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Good morning everyone and welcome to Androidizen Live episode 4.
On today's episode we'll be taking a look at
well. some new games that have come through but also a couple of interesting announcements
as well
including the new LGG 2. So
first off, if you're new to the Androidizen Live show
do have a look in the comments area and leave us a comment, we'll be checking
throughout the show
and if you have any questions do drop them in, any comments as well.
Introducing today as well just slightly out of shot
is Tinky the cat who may decide to cause us some problems during the show but
we'll see how she gets on.
So this week has been quite interesting from
an Android point of view because we've had a few new handsets pop-up.
We've had the new Motorola which everyone kind of just went Meh! at
and Motorola have attempted to defend the
handset saying you know it's not all about screen size it's not all about
speed it's not all about quad core
not all about everything that the latest handsets have coming out
but don't worry because you'll be able to customize your device in the future
and have it in lots of different colours.
Great! Needless to say
Google buying Motorola and Motorola
being kept at arm's length it doesn't really feel like it's done Motorola or
Google any good to be honest.
It looks like several billion dollars spent for nothing.
It will be interesting to see how Google and Motorola sort this out over time.
They do treat themselves as separate companies. There's a firewall
between what Google is doing in the Android team and what Motorola are doing
Effectively Motorola are treated just like HTC Samsung Sony or anyone else.
But you know I think personally
we really need to see Google using Motorola
for an intended purpose which is to produce the very best examples of
Android devices we can find.
Unfortunately as it stands at the moment
there's not an awful lot in the Motorola to kind of make me think
yes that's the new super phone, that's going to be the best device ever made.
Now, just a quickie having a look at this game that's up on screen at the
moment. Bubble Age. If anyone remembers Puzzle Bobble
then this is kind of a game you're going to want to pick up.
Really really simple game but wonderfully complicated as things go along.
So the idea is to burst as many bubbles as you can,
once you've managed to burst the required number for the level, the level complete
you get bonus points etcetera etcetera and move on to the next level. But it's wonderfully
executed and the graphics are just fantastic for this style of game.
But let's now take a look at another title
which I did do a review for the other day but unfortunately
I made a mistake with the upload and this is called Respawnables
and effectively it's a third-person multiplayer shooter
and the idea is, well
kill your opponents, simple as that really. Score points for your team
level up, unlock new guns, new armour etcetera
and generally have a good time. The graphics are absolutely top
notch for a title of this sort. It's got a real kind of Gears of War thing going on
but with a cell shader style animation and it just looks fantastic.
Now just excuse me for one moment because I'm just going to quickly fix my green screen here.
It's decided to have a little bit of a problem
and technical problems are always good fun aren't they!?
Come on, no,
it's just making things worse here. I'm going to pop some lights on.
I knew I'd forgotten something this morning.
There we go, should be quite a bit better.
Less spill and more cat so with Respawnables
it's very much a title about killing your opponent
no blood and gore in this particular game just great fun cartoony style
graphics.
The gameplay is good, there are few issues
around how the game does its match making unfortunately it has a habit of putting
game newbie players in with the latest, sorry
the higher-level players. You know who happen to be rocking the best gear and the best guns
and it can lead to a circumstance where well you basically die very quickly.
One of the things I found really cool with this game though is all of the unlocks that
they've got as you'll see in a moment. The gun unlocks as you actually progress
are really really cool
including some stuff that appears to have kind of been licensed for inclusion in the game
which just you know it's fantastic. Tinky
not upside down cat!
But here you go, here's some of the great games, just missed that unfortunately.
Basically there's a Ghostbusters proton pack available as well which I
just thought was fantastic.
Who doesn't want to run around killing people with a proton pack.
It's just such geekiness. Another game I spent quite a bit of time with this week is
Save the Snail.
It's an Angry Birds style puzzle game. So the idea is that you have to complete
the various challenges on each level
which involve saving your snail.
You'll have to drop various items which are used to protect the snail or
trigger traps and so on that will move your snail to safety.
The whole gameplay is done beautifully. It's quite a simple game
but it becomes very challenging later on which is exactly what you want.
Now another title I've spent quite a bit of time with this week was Stay Alight.
This one is one of those titles that comes along and you kind of think to yourself..
wow the developers have spent a lot of time and love
getting this game not only looking great but playing really well.
So it's a puzzler and the idea is you're
a kind of strange lightbulb guy and there's these
alien slime things and you're going to have to throw your light ball
light balls as it were, to destroy the alien creature things
and compete the level and it's all based around physics so it's very similar to the way Angry
Birds does its thing.
Each time you complete a level you move on to the next one you score stars
effectively
which show you how well you've done. But the gameplay's just
really nice and also the graphics are, well, pretty unique actually.
