Convertbot Forum Review by msbaylor. (Visit the thread for video and more pics. For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum!)

ConvertBot is by Tapbots – the developers of WeightBot and for those of you that love the way the application operates, this one will not let you down.

This is probably the sleekest conversion application I have seen with its cool animations and sounds. However, the only issues I ran into – it takes longer than I thought the program should take to load. At first I believed that it was the app itself checking an Internet connection to update the currency conversions, but when I put my iPhone in Airplane mode, it took just as long. But it is a good thing to note that even though the currencies could not update, the program is still usable.

The sleek interface is what really makes this app so nice. This has to be the coolest working Conversion app for the iPhone. The “wheel” that takes up the main part of the screen can be rotated to set the conversion type:

• Angles: Degree, Radian, & Grad
• Area: Square Meter, Square Centimeter, Square Millimeter, Square Mile, Acre, Square Kilometer, Square Yard, Square Foot, Square Inch
• Currency: Australian Dollar, Brazilian Real, Canadian Dollar, Swiss Franc, Danish Krone, Euro, Pound Sterling (UK), Japanese Yen, Mexican Peso, Swedish Krona, US Dollar
• Length: Foot, Meter, Inch, Centimeter, Mile, Kilometer, Nautical Mile, Yard, Millimeter, Foot+Inch
• Mass: Milligram, Kilogram, Pound, Ounce, Gram, Stone, Stone+Pound, Metric Ton, Pound+Ounce
• Power: Watt, Horsepower, Kilowatt, BTU/Minute, Foot-Pound/Minute, Foot-Pound/Second
• Pressure: Pound/Square Inch, Centimeters of Mercury, Inches of Mercury, Kilogram/Square Meter, Pascal, Atmospheres, Bars, Pounds/Square Foot
• Speed: Miles/Hour, Kilometers/Hour, Knots, Miles/Second, Miles/Minute, Feet/Minute, Feet/Second, Kilometers/Minutes
• Temperature: Celsius, Kelvin, Fahrenheit
• Time: Second, Millisecond, Microsecond, Nanoseconds, Year, Week, Day, Hour, Minute, Hour + Minute
• Volume: Cup, Teaspoon, Tablespoon, Cubic Feet, Gallon (UK), Quart, Pint, Ounce, Cubic Meter, Gallon (US), Liter, Milliliter, Cubic Centimeter
• Work (Energy): Kilogram Calorie, Foot Pound, Newton Meter, Joule, BTU, Erg, Watt Hour, Calorie

Once you have rotated the wheel to the type/category, then you tap on the bottom left button and you use the “wheel” to select the specific conversion unit, take the center blue button, “ok” and it locks that unit in. This unit is the unit you are converting from. The other black button is the unit you want to convert to. You repeat the same process of locking in the unit.

By tapping on the top “number screen,” this opens up a keypad so that you can type in the amount you are converting from. The application has a live update, in which the app auto converts as you type the number into the app. Tapping on the “number screen” again brings back the conversion “wheel”

You can tap on the center wheel to switch the units if you need to.

By tapping on the “i” icon you can view the Settings which allows you to turn the sound on or off as well as the choice of viewing the Demo (which is quite a nice feature in the app).

Issues:

• Would like to have the “wheel” spin more smoothly, rather than “clicking” into place.
• Not as common currencies are not available in the app. (exe.: Argentinian Pesos or Chilean Peso)

Pros:

• Sleek Interface
• Sounds & animation to go with each “screen” or tap
• Complex conversions

Cons:

• Takes quite long to update currencies at app start up (quicker in airplane mode, due to currencies not updating)
• “Wheel” ‘clicks’ into place rather than smoothly rolling.
• Uncommon currencies not available

TiPb Review Rating

[Convertbot is available for $0.99 from the iTunes App Store.]

Flight Control Forum Review by cjvitek For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum Review Index!

Ever want to be a flight controller? The most stressful job (so I hear) ever? Well, if you want the fun, but don’t want the stress, Flight Control is the game for you.

With Flight Control, you play a flight controller who needs to guide planes in for a safe landing. You have two runways (red and yellow) and one helicopter pad (blue). As planes fly in, they are either red or yellow, indicating which runway they need to land on (helicopters can only land on the pad). Your job is to guide the planes to the appropriate runway while avoiding in-air collisions.

