Amazon Fire TV Review

NOTE: This review includes First Impressions, Current Impressions, Hardware, Software and a summary. (Exclude the amateurish images!)

It has been a while since I’ve written anything on this blog and I apologise to anyone who is slightly bothered by that. However, over Christmas I received a present that has not only surprised me with it’s brilliance but encouraged me to want to write an in-depth review and summary of why I love it. That product, as you may have guessed from the title, is the Amazon Fire TV.

I admit, I asked for the Amazon Fire TV as a present from my parents for Christmas, wanting an alternative to my noisy, slow and increasingly lacking in space Xbox 360 that could deliver me Netflix, 4OD, iPlayer and other catch up services without the insufferable whirring noise that my 7 year old machine makes. I wanted a small little box that didn’t mean I had to turn up my TV a couple of extra notches to hear the content and a little box that always had the apps on it and didn’t require me to delete and reshuffle my app/demo choice when I wanted to watch a certain programme (I own the 20GB Xbox).

I began to scour the internet for the best little box for this job. I came across the obvious choices of the Roku 3, Apple TV and the Chromecast. Finally, I came across the Amazon Fire TV, it was on for a bit off and so sent the link to mum and dad and that was my request for Christmas. I realised after sending the link that this little box was much more than just catch up, it had it’s own Amazon content, alongside Netflix, it had the addition of a Game Controller (which I put an order in for as well, as I read it was a must for some big games on the Fire TV) and it also had highly-praised voice input which was something that, as a nerd, intrigued me!

Other things that intrigued me about the Fire TV over it’s competition is that it looked to have a more modern, cleaner UI, the ASAP feature (more on that later) and the ability to play Android games on it which screamed potential to me!

First Impressions of Hardware

As I took the Fire TV out of it’s little black box, it appeared to me to be exactly what I was looking for. It is a very good looking box, without doing anything remarkable! It’s about an centimetre and a half tall and about 6 or so centimetres in square diameter. It’s got a matte black finish with an engraved Amazon logo on the top. The only lights or power indicators is a really sophisticated mini-LED on the front of the device that simply light up when it’s plugged in and off when it is not. Overall, my summary of the box itself is that it fits right in front of your TV and on top of any other boxes you have in your TV set up really nicely and that’s the best you can ask for it really.

The Fire TV comes with a fairly standard remote that properly has most of the same functions the remotes for the Roku and Apple TV have. Back, Home, Menu, Rewind, Play/Pause and Fast-Forward. The buttons feel really solid and give off a nice click when you press all of them, no mushiness or uncertainty when hitting a button. The controller also features a voice capture button for searching, however we’ll go more into that later in the review.

The last piece of hardware was the gaming controller which felt like a cheaper version of an Xbox Controller, simply put. The sticks were a little flimsy and the triggers didn’t have as much spring to them as the Xbox. Despite saying all this, it felt like a controller than could handle any Android game that was thrown at it!

First Impressions of Software

When I first booted up the device, the software took a while to update, however this was 100% down to what can only be described as my abysmal internet speeds. Once everything was done, I began installing apps and games left and right, scrolling through pages and pages of apps looking for the important ones such as Netflix, iPlayer, Plex, Youtube, Twitch etc and coming across some other favourites such as TuneIn and a live TV Player, Notifications for Fire TV and others. I was intrigued to see some big games on there such as the Walking Dead Games, Terraria, MineCraft, Asphalt, three GTA games, three Sonic the Hedgehog games, Modern Combat 4, Dead Trigger 2, Riptide GP2, Ryaman and other games that a lot of mobile games would recognise the names of.

After about an hour of fiddling around, setting up accounts, downloading games etc, I sat back and realise that I had just accomplished all these tasks without having to wait once (excluding download times obviously). Which considering my aforementioned abysmal internet speeds was quite the feat. The menus whizzed by instantly with no delay, applications that I’d recently opened were ready and waiting when I clicked back on them again. All-in-all, this device felt like it wanted to get things done and get them done fast.

