Android App Review - Diversion

At first glance you'd be forgiven for immediately dismissing Diversion as a poor game. Ezone.com's free app has very silly and camp graphics and looks like a simple run and jump clone, however there's more about this game than meets the eye. If you can ignore the crazy colours and costumes, then there's a rather addictive puzzle game for you to get engaged with here. Although the format is repetitive, running and jumping to the end of a course of platforms, with the odd mini boss thrown in for good luck, Ezone.com include enough variation and challenges to keep things interesting. For example, some levels require your character to swim, use zip lines, fly, climb and teleport across the 3D environment. Yes the characters and costumes look ridiculous, but it's relatively easy to find something for your character to wear that isn't too embarrassing. 

Also, with over 100 levels for a free download it's definitely value for money.

Good:

Free

Hundreds of levels

Creative and challenging

Bad:

Terrible character design and costumes

Some people will find it repetitive

Large 16mb download, but installs onto the SD

Via: Android Market

Mobile games dominate app stores

We knew this all already, but here's further evidence from Nielsen that mobile games dominate the app space. Users are more likely to download a game app over any other and are also more likely to pay for them.

Source: Mashable

Google add killer "Download Map Area" feature to Maps on Android

What's the most frustrating thing about having maps and GPS on your smartphone? Not being able to use them in places where you need maps most, such as when you're on holiday, because you don't have a data connection. Well, Google's killer new Download Map Area feature for Android now means that you can use maps offline in future, with a little forward planning of course.

Google update - Google Maps 5.7 - allows you to pre-download and save maps onto your Android phone. When you have a data connection, just browse to the area that you want to visit and then click on more. Within that menu you now have the option to download that map, within up to a 10 mile radius. For now, it's just the basic map and remember that you won't have a data connection when you visit the location, but it's a really useful feature.

Source: Google 

LG Optimus Pad 3D Android tablet available at Best Buy, for a price

LG Optimus Pad 3D is now available at Best Buy, according to the UK version of their website, but for an eye watering £749.99. LG's flavour of Android Honeycomb has appealed to me ever since reading about the T-Mobile G-Slate. Throw in the power of a 3D gimmick and I was hooked. However, with Samsung's excellent Galaxy Tab 10.1 set to retail at around £250 less it's now hard to justify spending that much money on a tablet that I'll need to wear glasses to use.

UK mobile app market worth £280m in 2010

Mobile stats specialists Research2Guideance have released figures that the UK app market was worth £280m in 2010. Here are the headline figures.

• The UK accounts for around 8% of the global app market
• 860m apps were downloaded in the UK in 2010
• Free apps accounted for 757m of the total, around 88%
• Paid apps accounted for 105m of the total, around 12% 

Unfortunately, you don't get the full report unless you're able to pay them a heap of money, so I don't have any more detail. However, one interesting additional piece of information that they tease you with is that females are adopting smartphones at a faster rate than men in the UK now. Research2Guideance claim that the number of women who own smartphones will be equal to that of men by the end of 2011.
Source: Research2Guideance

My next Android phone will be 3D

I follow technology religiously, but even I find it amazing to think that the next Android device that I own will be a 3D device. When Docomo released the first Android 3D smartphone back at the end of last year, it received little attention from anyone except for Darth Vader. You heart was telling you that 3D mobile devices were on their way, but your head kept saying not to get too excited about seeing one in Europe anytime soon. HTC have changed all of that with the announcement of their beautiful EVO 3D smartphone. There's currently only a summer US release date confirmed for the device, but it's bound to show up in the UK towards the end of the year, probably under the Desire HD name.

Popcap survey reveals smartphone owners are avid gamers

PopCap games, the Seattle based developer of infuriatingly addictive games like Peggle and Bejweled, have published survey results which demonstrate just how much impact smartphones are having on how consumers game. In a nutshell, if you have a smartphone you're a downloading and playing a lot of game apps. Here are some interesting observations that I pulled from Popcap's survey.

Smartphone owners are avid gamers
The Popcap survey revealed that 84% of mobile phone gamers who own a smartphone have played a game in the last week, which apparently qualifies you as an avid gamer. Smartphone owners also admitted to playing more games than last year, with 63% having increased their gaming in 2010. In fact, 68% of smartphone owners claimed that gaming was now part of their daily lives.


Consoles are no longer the gaming platform of choice
Some scary results for Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft here. When asked which gaming device they play games on most often, 44% of those surveyed said their phones, compared with 21% for consoles and 30% for computers. Smartphone owners were even more likely to pick up their iOS or Android device to game than their consoles, with 55% of them playing games on their phones as a first preference.

Personally, I think that the results for consoles should be tempered by two points. Firstly, the survey only included mobile gamers, so they of course would be more likely to play games on their phones as a first choice. Secondly, I'd like to have more information on the amount of time people where spending on gaming on their phones. Instinctively, feel that smartphone gaming is still all about short bursts of entertainment where console gamers will spend many more hours on these devices, playing much deeper and challenging games, with friends online. I can't imagine that we're all going to throw out our consoles anytime soon.

Smartphone owners are converting from free to paid
As an app publisher, I was excited by the news that smartphone owners are converting from free apps to paid content. In total, 49% of smartphone gamers said that they'd upgraded a free trial game to the full paid version in the last year. In addition, 34% of smartphone gamers said that they had paid for additional content for an originally free game in the past year.

For any developer or publisher considering a freemium model for their app these results are especially encouraging. You would expect freemium to paid content conversion to be a lot higher for games, but 34% is more than I expected.  

Sources: Popcap Survey PDF & Popcap Survey press release