Sounds easy, right? Sure it is…when there are only one or two planes coming in at a time. But as time progresses, more and more planes enter the playing field, increasing the risk of close calls and collisions.

The process of guiding a plane is very simple. Simply tap the plane, and slide you finger along the path you want the plane to take. As you are creating the path, it appears as a dotted line. When you lift you finger, the planes path is “set”, and it starts to follow it. Need to adjust a path? Just tap the plane and slide your finger to create a new path. Not sure you know where you want the plane to go? Draw it flying in circles or a big loop, and then come back to it later. Don’t forget about a plane though! If a plane finished it’s path and hasn’t landed, it just keeps flying straight (pilots are sort of dumb like that).

This game is really sort of cool, and there aren’t any other games out there like it. The controls are very easy, making good use of the touch screen. The game warns your of potential collisions and incoming aircraft (which are offscreen so you can’t see them). As with most games, I wish there were some sort of multiplayer or competitive option, but the game can get pretty hectic on it’s own. The game’s difficulty increases quickly – one or two planes on the screen is fine, but with 5 or 6 planes it can be very difficult to keep track of them all.

I would love to see some different “airport” options – different layouts of runways and helicopter pads, so you could choose which airport you wanted. This would also be a good way to allow different difficulty levels. But the included airport is fun. The stats page gives you a nice rundown of your performance, including your average score, the most planes on the screen at one time, you highest score, etc.

Pros:

• New game concept,
• easy game play

Cons:

• No multiple airports

Conclusion

All in all, this is a fun little game. It takes the iPhone and brings a new game concept to it (at least a concept I haven’t seen before). The game design is perfect for the iPhone. At $.99 (current grand opening sale) the game is a must try. The normal price is probably going to be $2.99, and even at that price it is worth it.

TiPb Forum Review Rating

[Flight Control is available via the iTunes App Store]

Pocket Tunes Radio Forum Review by cjvitek For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum!

Coming from a Palm Zire/Treo background, I am familiar with Pocket Tunes (or Ptunes) – the default media and streaming audio player that came with both my Zire 72 and my Treo 680. So when Pocket Tunes came out with a streaming audio player for the iPhone, I said sure, I will review it.

Just a quick note, Ptunes (as I will refer to it) does not actually play media files on the iPhone – that is the exclusive domain of the iPod aspect of the iPhone (don’t touch Steve’s dock!). But it does act as a streaming media player. Also, although I briefly used a few of the other streaming media players for the iPhone, I haven’t used them exclusively – so I won’t be comparing Ptunes to those, but instead looking at Ptunes by itself.

Ptunes starts you off with a genre list of streaming music – Country, Funk, Comedy, Metal, etc. When you choose a genre, you are then presented with a list of stations in that genre to choose from. In the 5 days that I have had this program, the station list has been updated twice, so I think they will update the list fairly frequently. One thing I liked is that they include a featured, aacplus, and hi speed network stations as categories. I do wish they included a few more – like sports talk, for example.

One problem I had was there was no description of the radio stations themselves. For some stations, it was obvious where they were from, but some stations just included the call letters, so you don’t know where it is broadcasting or in some cases, the content of the radio station. As I said, I wish they broke down the “other” or the “talk” categories more – maybe sports, news, politics, etc. Simply listing radio stations under talk doesn’t really tell you what kind of talk radio there is.

On the bottom of the screen, there is a tab for favorites – you can add favorites to this list, including stations that may not be listed. You can also use the “search” tab to search for radio stations. Unfortunately, the few general searches I tried (sports) did not reveal any result, but search for call letters or station names directly can yield hit or miss results.

You can also use the web tab to go to web stations directly. This is useful to go to a specific website for a station and add it directly to your favorite list. Also, the Ptunes website lists some search sites that are good places to start looking through the stations. The web browser can also be used for “normal” surfing while listening to the radio.

Lastly, the now playing screen shows you the current station that is playing. On that screen you can add the current station to your favorites, you can pause, fast forward, or rewind. It also tells you the current song/artist that is playing. You can use the iTunes button to search iTunes for the current artist/music. That is nice, because you can go directly to iTunes to purchase music or albums if you like.