The voice search on the Fire TV was one of it’s highlight features in the advertising and was something I was intrigued to try out, for the first hour or so it worked 100% fine, even with some commands that were mumbled. 

How I Feel Now

As I sit here today looking at the hardware of the Amazon Fire TV, my initial impressions are still within tact. However, having had it now for around a month, I have found other great things about this little black box. The Amazon Fire TV only requires two cables to work, a power and an HDMI, which in this day and age makes sense. What this means is that the Fire TV is a very portable device which resulted in me taking it to my girlfriend’s so we could watch movies with the family, play some of the trivia and racing games. We genuinely spent one evening where the Fire TV was the base of everything we did. We began by played Asphalt for a bit, taking it in turns to do races; we then watched some trailers on YouTube of the up and coming movies we thought my girlfriend’s mum would be interested in seeing; we then proceeded to watch a movie whilst we grazed on snacks; next we loaded up a trivia game (You Don’t Know Jack) and played that with the controller, game controller and our phones connected which was cool; then we rounded off the evening by watching some live TV off the BBC with the TV Player app. I only realise at the end of the night that the whole of boxing day was spent on my Fire TV which is something no other device I’ve owned before has managed to do.

Both controllers still work a dream and the I’ve come to realise that soft-touch plastic is the absolute perfect material for a TV remote. My opinion on the gaming controller remain exactly the same, it’s not Xbox 360/One/PS3/PS4 quality, but it is extremely sufficient for playing anything the Fire TV can throw at you and it doesn’t hinder the experience which is important.

The Amazon Fire TV’s software just seems to work. Everything around us these days has become so smart and intelligent that we are starting to become overwhelmed with all the different things it can do and are asking the intelligent technology to “just do what I want and not get in the way”. I personally think the Amazon Fire TV eventuates that brilliantly. My prime example of this is when you try and explain what it does to your parents/grandparents and they ask “so can we watch iPlayer on it?” or “can I watch live TV on it?” or “can I catch up on my latest boring period dramas on it?” and the answer to all these is a resounding “Yes!”. What makes this answer even more satisfying is when you hand them the remote, tell them to hold down the search button and simply speak what they want and then they find it. “Period Drama”, they find it. “Ripper Street”, they find it. “Another boring period drama”, they’d likely find something.

The Confusing Bit

For the past 1,400 words I’ve been praising the socks off the Amazon Fire TV as I am overall very happy with the device. However, this is because (through an accidental set of button clicks) I’m now a student Amazon Prime user. This allows me to make the Amazon Fire TV a LOT more useful! 

You see, the incredible problem with the Amazon Fire TV is that the search/voice search is ALL Amazon content (supposedly Netflix are adding in their compatibility soon) and therefore all results you find with need to be paid for somehow. Now with the Fire TV you do get 30 day free Prime Trial. However, once this runs out, you are looking at £79 a year for Amazon Prime. The perks of this are that you get next-day-delivery on a LOT of Amazon products and you get some tv and film content; I say “some” as this is where the annoyance slips in. The Amazon Fire TV allows you to see ALL Amazon Instant Video content when searching and you may find this absolutely fine if you don’t mind spending £9.99 on a HD movie or £3.50-£5 to rent it, it may be fine if you have the money or the intention to spend £25 on the newest series of Arrow (even though you can buy both the 1st AND 2nd season on DVDs for £25 - as opposed to the £40 you’ll spend on both on Amazon Instant Video). However, if you are a student, like you can’t afford to be spending these sums of money on TV Programmes you may be able to see on Netflix or even cheekily torrent.

Credit to Amazon, they do have different sections on their home menu for Prime content and do define it in the language they use such as “Best movies to buy” as opposed to “Best Movies on Prime” so you know all of the following movies will cost money. In addition, when searching with voice you can add the word “Prime” into your search and 95% of the time it will define your search down to only Prime results. For example, you can search “Prime Horror films” or “Prime TV Programmes” using your voice and it will bring up only Prime content (or the first half the options will be Prime content only anyway).

