Review TechRadar: Phone and communications news 11-17-2013

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Roundup: If you loved Sim City then you'll love these great iOS sims Nov 17th 2013, 14:00, by Alan Stonebridge So many games involve death and destruction that SimCity remains as much of a breath of fresh air today as it was in 1989, with the opportunity to lay the foundations of a town and nurture it to city status still captivating and time-absorbing. Yet even as you deal with the self-inflicted fallout of misguided decisions, the learning experience is hugely satisfying. It's no wonder that there was such a clamour for the recently released fifth major installment of the series - even though it introduced some significant changes to the formula. SimCity Deluxe (69p, iPhone; £4.99, iPad) is closer to the classic versions, though. Sadly, it lacks cloud-based syncing of cities, so you can't carry on a game between devices. Landscaping tools are omitted and the terrain is completely flat, which limits the opportunity to give your city a unique feel. Otherwise, a satisfying amount of complexity is retained from other versions. That includes three levels of density for residential, commercial and industrial zones, a variety of ordinances to generate income, and 10 types of disaster looming to lay waste to your hard work. Thankfully, placing power lines and water pipes for your Sims can be set to automatically occur, eliminating one of the game's more fiddly aspects. Positioning things on the landscape is achieved with an anchor point, which is dragged to put things exactly where you want them - and many other city-builders for iOS have replicated this technique. Megapolis HD (Free, Universal) shuns the zoning approach and expects buildings to be individually constructed. The city limits are heavily restricted at first; expansion is achieved by taking on quests that grow the population. Some goals seem natural, but some, such as placing a Japanese house and sakura trees, don't inspire a sense of freedom to create the city of your dreams. Taxes aren't automatically collected like in SimCity; you must tap buildings to do it, which resets a countdown timer to the next time money can be collected. This fills in time, but it isn't fulfilling. Many other city builders for iOS employ this approach, too. Constructing a building is a complex process because parts have to be acquired. A sports centre, say, requires iron beams, concrete blocks and fitness equipment. One method is to ask neighbouring cities - computer-controlled or real online players - to gift them. The favour can be returned to help their city. If parts are unavailable, you can fall back on trusty megabucks: they're quickly acquired by spending real money on In-App Purchases. If you want your Megapolis to have some real pizzazz and identity, you can purchase real-world buildings as IAPs, but be careful: some single-building landmarks range in price between £13.99 and £69.99. If your kids might play, be absolutely sure you've locked out the ability to buy IAPs! City Story Metro (Free, Universal) is another goal-driven take on the genre. Its music is brighter and breezier than SimCity's groove, and it's the most cartoonish of these alternatives. City Story's goals make sense when it comes to developing infrastructure. Upon building a particular business, contracts can be taken out for it to supply things into the economy. As time passes, units of power are generated and income is reaped from inhabitants. Fulfilment of contracts can be sped up by spending purple gems. Items that can be added to your city are obnoxiously weighted towards making an In-App Purchase. The two most basic house types can be added using the in-game currency, but they take hours to generate more income. The next house type generates income every few minutes, but it requires purple gems - City Story's version of Megapolis's megabucks - to purchase it at all. Expansion of the city is tightly managed. Only a certain number of industrial buildings can be added until the population reaches a threshold. To offer constant city re-development, buildings aren't fixed in place, but can be dragged to new plots. Your chance to play as Caesar comes in The Settlers (£2.99, iPhone; £2.99 iPad). A free version is available as a taster, and it's more palatable than most thanks to the absence of IAP. The Virtual City series leans more towards detailed infrastructure planning and resource harvesting, lending it a shade of old PC favourites such as Transport Tycoon, though erecting buildings is part of it as well. It's more heavily structured by its level-based approach: after completing one, you'll often find yourself transplanted to another one to help raise its economic game. Growth is achieved by establishing production chains. Once key buildings - such as a mill and a bakery - are in place, you buy trucks and assign routes for them to carry resources along the chain. There's also housing and public transport to consider, and refuse to clear, so a city isn't inundated with waste. Virtual City (iPad, £2.99) is available in this full version, or in a free version, with a few levels as a taster, and the full game unlocked through IAP. This game includes a sandbox mode, but that's developed on in Virtual City Playground HD (Free, iPad). It takes place on one landscape, and while it's more of a sandbox overall, the