I've not seen graphics that look this kind of have this style to them before
in mobile title or anything else. It's kind of a very very
high-quality artwork that really just makes the game have
so much personality and you know a unique style
it's just fantastic. Another title I've spent quite a bit time on this week
well last week in fact was Prince of Persia, the Shadow and the Flame.
If you've played any Prince of Persia games welcome back.
Basically it's Prince of Persia updated for
a modern age, for modern devices and so on unlike the previous Prince of Persia
title which was
very much a remake this one is an all-new story.
They've added some new gameplay mechanics, improved the combat and so on.
It's still a little tricky in places and it can trip you up
when you actually think you're about to make a jump and you don't make it
purely because you weren't close enough to the edge of the
ledge or you didn't time it quite right. And it kind of breaks your flow a little bit. There's
a good example of that there, but overall
the graphics are just fantastic and it's one of those titles where you kind of think to yourself
this shows kind of where Android and online games,
mobile games will be going over the next year or so. Fantastic graphics
and just really really good gameplay apart from some of these
moments like that where you
can easily mess-up and not quite time it right.
Another title that we'll be taking a look at later on in the week
is WC Genesis which is kind of
a more basic third-person shooter
not quite as nice graphics as Respawnables
but the gameplay is actually pretty good.
The mobs tend to be bullets sponges as I found.
Into the head would be my advice and keep moving but overall
a really good effort from this game's developer to create something that's
just a good fun
shooter experience basically. Like I say the graphics are not the best around
but that means that this game is going to work on a much wider range of
Android devices.
Certainly I'd say that any device over the last two years is going to play this game
absolutely fine. Now,
another title that I spent some time with was Blastron. If you play Worms games,
if you've ever played a Worms game then this is going to be of interest to you.
It's effectively it's a multiplayer Worms title I know Worms has done multiplayer before
but you know it's nice to have a kind of new skin on things as it were
and new weapons. It keeps the over-the-top Worms style gameplay
so lots of crazy crazy weapons in which to destroy your opponents with
but at all times it just is a fun game
and the multi-player works really well on an Android device.
It's not too laggy or glitchy. Obviously because of this turn-based style gameplay
it has going on
much easier to do on mobile, and
using 3G connections etcetera but works absolutely flawlessly and
really good fun.
Now a title that I know quite a few of you are interested in seeing a review for
from me or for me from one or the other
is the Walking Dead and this is a game where
normally with TV shows and movie tie-ins I tend to roll my eyes and go Aargh!
what an awful attempt to capture what that
medium was about, that movie that TV show. With The Walking Dead
they've cracked it, it's absolutely brilliant.
So the idea is it's a top-down strategy game of sorts
where you have to move Rick around
these various environments and it kind of follows the progression of
the first series so you have to escape from the hospital
and basically you have a circle of influence as it were
and any zombies that move into that circle of influence and if you're pointing the right way you'll
start attacking them
and the shootings automatic. You'll have to pick up mission health packs
and all sorts of other elements as well as charging up your special attack
to allow you to obviously survive as long as possible.
A lot of the kind of tropes from the TV show and from zombie movies in general
are included here including things like setting off the car alarms to attract the
zombies
and it's just beautifully executed. Even the graphics kind of like feel
like flash game plus a little bit more. It works brilliantly
and especially on a large format tablet as well, 7-inch tablets and above
it just works beautifully well.
The graphics this gray cell, gray cell shader style of
animation, there's a mouthful for you, works great
and it really does add something quite unique I think to the game.
And to game play in general. It just screams
quality in a way that we don't really get from most TV or movie tie-ins
usually. But anyway let's go on to the
LGG 2 because this device has caught
a lot of people's attention. Now
specifically for this particular one LG have kind of upped the ante
substantially really against their competitors. If you're not aware
LG is not exactly one of the top flight companies we would consider
when we look at mobile phones. You might say they were in the mid-tier really
and so when they release a device that basically on paper at least
blows the competition out of the water, well worth taking a
look at. So the G2 is going to be rocking a
2.3GHz, Snapdragon 800 processor with
an Adreno 330 GPU backing it up for your graphics.
Now, just listen to that again. A 2.3 GHz
mobile processor sitting in our smartphones.
And that's something pretty special and
we know the Snapdragon 800's an incredibly powerful chip anyway
but seeing any processor in a mobile device clocked at
2.3GHz thats got to pique people's interest.
Now it's only backed up with two gig of ram which is a slighly odd one because
given the overall spec they've got there with the graphics
with the CPU and GPU probably would expect to see 3gig
of RAM in there but never mind if you look across the
specs of other devices out there, 2gig of RAM is pretty much the standard this year.
Note 3 widely rumoured to be going to 3gig and we'll see what kind of
difference that makes.