This is something that can lead to a lot of frustration and is based more on Amazon’s business model rather than the Fire TV itself as the Fire TV does have a UI that compliments both formats and a lot of the time, it is understandable as to why certain contents are to pay for such as Game of Thrones, Avengers Assemble, Guardians of the Galaxy, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, X-Men: Last Stand, Frozen, Taken, The Dark Knight Trilogy and much more. You’ve also got the content that is clearly paid for because it has only just left the cinema or come to DVD such as Let’s Be Cops, Sin City 2, The Guest, Before I Go To Sleep, Equaliser, Sex Tape and such. 95% of this content can be rented along with bought, so if you don’t want to commit to a £9.99 purchase, films range from £2.49-£4.49 depending on definition and how old or popular the film is.

It’s a situation that can cause a lot of confusion and sometimes annoyance, however I would never say there isn’t enough content within the Amazon Prime market for you to feel completely cheated and a lot of the content that is purchasable is so due to usually obvious reasons.

Gaming

When describing my reasons for purchasing the Amazon Fire TV, I mentioned that it had the ability to play games on it. Now if you’re a US reader, you’ll argue you can do that with the Android TV Player, however in the UK that’s not an option. In short, gaming on the Amazon Fire TV feels to me like a whole new genre. I would say the Amazon Fire TV’s attempt at gaming hits the family market right on the head.

I’ve not actually mentioned yet, but the Fire TV’s basis software is Android. It is a slightly modified version of the Fire Tablet software blown up to have vertical menus basically. Therefore, the Fire TV runs Android games.. oh and it runs them well! The Fire TV is packing a Qualcomm Quad Core 1.7Ghz processor, a Qualcomm Adreno 400 graphics card, 2gb of RAM and 8gb of Hard Drive space. This means the Fire TV is fully equipped to play every game that the Fire TV offers! What this allows is not only the security that every game you get will work on the device (like a dedicated games console) but also some really good looking games!

I’ve mentioned above some of the highlight games that the Amazon Fire TV offers. There are some big games on there and some that have kept me playing even a month on such as The Wolf Among Us TellTale series which I think is the perfect type of game for the AFTV and has ended up being a game my girlfriend and I have gotten into watching/playing. A lot of the games on Amazon Fire TV have the potential to be great family games too but lack multiplayer support; if you just pass the controller around though it can still be great fun.

Another genre of games that are starting to become a big hit are the games that require you to use your own handheld device. A couple examples of this are ‘Fibbage’ and ‘You Don’t Know Jack’. Fibre requires you to go to a web-page then insert a “room code” which then allow you to all be within the same session, then the whole game is played on your own personal devices which adds an extra layer or competitiveness and reminds me of card-games that require you to hide answers from others such as Poker and Rummy. ‘You Don’t Know Jack’ is a similar concept except you download an app that has to be on the same WiFi as your Fire TV. These types of games are great for nearly everyone, the games are only limited by those that don’t own an Android or iOS device.

To summarise my opinions on games for the Fire TV would be to simply announce that they surprised me a hell of a lot. I didn’t expect to come into this and still be playing games on the platform a month later!

Other Points to Note

The Amazon Fire TV has many features that allow it to take over your living room in almost area that you’d want it to. If you weren’t bothered about specific content, this device can cover gaming, Live TV and movie/tv content. When you put that into perspective, for £79 you’re buying a device that can arguably satisfy every need. When it comes to film/tv content, as long you’re willing to Subscribe to either Prime or Netflix then you’re absolutely sorted. When it comes to gaming, as long as you aren’t looking for AAA titles with life-like graphics then you’re absolutely sorted. When it comes to TV as long as you don’t want every channel that Sky or even Freeview can offer then you’re absolutely sorted. 

Those three statements sum up the Fire TV really, it is a device capable of doing everything but none of it exceptionally well. However saying that, it feels like it does two out of those three things really well for the market it’s aiming for. And if you can name a device out there that can do it better, please point it my way!