This is a nice interface for streaming music. According to the website, Pocket Tunes will recognize a large variety of streaming audio formats, including MP3, AAC, WMA, and more. The sound quality was nice – I didn’t have any stuttering and hiss, nor was there any interuption of the station while I was listening. Of course much of this will depend on the radio station and the quality of their stream. I tried using a 3G connection, and the quality of the stream still was quite good, but using edge I had connection difficulties (mostly connection time itself and time to buffer the station).

Pros:

• Easy to use and add stations,
• remembers radio stations,
• easy to create a favorites list

Cons:

• Can not skin the player,
• a little expensive,
• some radio station descriptions could have more information

Conclusion

All in all, this is a nicely designed program, and the quality shows. Unfortunately, at $9.99, it is priced significantly more than other streaming audio programs (many of which are free). The interface, program quality, and sound quality may justify some of the cost, but I am not sure how many people will purchase the $10 app when there may be a similar option that is free (even if the sound quality is somewhat worse). Because of the high price point compared to other apps, I would rate this app as four out of five stars, but if you are willing to pay for the quality, it might be worth it to you (and the few other issues were minor).

Forum Review Rating

[Pocket Tunes Radio is available from the iTunes App Store.]

Guitar Rock Tour Forum Review by msbaylor. (Visit the thread for video and more pics. For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum!

In the game you play a “guitar” or a “drum set” along with songs. There are a total of 17 different songs, some of which are fairly recent, but also include songs such as “Smoke on the Water.” Each song can be played within three different difficulties and of course on each instrument.

Game/ Layout & Controls:

When loading the game, it takes about 20 seconds (as all gameloft games do.) Also it takes about 15 seconds to load after selecting a song. To reply the song there is little or no wait time. After the song though, in returning to the menus, you’ll have to do a bit of waiting.

In the game there are two modes – Quick Play & Tour. In quick play you choose your difficulty, instrument and a song to play. You can only play songs that have been unlocked in Tour mode. When beginning for the first time, the first three songs are already unlocked.

In Tour mode, you create a profile (up to 3,) you select an avatar and an instrument. Then you select a place on the world map to play at. You have to play 3-5 songs to continue to the next location. As you progress across the map, you will have to replay some of the songs that you have already beat, but from what I could tell, it seemed that the note pattern was different and a little more difficult, which in the end made it better instead of repetitive.

Whether you are playing in Tour or Quick mode, the guitar and drum layouts are the same. Firstly the guitar – the screen shot above shows the guitar layout. At the bottom, you have four fret-tap-areas, so as the correlating notes come to the bottom you tap them, usually in rhythm of the song or the strumming of the guitar in the song. If a colored note has a “wavy-line” coming out of it, it means you will have to “hold-the-note,” otherwise, it’s just a simple tap.

On the left –hand side of the screen, you have, as I like to call, your death-meter – the more notes you miss the lower the meter drops, if it drops to far, then you fail the song. In the top left-hand corner, you have the “star-multiplier.” The more notes you get in a combination without messing-up, the higher the combo and thus higher your multiplier. To the right of the multiplier is your score.

On the right-hand side of the screen is you have your “pyro power” meter, through each multiplier you get, you increase your pyro power meter. It’s like the “star power” in another related game, you “flip” the switch and your current multiplier can double up to 8x. Above this meter, you have a “home” icon, this take you to the pause menu.

As for the Drum set layout:

You have four tap areas as well, but usually the cymbals (yellow notes) are normally played together. The blue notes are for the left drum and the purple notes are for the right drum. Everything else on the screen is the same, however, in order to get the pyro power, certain notes will “be on fire” and if you hit these notes, you get a “full pyro meter” to use. When using pyro power, all the notes will turn orange-yellow.

Issues in Game & Layout:

Most of the issues I had in the game had to do with this section. As you can see by the screenshots, the game is played with the iPhone held vertically. It would’ve been nice to have a horizontal mode as it is hard to hold the iPhone, but you will get used it, however, if you play with the Hard difficulty – good luck, I had trouble holding the iPhone while my fingers flew across the screen.