city limits are restricted at the start; goals have to be followed in order to raise capital to expand them. EA makes another city-building game for iOS besides SimCity. The backstory behind The Simpsons: Tapped Out (Free, Universal) involves an explosion at the nuclear power plant, leaving Homer to recreate Springfield. With successful missions, he discovers fellow cast members and their respective businesses. A social element introduces a multiverse of different Springfields run by other players, which you can visit to take limited amounts of income from them daily. Characters can be assigned tasks to earn cash derived from their personality (Homer can lounge in the pool, or Lisa play the sax), though they take real time (in some cases, hours) to complete. Notification Center is used to tell you when a character is free to take new orders. Things can be hurried along by spending donuts, which are quickly acquired through not-so-delicious IAP. However, fondness for the characters is encouragement to play the slow game. The Wizard of Oz Game (Free, Universal) roughly follows the film's narrative, and reuses imagery and audio from it. Starting out in Munchkinland, you're tasked with growing the population to help you build the Yellow Brick Road so you can meet the Wiz and get Dorothy back to Kansas. Tap Paradise Cove (Free, Universal) has a tropical island for a setting. Placing buildings isn't as simple as choosing where to erect them. You have to harvest the resources for construction. Yes, you'll holler 'IAP ahoy!', but there's action to be had too, in which you build ships to protect your bounty from nasty pirates. Finally, for a burst of nostalgia, hardcore Sim fans might enjoy Yoot Tower (£5.49, iPad), where you're charged with growing a skyscraper packed with offices, condos, hotel rooms and more, ensuring people have everything they need. Now check out 80 best free iPad apps 2013 Galaxy Gear's 'real' notifications boost may actually make it useful Nov 16th 2013, 15:17, by Chris Smith The Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch has endured a rough time of it since its launch this autumn, after failing to sell smartphone users, or anyone else for that matter, on the real benefits of strapping one on. Now there is hope, as an update to the Gear Manager app gives the device a shot making some headway, by bringing real notifications from any Android app, directly to the screen. Prior to the update, users would only see they had a notification so would have to whip out their phone anyway. Now now they'll see the full content of Facebook alerts, WhatsApp messages and everything else. Thanks to v1.5.111304 of the Gear Manager app, owners will handily be able to select which apps send notifications to the watch and which don't. Progress. More appealing or less appalling? To grab the update, Gear users should head to the Gear Manager app on their compatible Samsung smartphone and download the latest version from the Samsung App Store. Does this, all of a sudden, make the Galaxy Gear a more appealing prospect for you? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below. Maybe now people will stop returning them to the stores in droves? What was he in again? Google Play Movies brings info cards to the UK Nov 16th 2013, 14:05, by Chris Smith Google has rolled out an update for its UK Play Movies app for Android, introducing the handy information cards that rolled out in the US earlier this year. The feature allows users to pause the video and view information about the actors currently on screen, the related movies and TV shows, as well as information about the soundtrack (sorry Shazam). Users can tap on the lovely actors' faces to see their filmographies, age, birthplace and the other associated items available from the Google Play store. The feature is similar to the Amazon X-Ray for the Kindle Fire and saves a trip to IMDb when trying to answer the age old 'what else has she been in?' question. More Jack Black information "Next time you're watching a movie on Google Play you can find out that it's Jack Black, who was born in Hermosa Beach, California and is 44 years old," the company wrote on the Google UK Google+ page. "In the UK, we've added info cards to the Google Play Movies & TV app so you can easily learn more about the actors, related films and even what song is playing in many of your favourite movies." You think that's cool? Well Amazon does it with books too! In Depth: 10 ways to improve Google Now Nov 15th 2013, 13:00, by Thomas Thorn Smartphones are now the central hub for our entire lives, but as they become ever more complex we could do with a helping hand from time to time. Meet the digital personal assistants, which are quickly becoming an integral part of our smartphone's interface and something we're slowly getting more dependant upon. Ask anyone about digital PA's and they'll probably be able to name Siri. Apple's assistant is the most well known, but currently suffers when it comes to providing real time data without external requests. This is where Google Now succeeds in its ability to provide contextual information. Unfortunately for Google, the purchase of the crowd-funded app Cue will mean that Siri is about to get a lot smarter. As Cue pulls in data from contacts, Twitter, Facebook and Gmail, it will give Apple a lot of information to make Siri even more powerful than Google Now. Google