Now, I’ve skimmed over the Voice Search of the Amazon Fire TV and it’s something that I truly think is the future. We live in a world these days where voice-controls are getting better and better and I believe the Amazon Fire TV’s voice control is the best there is out there right now. It’s advantage is that you hold a button to turn it on, speak into the controller itself, then let go to stop the recording. Therefore you have a voice recognition remote that is only picking up a minor amount of noise so there’s no chance it’ll hear something else after your speaking, plus you are holding the remote right in front of your face as opposed to trying to shout at the device as you may do with your phone or the Amazon Echo.

Summary

In a world where we are going from buying Freeview boxes and Sky boxes to buying Amazon Fire TVs, Chromecast, Apple TVs, Nexus Players and the such, one platform needs to stand above the rest. Now don’t get me wrong, when Apple release their updated version of the Apple TV, it will be a market leader; it will offer iTunes content that most people in the Western World use for their content, it will use an interface that is likely to be recognisable to anyone who’s used an iPad, iPod or iPhone and therefore recognisable to most of the Western world too. In addition, the Nexus Player is a device that has so much potential and with Google’s latest attempt at pushing advertising and their Play logo brand onto every screen in the world, the Nexus player’s sequel could be a top performer.

However, for me; right now… the Amazon Fire TV is the best set top box you can buy. You not only get the essential apps you get on other platforms, but you also have the additional option of Prime content which covers even more TV and Films that these other providers may not offer. On top of that it offers you it in an incredible fast and visually appealing style.

Gaming is something I never thought I’d enjoy on the Fire TV and to me was to be dismissed as a gimmick. Little did I know that a month later I’d be sitting here enjoying trivia games with my girlfriend, her sister and her girlfriend and playing The Wolf Among Us almost as a replacement to a TV show due to the size of the screen. Little did I know that Crossy Road was the answer to all our answers when it came to killing 5-10 minutes trying to beat my high score of 142. I also now want to see what other games work well on the big screen, I can imagine FPS games work well as they do on an Xbox or Playstation. Only the future will tell.

The Fire TV for me, is one of the most surprising purchases (gifts) i’ve received in recent years. For me, it’s in a category I’ve never really bought into before. However, unless I buy a Smart TV with LG’s webOS on it or Google’s Android TV, then I will likely be investing in the Amazon Fire TV2 if there ever is to be one.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Below all of that review, I’ve decided to include some titles that I found would really be worth watching. This is intended to show people that Prime does offer some really good content that can rival Netflix and in some places better it (due to no country restrictions.)

Content worth watching on Amazon Instant Prime Video:

TV SHOWS

The Walking Dead (3 SEASONS)- needs no explanation, one of the few pieces of content about Zombies that doesn’t suck

Arrow (1 SEASON and likely the second season too as Amazon have an exclusive deal) - one of the best/if not the best TV Show based on a comic book hero

Lost (EVERY SEASON) - more famous for being confusing but nearly finished season 1 and hooked

Constantine (working off an exclusive offer of an episode a week, right after they’re aired live) - a clever series based on the DC Comics of a similar name

Prison Break (EVERY SEASON) - needs no words, a beautifully told story of a prison break, sounds hard to make interesting but is! 

The Inbetweeners (EVERY SEASON) - needs no introduction, the original and arguably one of the funniest British TV Shows of modern culture

Heroes (4 SEASONS)- a gripping series of a bunch of people who find they have super powers

One Tree Hill (EVERY SEASON) - MY guilty pleasure!