When you hold the iPhone, I hold mine so that I play with my thumbs, my pinkies support the bottom, my pointer finger hold the top and my other fingers cradle the under-side of the iPhone. In doing this I found it was the best way to keep from covering up the speaker. I suppose if you use headphones, this isn’t really an issue. Gameloft also added a feature that allows you to flip the iPhone 180 degrees so that the speaker is at the top. The main problem I found was that the accelerometer that is used to rotate the screen was too fickle in the optional rotation. It’s somewhat hard to explain, but basically, it just doesn’t work.

In the guitar playing area, you have to flip the switch for pyro power; however, it is extremely hard to flip it while play on any difficulty, thus messing up your multiplier. I don’t see why gameloft couldn’t have the user shake the iPhone for this or something. Another side-affect I encountered was in attempting to flip the switch; I’ve also accidentally hit the men/pause button. Coming out of pause, can be difficult as it begins without warning exactly where you left off.

The death-meter with both instrument, I thought, fell to fast when missing notes and made my overall experience when playing the drums extremely frustrating. So there is really no way to practice the song even on easy.

In the drum layout when the pyro power is on, obviously all the notes turn orange, well whether the cymbals come up together of the two drums at the same time is impossible to determine due to their color.

I found the drum set very hard to play in Easy and soon failed the song miserably

Animations:

The animations follow closely like similar games. I really like he notes and the frets that they pass over – easily identifiable. I noticed that when you taped and note or when you had to hold down a note, that the path (or I guess you could say the “string”) vibrated as if it had been strummed. You’ll notice that when playing a guitar, you’re actually playing on the neck and the body of a guitar this adds a nice touch (sorry I am a bit ignorant of guitar vocab.) The animations that play in the background a very good and I‘ve noticed that the animations, that is the avatars, move to the beat on the song. Although sometimes the drummer animation got off a bit. If you are playing on tour (and depending on what song your playing in quick mode) the background scene will change (On top of a bus in London, Concert Hall, pool party, etc). The band does stay in constant motion while you are playing and if playing in Tour mode, the avatar you have selected, is also in the animation as well. Now as for the crowd, they are just black silhouettes moving about. When you tap on a note, the note literally explodes into flames. I thought this was nice at first, but I think it is a little overdone. Overall the animations are very well done. This is a major load-bearing app.

You MUST restart your iPhone in order to play this game. I also highly recommend that you turn Airplane mode on as when my iPhone would check for e-mail, the app would lag, and I would end up failing the song…very annoying to say the least.

Sound:

Other than the song playing, you’ll have the crown cheering when you begin 50-note streaks or more and on the other hand you’ll hear boo-ing if you start to mess up. Also when playing, if you do miss a note/beat, the drum or guitar will drop out of the song also, you will hear a miss-strum or drum-hit. I found this to be a very nice touch and greatly added to the realistic nature of the game.

Overall:

The game is pretty cool. My main complaints basically had to do the way the game is laid out and how awkward it is to hold the iPhone vertically rather than playing it horizontally. The replay-ability is very high as it has 3 levels of difficulty, with each layout being different per difficulty. Having airplane mode on is nearly a requirement in this game. I however found that turning on Wifi, sometimes helped. Not sure why…maybe faster data connection? I think the little things that make this application annoying (at time) could be easily fixed. I knew I could not goive this game a 5 stars, not even 4, because I knew the main thing keeping me from playing this game was that I could not turn my phone on Airplane for extended periods during the day and also playing on the harder levels, in finding the iPhone hard to hold, made me just give up on the game. So as much as I want this game to have a higher ranking, I am giving it a 3.5/5

Pros:

• Realistic playing – miss notes/beats, correlating instrument is not heard in song.
• Good, even great animations at times
• Backgrounds change
• Avatars ‘rock’ with music
• Replay-ability is very high
• Very east to “get into the game”

Cons:

• Notes hard to detect in drum pyro mode
• Smooth-playing only in Airplane mode
• Pyro-power is really hard to turn on and can end up screwing up your score.
• Death meter falls to quickly in my opinion – no practicing the song
• Airplane mode a requirement

Forum Review Rating

[Guitar Rock Tour is available from the iTunes App Store]