Now is going to be given a much greater run for its money, so it needs to up its game. Here's how it needs to go about it. 1. Make use of our multi-device lifestyle Google Now is already available on iOS and Android, and will soon be built into the desktop via Google Chrome. Google will then take this one step further, with the advent of wearable tech. Now is already partially baked into Google Glass, and could well come as part of any upcoming smartwatch from the search giant. If Google decides that it is only going to put this functionality into its own smartwatch, it could well be missing a trick. We suggested in our piece on what Google needs to do when it builds a smartwatch, that it needs support for more than just in house technology. We'd like to see it built into others, like the Sony Smartwatch 2 or Galaxy Gear. 2. Use our alarms and location reminders better Taking the smartwatch idea one step further, Google could easily make this data far more relevant by using our alarms and reminders a little better. The traditional alarm clock has now been replaced by alarms on smartphones, and generally at least five out of seven of those are for work. By noticing this, Google Now could see that we are getting up at the same time and going to the same place, even if we only go somewhere once a week. Imagine the scenario that Now has noticed you wake up at 7am each day, leave at 7:30am and travel to work for 9; it could let you know how long it will take to get there, whether you're going to be on time, and if you'll need a coat on the way. A pre-set could be built in to let Now know that it is okay to wake you up early if your journey is going to take longer than expected, even with a time frame. 'Set alarm for 7am but wake me up between 6am and 7am should I need extra,' for example. Incorporating notifications from third party sources like National Rail would only further boost this functionality. We've all been late for work at some point due to rail issues. Google Now is already half way there, with the ability to show you the next train home, or your driving route with traffic updates - it just needs to be fine tuned. 3. Add support for third party email addresses At the moment, Google Now can only pull data out of Google's proprietary email system. Don't have a dedicated Gmail account? You can completely forget Gmail cards. This is a crying shame, as many people still prefer to use other email accounts. If Google could enable it so that it pulled the same data out of a Hotmail or Yahoo account that it does from a Gmail account, it would be relevant for so many more users. Many people have already signed up to Google services, signing into Gmail or Google docs with a third party email address, yet Now doesn't accommodate. This could well only be a temporary thing, as the Google Now page says "Gmail cards are currently not available when using Google Now with a Google Apps account." We hope that this means that Now will soon be integrated deeper. 11 ways Apple and Google can save the smartwatch 4. Learn favourite restaurants We all have preferred restaurants, and we have all been to unfamiliar cities. Using Google Now's tie in with location services, it could easily suggest nearby restaurants when you're in a new place. Imagine how useful it would be if Google Now could say "you're in a new place, and it's nearly dinner time, here's the nearest outlet of your favourite diner". The downside of this is that this will prove annoying if you'd been to that place very recently. This is a problem easily rectified; we would happily offer up more information through check ins. The obvious route for Google is to use its own social networking site, Google+. In the long run, this may prove useful as Google+ looks to become an increasing part of our lives, at least if the guys at Mountain View get their way. However, a much better solution is to pull in data from Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare. 5. Notify us of any deals, discounts or offers We've all received marketing emails that let us know that we can get 10% off here, or buy one get one free there, but we forget these. Google already sorts deals via Gmail into a Promotions inbox and this helps to some extent, but we still forget they exist on mobile as the promotions inbox isn't brought to the fore. Packing in functionality that lets us know we've received these emails, as well as letting us choose to totally dismiss or remind us near the end date would gain Google many brownie points. We wouldn't stop there, Google Now should go one step further. It could use location data to warn us at certain times when we're in town that we have offers for a nearby restaurant. We don't want to find out that we've eaten elsewhere when there is an offer on in the restaurant next door. Google at 15: from the garage to Glass 6. Create downloadable packs One of the major downsides to Google Now is its desire to be connected to the internet to get all the data it needs. This could be solved with the creation of downloadable packs of information. Google Maps can already be cached, but this is a very awkward process that requires typing "OK maps" into the relevant map. Apps like Here Maps work a lot better. With Google's very impressive mapping system behind it, Now needs to take this further. It should learn when and where you're going from your emails. Book a trip to Paris and Google will know that you're gone for a weekend, suggesting downloading a pack containing language translation, currency conversion, public transport timetables and locations, maps and local points of interests. As Google Now will know that you're only there for a weekend, it could then remind you to download this the day before you go, and then automatically remove, or suggest deletion of the data the day after you get home. On devices without microSD, or limited internal storage, this is vital. 