Now also with the LGG2 they've gone for a 5.2 inch screen
and they've gone for IPS LCD. Now, they're saying
that the IPS LCD screens which they're calling full
HD screens because they're not pentile so they're not using subpixels
etcetera,
or robbing a sub-pixel in I think is it blue or green with Samsung's devices I
can never quite remember.
I think they switched it round a few times on the AMOLED screens
but in essence there's nothing being robbed
from the LGG2 screen and when they've shown it in their demonstrations
it certainly appears that you're going to have a greater level of
definition on the screen than you would normally get with say, a
Galaxy S4. Now theyre quoting 4.24
pixels per inch, 424 pixels per inch on a
1920x1080 display. Now again, if you pop that against the Galaxy S4
which is using Super AMOLED screen pentile Samsung are actually achieving
441 pixels per inch
but LG are adamant that the
pixel per inch count kind of doesn't matter if you are actually robbing away
from some of those subpixels.
So if you're kind of shooting some pixels for sub pixels
and then you're removing one of those colours you're not really hitting
444 pixels per inch
you're actually hitting something a little bit less depending on how many subpixels
you've changed round. In this particular case
I don't think it's going to make that much of a difference to real-world
situations. I think a lot of it's going to come down to the colour reproduction more
than anything else
The clarity on screen human eyes being what they are, you know,
we're kind of reaching the upper point really I think of what is perceivable.
However things like colour saturation, colour reproduction and the dynamics of those
colours
we would expect the IPS LCD screen to provide a
much more natural feel to it. Now the other interesting area is the battery.
They gone for 3,000milliamp power battery in here
which is phenomenally large actually if you
look around for another device which a has similar size battery in it
you'll be looking at the Sony Xperia Z Ultra which is a 6.44in
screen, I mean it's massive. You know, it's like a
Note Plus so to have
a battery of that size running in there,
obviously we would expect good battery life however traded off against running a
processor at 2.3GHz
it's going to be very interesting to see what that means in real terms.
Now it's coming with 16gig or 32gig of storage, hooray,
choice at launch unlike Samsung who only offer the 16gig to begin with
and it's also got the infra red blaster built-in as well. Now it's not water
resistant
but as we've seen with some other devices claiming water resistance and
actually delivering water resistance, two totally different things.
You having fun there cat?!!
Now the camera is actually quite an interesting thing on the LGG2.
The reason for that is it's a 13 megapixel sensor
Now that's by the by. Let's face it you know megapixel count
means very little but what they have done with this particular device
is put in an Optical Image Stabiliser
and that's they're claiming, a first for a 13 megapixel shooter.
Certainly if we look at the others on the market, the Samsung it does not have image
stabilization.
And OIS does make a massive difference to picture quality.
I cannot stress this enough. So if you have a camera which
with image stabilization in there not only does it mean that
you're more likely to take the great picture first time without any judder or
shake,
but it also means in low light conditions the camera is going to have a
better time
analyzing the frames and working out exactly how much exposure is going to be
needed in compensation to get a great shot in low light as well.
It does make a massive difference. If you're someone who's used a
digital SLR camera with image stabilised lens, or if you've used some of the older
smartphones which included image stabilisation
you'll know what I mean. It makes a massive massive difference.
Now coming to the market with Android 4.2.2 so
you're not getting 4.3 in here and I don't recall seeing anything that said
when we might likely see 4.3 on this device
so we'll just have to wait and see but I would be very surprised if it doesn't receive
4.3 and key lime pie
when that launches later on in the year. Overall
on paper at least the LGG2 looks like an absolutely stonking
piece of kit, possibly one of the best
released this year. What we'll have to do is really see
how that holds up in real-world tests. They've got a few interesting software tweaks
that they've made
as well on this device. As well as a really interesting hardware concept as
well
which is known as graphics RAM or display
RAM. Now this particular technology really caught my attention because
the way it works is very similar to how the ink displays work.
So if you imagine that our
smartphones have to display a picture on the screen
sixty times every second. Now here's the problem,
most of the time unless you're playing a game the screen doesn't actually need to
show a new image
sixty times every second. It actually might only need to show
an updated image once every second or maybe once every five minutes if you
happen to be reading an e-book or
you know just looking at an image on the screen that's static.
We spend, or waste should I say, an awful lot of
processing power which ultimately is battery
just updating the screen unnecessarily. Now what LG have done
is they've added a small amount of graphics RAM
onto their display. It sits effectively between the logic board
and the display and what it does is every time a new frame senses that
graphics RAM
it checks and it says, well, hang on a second if this frame hasn't actually changed
since the previous time
why do I need to keep updating and
having the CPU updating all of this information
if what I can actually do is just keep displaying this same frame
over and over again from my buffer. Now that buffer is a lot cheaper
from the cost of view of CPU resources and battery life
then anything you would get from updating the screen sixty times every
second. Now
LG have worked out in their tests that this will give them a 10 percent
battery advantage.
