzzle game for those seeking a zen-like experience. The game features adorable and endearing graphics that are colorful and appealing. The sound design is well done, adding an extra layer to the overall mood of the game. I love the dreamscapes that the game features, because it definitely helps me de-stress after a long day. While the gameplay is not completely original, the developers added enough differences in it to make it unique and distinctive from the competition.
The puzzles in Ruya go from simple to a bit more difficult at a gradual pace. However, every stage can be completed after a few tries, so it's never overwhelmingly difficult. This is a game that everyone can enjoy, and it's a wonderful way to just kick back and relax.
The Bad
While Ruya is an excellent game, it may not be challenging enough for those seeking something more stimulating. If that's what you're after, then you should probably look elsewhere. But if you just want a game to take your mind off of things for a bit, then this is perfect.
The verdict
I've only started playing Ruya this morning, but I fell in love immediately. The game's cute visuals are bound to melt your heart, and the music is delightful. Controls are intuitive, and the game does a good job of explaining how to play with the subtle tutorial in the beginning. Discovering Ruya's memories is a pleasant journey, and nothing feels overwhelming. The only thing that could improve this game is more levels in the future, so hopefully the developers have considered that. This is a game that I'm going to keep coming back to time and time again until it's finished.
I highly recommend grabbing Ruya if you're a fan of peaceful puzzle games. You can find Ruya on the App Store as a universal download for your iPhone and iPad for just $0.99. There are no in-app purchases.
9.1
OVERALL
Graphics 10
Sound/Music 10
Game Controls 9
Replayability 8
Gameplay 8.5
Ruya
Miracle Tea Studios
Source link: http://appadvice.com/reviews
credit : appadvice
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