7. Tell us when Google learns something Google Now has some pretty awesome features, things like being able to let you know when you need to leave for a restaurant to make your reservation on time, or let you know when your package has been dispatched. Unfortunately, it is not always clear as to whether Google is following what you want it to. We like Google telling us when packages have been dispatched, but we'd also like Google to let us know that it is tracking it from the very beginning. Google should tell us it knows when we are going to dinner, so we can rely on it to warn us when the time is right. Through deeper functionality by tying in with the likes of Amazon, Ebay, or courier services, Google could let you know from the time that you receive order confirmation that it's following your package. Surely it can't be long before a lot of parcels are being transported with emails as identifiers, so the likes of UPS and Royal Mail can email you letting you know when they have a package that is destined for you, and where it is. The added bonus of this is that it makes Google Now's functionality a lot more transparent. In a world where privacy concerns are prevalent, knowing when Now learns something will ease many concerns. Cortana: everything you need to know about Microsoft's Siri rival 8. Go global, properly There could be a reason that a lot of Google Now's features haven't made it to different territories, costs and licenses being two of the biggest that we can foresee. Regardless, this is really frustrating for those left out. Users are now very aware of what is available in other territories, and it is one of the largest causes of piracy. Why should we wait for the latest film when it is already available elsewhere? Knowing that the US gets things like boarding pass integration, or location reminders is highly frustrating. Maybe there isn't a disaster warning system in place in the UK, as there is in the US, but it's something that could easily be implemented by Google themselves. If Google is to beat Siri, it needs to show that it is responding to the desire for global availability. Locking features to US only, such as Google Now's voice search, leads both to frustration and use of competitors. 9. Know when I need to go to the shops This ties in rather heavily with the point we made above. Location reminders are something that are available in the US Google Now app, but something missing outside the US. If location services became a global feature, it could then tie in with the data that we put into apps such as Google Keep. Keep is a great way if taking small notes, and we use it a lot for taking down shopping lists. Google Now should notice that we'd written bread and milk into Keep, or work out that because we'd called the note "Shopping List" that we need to pop to the nearest supermarket. Couple the shopping list with location, and Google can remind us when we're near so we never have to forget again. What else can we expect from future smartphones? 10. Allow others to remind us Google Now should allow collaboration between trusted users and ourselves, in order to create a more relevant experience. The text to 'take the bins out' from the other half can now become even more contextual. We'd suggest that this is done through the calendar, email or texts. Google Hangouts now also incorporates SMS, so why not take it from there as well? Preset templates with customisable text fields could make things easier, but Google Now could easily see a text or email that says "Can you please take the bins out when you get home? Xx" and recognise that it should send you that reminder when you get home. Lovefilm streaming comes to iPhone and iPod touch at last Nov 15th 2013, 10:06, by Kate Solomon The iPhone and iPod touch now have a Lovefilm app that can actually stream films and TV shows. Until today, Amazon's Lovefilm subscribers could only peruse the full catalogue and manage their physical disc rental lists on the smaller Apple devices, although you could stream films through the iPad app. But now you can fire up the new Lovefilm Instant app on an iPhone and gobble up such exclusive blockbusters as The Green Lantern, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 2 on your way to work. AirPlane! The app also comes with AirPlay support, so if you're all Apple'd up at home you can stream a film through your phone and watch it on Apple TV. There's also the option to minimise the app while AirPlay streaming so you can Google the characters and make pithy comments on Twitter while you watch, without interrupting the film. The new Lovefilm Instant app is available in the Apple App Store from today - it won't cost you anything to download, but you'll need to be signed up to Lovefilm Instant to make use of it (£6 a month). We've pitted Lovefilm vs Netflix in a fight to the death

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