Sherlock (TWO SEASONS) - one of my favourite series, if not my favourite series ever. Based on the well-known detective but using incredibly clever filmography and incredible use of witt, brilliantly played of course by the incredible Benedict Cumberbatch

FILMS

12 Years a Slave - an incredible moving film about slavery and the struggles

Taken 2 - The sequel to the film that will always be remembered for “I Will find You and I Will Kill You”

Django Unchained - Quentin Tarantino’s slight take on slavery and bounty hunters

Monsters Inc - an incredible classic for all ages/brilliant family film

Now You See Me - an engaging and clever movie about a group of magicians

Rush - a brilliant film on the bitter-sweet rivalry between Niki Lauda and James Hunt

Life Of Pi - an incredible story of a boy who gets lost at sea with an incredible CGI tiger

Pitch Perfect - everyone’s guilty pleasure

Cars - brilliant Pixar movie about Cars basically

Toy Story 3 - the saddest film in the passed 5 years if you’re between the age of 20-25

Kick-Ass - a bunch of kids who dress up as superheroes sound stupid but actually a really good film

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - a movie about memory loss and the power of love and all that crap - actually a great movie!

My late response to Google I/O

Having waited for the Google I/O hype to die down a bit, these are my feelings on the announcements

You’re probably shocked by the fact I’ve not yet written a massively long article on the Google I/O yet considering how much I complained on Twitter that i was working when it was on and that consequently I’d end up missing it. However, my reasoning for this is that I cannot get my hands on a developer edition of Android L, I have not got an Android Wear Smartwatch and I barely paid attention during the Android Auto part. Therefore, I shall focus on my two favourite and in my opinion, the two most exciting aspects of the I/O, Android Wear and Android L, I will touch on the other two hardware/software announcements also though.

However, I feel that as an Android user and a slave to the mistress that is popular technology news, I feel that I should express my opinions on each of the matters. This article is assuming that the majority of you will already know the news, that you will already know the important parts and interesting features, so I will merely express my opinions and ideas on each of them and you can choose to discuss or merely take in such ideas.

Android Wear

• For me, Android Wear was the most revolutionary thing to come out of Google I/O as it showed the next generation of smart watches in terms of interface, design and innovation
• It is a basic watch interface that allows for very intelligent ideas. Simple cards allow you to just read notifications, however it has Google Now properties allowing you to see things you may not even have remembered you needed
• The Moto 360 could really be the first mainstream smartwatch to hit big
• The ability to use it to unlock your phone/chromebook is a very clever idea that just makes sense
• It’s interface and gestures are clever and intuitive and I believe would take merely a minute of using the device to get used to
• The support for the software is already absolutely flooding in despite the watches only just having been released

In summary, I personally feel that Android Wear is going to go a long way to making smart watches the mainstream watch for techies and maybe even the majority of high-end smartphone owners. I say high-end due to the fact these watches cost minimum £150 at the moment in the UK which is a lot for a watch (unless you’re used to buying Armani and Rolex all the time). However, I think these watches will either absolutely soar or will absolutely flop, I also think the introduction of an iWatch will enhance the idea as every piece of hardware Apple brings out becomes mainstream at the moment.

Android ‘L’

• I personally think this is the best update for Android to date
• The lock screen notifications is something I’ve wanted and attempted to replicate on Android for over two years now with little success
• I like that they’ve not tried to copy iOS 100% and come up with their own way of handling these notifications
• The design of Material excites me also as I feel for years, Android has lagged behind iOS due to its lack of animations or fluidity something which now I think will be rectified
• The multitasking doesn’t seem as fast to me, it may add a second or two to find the app you want. In addition, I often have 10s of tabs open in chrome which could cause a lot of confusion in this mode
• The new notification shade screams futuristic to me with it’s transparent background and flat design and colours, it’s beautiful and looks to be more useful too
• Not 100% keen on the change of the navigational buttons, but they are more suiting to the design change in Android ‘L’

