iPhone/iPod Touch Thread

[piku]

Anyone had a play on SimCity yet? I'm sorely tempted to splash the cash on it...

oooh, where's my iPod...

[piku]

Damn, I had a reply but must have taken too long editing my last post. I hit post and was told I can't edit it any more.

Pretend the text below is glued to the post above...

OK, my initial two minute play has convinced me it's 6 quid well spent. It's fairly obvious to play, and not as childish as the DS version which is good in my books. It's a bit jerky to move around, but I expected it to do that anyway. It appears to be important to reboot your iPhone/Touch after installing it for some reason. People who've done this have given it 4-5 star ratings, people who haven't rebooted gave it 1 star and said it crashes lots.

It's got a nice feature when zoning areas to build on. Fingers are quite fat objects and it's hard to see through them. Someone's obviously thought of this because after drawing a zone little controls appear to allow finer resizing and moving.

Now I have this I might sell the DS version, it's not so good.

[Misfit]

Damn you all, two £5.99 apps to tempt me.

The reviews are all amazing for Rolando in the AppStore. And here is a direct link to the article Deckard mentioned:

http://www.tuaw.com/2008/12/18/tuaw-goe ... h-rolando/

And here is a review of Simcity:

http://www.tuaw.com/2008/12/18/review-s ... he-iphone/

[Deckard]

From TUAW

One of the biggest comments on the recent SimCity announcement for the iPhone, other than being able to locate the SimCity International (link goes to the U.K. iTunes store) version of the game, was complaints that the game was crashing for some people.

This is not a new issue for graphically intense games for the iPhone and one of the solutions for solving this is very easy: Before playing your new game, reboot the iPhone.

Here's how to do it.

Update: As has been pointed out in the comments, a normal shutdown/startup process, or "soft reboot," should work fine: simply hold the power button down for 3 seconds and slide to power down. The "hard reboot" described here should only be used if your iPhone isn't responding to touches or the Home button -- it is not intended as regular maintenance. Thanks to all for the feedback.

[If your phone ever becomes completely unresponsive, you may need to do the 'hard reboot process described next -- but remember this is the equivalent of pulling out the power cord on your computer.] Hold down the Home and the Sleep/Wake buttons until your screen goes black, as shown at right. After a few seconds, you should see a sliding bar for powering off the phone. Ignore it and keep pressing those buttons. After about 20 seconds or so, the screen will go completely black and the silver Apple logo appears.

Once your phone goes through the rebooting process, launch your game. You shouldn't have any further problems with it. One word of warning: Rebooting the iPhone does drain your battery somewhat, so if you're pretty low on power you may find yourself unable to use the phone until after you're recharged it.
Why reboot your phone? The iPhone, like a regular computer, uses memory and system resources every time you launch a program. The typical iPhone user utilizes several applications at a time, often hopping back and forth between them. When a program that is heavy on system resources is launched, such as SimCity, if you haven't rebooted in awhile to refresh your iPhone's memory and resources, it could cause the program to crash.


I saw this tip posted on the App Store when I was purchasing Scrabble at the end of November and followed the advice and didn't have a single problem with Scrabble on my 1st generation iPhone. I repeated it with SimCity and, again, I'm not having any issues playing the game.

[piku]

For all its magic, the iPhone/Touch are a bit crap if they crash when system resources get a bit low and a pre-emptive reboot is the accepted cure.

I'm betting most of these devices sit idle for many hours a day, which would be an excellent time to do some housekeeping and garbage collection / memory defragmentation.

[Flojomojo]

For all its magic, the iPhone/Touch are a bit crap if they crash when system resources get a bit low and a pre-emptive reboot is the accepted cure.

I'm betting most of these devices sit idle for many hours a day, which would be an excellent time to do some housekeeping and garbage collection / memory defragmentation.

I suspect this issue will get better with subsequent OS patches. I haven't found it necessary to reboot my device very often since I stopped collecting work-related Exchange mail on it, so it could be a question of how the devices are being used.

The batteries on these things is slim as it is; I'd hate for my phone to run out of juice because it spent it all defragging!

[VNVObit]

have found that occasionally sound disappears from phonecalls - cured again by rebooting
irritating in the extreme

[WiteWulf]

It should be a trivial task to schedule a reboot with cron in the middle of the night on a jailbroken machine, I imagine.

[Mele]

Rolando is fantastic ! I never though my iphone would turn into such a great gaming device. Can this piece of kit get any better internet, phone , ipod and games machine ?

[Col]

Rolando is a great little game, it reminds me quite a lot of LocoRoco - which is certainly no bad thing.

[amanset]

Rolando is a great little game, it reminds me quite a lot of LocoRoco - which is certainly no bad thing.

The videos make it look like Loco Roco minus the charm. The character designs are horrible.

How does one reboot an iTouch?

[WiteWulf]

Hold down the top button until it asks you to slide your finger to shutdown, then just turn it back on again.

If the thing's locked solid, hold down both buttons for about 10 secs and it'll hard reboot.

[t0ne]

I had no idea that allowing iTunes to update my unlocked and jailbroken 1st Gen iPhone with the 2.2 firmware wouldn't lock it again. I was planning to use QuickPwn after I allowed iTunes to update it (as per the QuickPwn instructions) but if all that that will give me is the Cydia downloads I'm not sure I'll bother.
Am I a bit slow or summink ?

The iPhone still seems happy with my Vodafone SIM and I can now play Rolando

[Sir_LANs-a-lot]

Don't think anyone's mentioned here... but there is now a SID Player available for the iPhone/iTouch on the AppStore - £1.79

Uses the HVSC but downloads and caches SIDs as you play them rather than downloading the entire HVSC in one go.

[Flojomojo]

Don't think anyone's mentioned here... but there is now a SID Player available for the iPhone/iTouch on the AppStore - £1.79

Uses the HVSC but downloads and caches SIDs as you play them rather than downloading the entire HVSC in one go.

This thing is awesome. The files download almost instantly and once you have them, they're with you. I had a blast just randomly searching one keyword that led to another.

Not being a C64 child (yes, pity me), can you tell me who The Greats for SID tunes are?