New apps for every platform
James O’Connor reviews the most interesting new apps for iOS and Android.
Pokemon Home
Pokémon Home is designed to make it just a bit easier to catch it all. It allows you to sync up your collections between the two Pokemon games on Switch, as well as the various 3DS titles, and it makes for easier trading… theoretically, since it’s essentially fulfilling functionality that is missing from Pokémon Sword/Shield. It’s got a global trade system that lets you put your creatures up for trade, or you can take advantage of a few random trade options. Of course, because this is a Pokémon product, there’s all sorts of weird restrictions in place. There are multiple overlapping apps and subscriptions that all need to be used together to transfer Pokémon – on the 3DS you need Pokémon Bank, then you need a $25 subscription on your Switch, but then the mobile app is where trading happens. It’s more convoluted than it should be, but if you’re still playing Pokémon on the regular and want to build up your Pokedex, it’s basically an essential download.
LucidPix
LucidPix is the kind of app that speaks to one’s underlying expectation that modern technology can do just about anything these days. Can your phone take a perfect 3D photo, like a little diorama of whatever you point it at? No, as it turns out – you can make a little photo that will bend a bit and blur at the edges, but that’s it. LucidPix is a novelty app, one that encourages you to cover up the edges of your photos with cartoony pictures that will hopefully cover up how much blur there is when you tilt them. Photos won’t take properly if you don’t stand very still after taking the photo, or if any element in the shot is moving a lot. Even the example shots on the app’s front page are missing details or have weird negative spaces. It’s a neat idea, and to be honest it’s pretty cool that it even comes anywhere near close to working, but LucidPix isn’t there yet.
Barre Workouts – Dog Down
As the name suggests, Barre Workouts – Dog Down (a yoga app) is fairly barebones. This is, ultimately, to the app’s advantage, as it’s the sort of yoga app that just about anyone who can do the exercises can work into their life. When you enter the app, you make a few basic choices – which part of your body to focus on in this session, how long you want to go for, what kind of music you want to work out to (if you’re not just playing your own), and how long you want each activity to go for. The app will then generate a video for you based on these stipulations, and while there must be some smart cuts at work here, it’s pretty seamless. All you need is a chair and an appropriate surface to work out on. It’s definitely not the most in-depth workout app, so don’t go in expecting fantastic life advice or advanced techniques from
Dog Down, but it’s excellent as a smart, casual workout app.
My Limit
My Limit has a single, simple aim – to let you keep track of how much you’ve had to drink, and how “sober” you are. It’s based on an honour system, wherein you enter some details about yourself and then track each drink you have. The tracking is very rudimentary, and the percentage of alcohol is estimated rather than exact, as it does not have a drink database or anything fancy to pull from. But if you plug in how many drinks you’ve had, and keep track of how far apart they are, it will track, roughly, how drunk or sober you are.
This is obviously an imperfect system, and should never be relied on if you’re not sure whether to drive or not (don’t do it!), but having even some idea of what percentage you’d blow, or how long it’ll be until you’re completely sober, is interesting, and you can track your drink intake over time. My Limit isn’t something you can or should depend on, but it can be – pardon the pun – quite sobering.
MauAR – Berlin Wall
MauAR is an educational AR storytelling app focused on the building of the Berlin Wall, told from the perspective of two people on either side. As the two protagonists talk about their memories and experiences, you can view and explore scenes that will build up in the room around you, which are often more allegorical rather than straightforward representations of the wall. This one requires quite a bit of space to operate, as it was originally designed to be used in Berlin itself – in fact, if you happen to go there, it has some extra functionality, and will more faithfully recreate the events depicted. As it stands, the short pieces of interactive AR storytelling in here are moving, and occasionally beautiful, if a little hard to navigate and not quite as cohesive as you might want. It’s a small stepping stone towards learning about the Berlin Wall rather than a comprehensive education, but it can be quietly effective at evoking a time and mood.
Fantastical
Fantastical, the long-beloved calendar app, recently switched to a subscription model and received a redesign and is thus ready for a re-evaluation. This is one of those apps that immediately feels very professional – it’s a serious step-up from the included calendar app on the iPhone, even if some of the better customisation options are locked behind the premium paywall. If you’re paying for premium, it’s easy to share with other users (assuming your friends or coworkers are also on it), and you can create and switch between different calendar sets easily. I found that, for my own less-complicated schedule, the free version was still excellent and a huge aesthetic step-up. It also syncs up with Apple Calendars, so all your reminders and dates are immediately imported. It’s great, no matter how serious your needs.