So again, taking into account
what they've done with the larger battery, and offsetting against the
more powerful processor are we going to see 10% better battery life versus
other devices on the market
the HTC One, Galaxy S4
or will it kind of just be buying back some of that
battery life that's being robbed from a much more powerful processor.
It's going to be really interesting to see how this works in real terms
but also if there's any drop or perceivable loss of quality of holding that
image on the screen. Like I say, this is something that's being done quite a lot
with e-ink displays more effectively when you're
first, when you're looking at a page, that is buffered up
and locked to the screen with obviously still an electrical charge going
but you don't need to do all of the updating and so on which usually involves a small
amount of animation transitions etcetera.
If you already know that the image is there why keep asking the CPU and the GPU to keep
rendering something that hasn't changed?
It's's a great idea and I honestly think we'll probably see this technology
dropping down into other manufacturers' devices probably over the next 18 months
to two years
if it works as well as LG claim it does.
And that's ultimately going to be the real test. If this works
then we've found another way to save battery life or offset some of the extra
processing power
that we eat up effectively with our devices.Like I say it's not going to
work for games
where you really do need those displays updating really really quickly
but e-books, browsing the web, looking at photographs etcetera.
Anything where the image is going to be static even for half a second
could provide an extra boost for the battery because effectively for that extra half a
second for those thirty frames
the system is just going to go, well, I'm not going to keep updating myself, why bother,
it's just a waste power? Now, one of the things that's quite interesting that
you just caught a quick glimpse of
is LG's promo roll for their various innovations.
They've taken the SP cover concept from Samsung, this idea of having a
front cover that you can pop onto your device and then
interact with the device through the cover. And so there's effectively
an S Window style thing and
there we go. It shows your clock it gives you access to widgets etcetera
and it's all done very similar to the SView.
What I thought was much more interesting with this device though is a bigger
window.
The one thing I couldn't understand with Samsung was why put on
this tiny little bar effectively there which actually doesn't provide that much
information?
And any information that does go in there has to be quite cramped up
which LG have obviously looked at and thought to themselves well let's just make
it bigger
maybe not make it as long but make it at least twice the depth
effectively, twice the height of the S View cover
and in doing so you get more functionality, you're not squinting at the screen, you're not going
like this every time you want to, you know, read something through
the SP cover. For my mind that's the actual way to
do it as it were and I think LG have got a bit of a winner there. One thing that
will be interesting is
whether we see the same problems with LG's cover
as we saw with the Samsung cover which is where the actual
spine isn't really very well
manufactured I suppose you could say and effectively the cover
keeps popping open when it's in your pocket. You would think if you have a
little magnet there that's designed for turning the screen on or off
you know when you open the cover you would hope that same little magnet
could be used just
to give a little bit of pressure of some sort just
suck that cover directly to the top of the device.
But sadly no. It will be interesting to see what LG do on this one.
And whether they resolve that issue or whether it's a case of lots of bending of
the spine until you get something that
lies as flat as possible. For my mind a lot of these covers especially ones that
replace these
backplates they just don't work very well when they have a spine
they're too prone to falling open unfortunately and in some cases i've seen devices get
scratched purely because
the cover lifted up slightly and a coin slid down the inside got trapped under
the cover,
rattle rattle, nice scratches on your screen. Didn't happen to me, did happen
to someone I know.
So with the LGG 2 it's certainly going to be a device we'e going to be watching
over the next
three or four weeks or so, be interesting to see how it stacks up
in reviews, and we'll certainly be trying to lay our hands on one to bring you a fuller picture.
So let's have a final look at a couple of games I have kicking around on here.
One game that I was quite surprised didn't get quite the attention
I thought it would on the channel is Boom Boom Hamster Golf.
Possibly a controversial title in the sense that you're firing hamsters out of
a cannon
but as a twist on the way, you know, golf games operate,
it's fantastic because let's face it Tiger Woods, if you've played Tiger Woods
once, you've played every version of Tiger Woods they've ever brought out since.
It just has new graphics and you know some updated courses.
So to have something that kind of reimagines the concept of golf and does it in
such a wonderfully cute style as well
is just fantastic. You really can't get much better as a kind of alternative
golf game than this
and putting is just as hard with the hamster as is with a real ball
and does take some practice and skill so
really hope you've enjoyed Androidizen Live episode 4.
Do let me know in the comments if you have anything you'd like to say
or any feedback or if you have any questions so do keep watching
I'd also suggest Grandma Android app as well
it's available free on the Google Play Store. Subscribe if you're not already subscribed
and do tune in again next week and and keep checking the channel because we
have new uploads
every single day. So hope you've enjoyed Androidizen Live episode 4
and we'll see you again soon.