The latest and occasionally greatest
apps across all the available mobile platforms
Chrome
Now that Chrome has conquered the desktop
market, it’s only natural that smartphones and tablets would be next. And not
just the ones running Android, either. While a beta version of Chrome has been
available for Android 4.0 users since earlier this year, Google has now opened
it up to iOS users as well a move that’s sure to infuriate the Android
faithful, especially since those on earlier versions of Android are still
locked out of using it.
The question on most users’ minds will be
this: is it better than Safari? Based on the user interface and features,
Chrome has the upper hand. Google’s browser lets you have an unlimited number
of tabs open (unlike Safari, which Limits you to eight), and we love that you
can move between tabs by swiping across the screen, On the ¡Phone version, the
card-based Ut makes ¡t easier to keep track of all the pages you have open,
while the iPad version uses the more traditional tab interface.
Now
that Chrome has conquered the desktop market, it’s only natural that
smartphones and tablets would be next.
The other killer feature is that it syncs
with Chrome on all of your other machines, so all of your open tabs, bookmarks
and passwords are seamlessly transported across.
Sadly, it isn’t as fast as Safari when it
comes to rendering webpages. For everyday web browsing, the speed disparity
isn’t obvious: it took 17.6 seconds to launch the PC & Tech Authority
website in Chrome, and 17.2 seconds in Safari. But web browser benchmarks paint
o vastly different picture. The Rightware Browsermark result for Chrome was
48,554 and 100,779 for Safari (higher is better), while the SunSpider 0.91
JavaScript benchmark took 7366.3ms in Chrome and 1820ms in Safari (lower is
better).
If speed ¡s your main concern, you’re better
off sticking with Safari or starting to use it, if you’re not at the moment.
But slower rendering notwithstanding, the superior interface and features will
persuade many users us included to make the switch to Chrome.
Commbank KACHING
Previously exclusive to the iPhone, CommBank
Kaching has now launched on Android, letting you do regular and not-so-regular
banking transactions from your smart phone.
All the usual suspects you’d expect in o
mobile banking app are available, such as transaction history, balance checks,
money transfers, and BPAY, but Kaching goes further by adding more ways you can
pay people. Through the app, you can make payments using someone’s phone
number, email address, or Facebook account.
Through
the app, you can make payments using someone’s phone number, email address, or
Facebook account.
Admittedly, the process for non-traditional
payments is awkward. Once you make a payment through the app, the recipient
gets notified via Facebook, email or SMS. This is all well and good, but you’ll
still need to send them a unique payment number separately - which Koching
generates - by copying it to your smartphone’s clipboard, and pasting it into a
second message to that person. Recipients then enter that payment code, along
with all their account details, into the Kaching website to claim the money.
Really, it’d be faster to just deposit money into their account the old-
fashioned way.
We’re not too sure about the Facebook
feature, either. If you pay someone through Facebook, the recipient gets a
notification posted to their profile, which is a bit too public for our tastes.
The new Android app lacks a couple of
features of the ¡Phone version, namely ‘Bump’, which lets two users transfer
money by bumping their iPhones together, and contactless payments using on
optional $50 ¡Carte special phone case, which adds NFC to the iPhone so you can
make payments (provided they’re under a hundred dollars) when you top it
against a MasterCard PayPass terminal.
But wait, we hear you say, don’t a few
Android smartphones come with NFC chips built-in? Good question. Commonwealth
Bank says it’s waiting on Google to give it access to the secure element of NFC
before it can offer the same feature in the Android client.
Ifixit: Repair Manual
Price Free Developer Ifixit Platform
Iphone, Ipad, Android
If you’re a PC & Tech Authority reader,
there’s a good chance you’re the go-to guy or gal that everyone runs to for
fixing their computers and gadgets. The iFixit: Repair Manual app will help you
on your noble quest, with thousands of repair guides for Laptops, mobile
phones, games consoles and cameras. You’ll also find information on non-tech
items like cars, musical instruments and toys. Some of the content simply links
through to the iFixit website, where you can browse through discussion forum
topics and post new questions. But the meat of the app is in the guides
section, which contains illustrated guides for making repairs and replacing
parts on each supported item.
The Apple iPhone 45, for example, has
guides available for replacing the battery, antenna, display, dock connector,
earpiece speaker, front- facing camera and home buttons, among other parts.
Price
Free Developer Ifixit Platform Iphone, Ipad, Android
Navigon Australia
Price: $49.99 Developer Navigon Platform
iPhone, Ipad, Android
For proper in-car navigation, Google Maps
doesn’t quite cut it. What you want is a fully-fledged turn by turn GPS app,
and while there’s no shortage of them for ¡OS and Android, Navigon offers the
most features for a fairly reasonable price tag or free, for certain Samsung
Galaxy smartphones. The latest update to Navigon adds a couple of nifty extras.
When you’re close to your destination, it displays a photo of the building
using Google Street View so you know exactly what to look for. There’s also a
new Cockpit view, although you’ll have to buy this as an in-app purchase.
The Google Street View didn’t always work
os expected. In some cases, it showed us o building from around the corner
instead, though this seems to be a bug with Google Maps rather than Navigon.
The
Google Street View didn’t always work os expected.
Fox Sports News
Price Free Developer Fox Sports Platform
Ipad
Sports fans will love the new FOX Sports
News app for iPad. It’s packed with content on all the major sports, with news,
video clips, highlights and scores, along with live 24/7 streaming of the Fox
Sports News channel and full episodes of shows like Super Rugby Extra Time, NRL
on Fox and The Back Page - all of which you can access over a 3G or Wi-Fi
connection.
If you’ve got time to kill, you can
literally spend hours browsing through all of the different sections. The app
is beautifully designed, with scrolling headlines across the bottom, a carousel
of news rotating across the top, and a pop-out score centre on the side where
you can see the latest AFL, NFL and Super Rugby scores.
Access to the app is free if you have a
Foxtel subscription, otherwise you’ll need to pay $5.49 a month - a paltry sum,
we think, given the wealth of content on offer.
Sports
fans will love the new FOX Sports News app for iPad.
Bento4
Price $5.49 Developer File maker Platform
Pad
The latest update to Bento has made it
easier than ever to organise your life into neat little databases. The
comprehensive design tools and easy-to-use interface make it a breeze to create
databases and enter data so much so that you could conceivably skip the pricier
desktop version of Bento altogether and work completely from your iPod. If you
want to back-up your Bento DOTA, however, you’ll need to spring for the pricier
Mac version, as it doesn’t support syncing to iCloud or Dropbox - o shame,
given this would be a great way to share data between Bento clients on different
devices. You’ll also need the desktop app to perform functions like generating
reports and outputting to email.
Even if you’ve never designed a database,
the templates cover most common use cases, such as inventory, projects,
customers and time billing, and you can download more for free from the Bento
Template Exchange.
The
latest update to Bento has made it easier than ever to organise your life into
neat little databases.