Android TV

• I have quite a simple view on this matter: if Google can get this involved on as many TVs as possible, not make you charge too much more than a “dumb-tv” then it will take off, if not, it will be like smart tvs now, only certain people cans see the point
• Very nice interface that is improved in usability with the ability to control it using your phone/tablet
• The addition of search with Voice really is nice as Google’s voice recognition is by far the best in my opinion and will allow for improved and alternative ways to navigate
• I believe this is another interface that would benefit from being able to control everything via voice “OK Google TV, search Netflix for Doctor Who”, “OK Google TV, continue my last TV series on Hulu” “OK Google TV, how old is Brad Pitt?... Show me films that he’s appeared in... Play World War Z” *it opens up the relevant app to play the movie (probably Netflix)
• If Google can involve a complex voice system like this that feels natural and where everything you throw at it works, it will sell.. lots

Android Auto

• I paid little attention to this section of the I/O as it didn’t appeal to me
• I don’t think that android or iOS in cars will ever become massively mainstream as I don’t think people are bothered about other parts of their sat-nav
• I think the primary rule for these would be the ability to open and perform all actions by voice to avoid having to interact or look at the screen, similar to my views on Android TV. If they can make the voice commands feel natural and powerful, people will admire it and will want to be able to do it. On top of this, the novelty won’t be something that runs out, it will become incredibly useful instead of just being a gimmick. Similar to how Moto X’s touchless controls have become more than just a gimmick

Now there was mention of Android One which I paid little attention to as I skipped that bit by accident and then merely skimmed over the news about it post-show. However, from my understanding it will spread the use of Android to lesser-wealth countries such as India, allowing them to produce phones with Android 4.4 and above on them with impressive specs for very little money. I was confused as to why this is lesser-wealth countries only and not in the popular markets too, but maybe I missed something.

I was excited to watch Google I/O and was excited after having it watched it also. It excited me by showing me that Google is really looking to bring an incredible polish to Android that it’s been slowly incrementing in it’s latest updates and it’s built to an Android that runs at 60fps all the time with beautiful flowing animations and a modern-design interface. This to me was the most exciting thing to come out of this year’s I/O.

However, I feel in terms of the evolution of the market of ‘smart’ devices, the introduction of Wear has really forced the smartwatch market forward in terms of design, usability, functionality and the general idea of what a smartwatch can be. It doesn’t have to have ugly, black and white pixels on the screen anymore.

What did you think of Google I/O? What was your most exciting announcement as a nerd or just as a general consumer? Do you think Google is missing anything?

Forza Football: my new favourite Football app

Why Forza Football has become my favourite football app for the World Cup and everything else football

For a long time, I have changed footballing (or ‘soccer’ if you want) applications almost weekly, trying to find one that satisfied my need for statistics, need for quick push notifications, footballing news and my never-dying need to own only beautiful applications. For a little while, I stuck with OneFootball, an application from a single developer who then found some potential in his application and has currently managed to rack up more than one million downloads of the application in the play store with an average rating of 4.5 from over 81,000 reviews. For ANY application this is an impressive set of numbers, but for an application that people expect so much from, it’s an even more impressive score.

Recently however, I glanced upon an Android Central post that read of a recent update to the application, Forza Football. I read through the article explaining the update included a brand new UI and lots of new features that ranged from standard push notifications for the average football fan to some more in-depth statistics that the deeper football fan would be able to appreciate. What I’ve come to learn from the term “updated UI” in this day and age for Android usually suggests the developer has tried their hardest to replicate the modern Holo UI. This resultantly piqued my interest and forced me to proceed to download the application, I instantly fell in love.

But wait, that wasn’t the first reason I fell in love with Forza. Once downloading Forza, I wanted to push the boundaries of how good a football application could be and so I went ahead and searched high and wide for the best. I downloaded and narrowed them down based on design, what they offered in terms of detail, their unique features, their push notifications and overall how the application felt in different situations. The different situations simulated were: quickly see who’s scored (so which application shows this in the notification or I have to proceed to the app to find out); finding out which teams were in which groups, find out upcoming fixtures and plenty of other reasons to own and open a Football application. After attempting applications like OneFootball, FTB Football, SofaScore, FotMob, ESPN FC and Super Score I just felt most comfortable using Forza.

The application opens up to a ‘All Matches’ mode that shows you all the current matches that are taking place and at the current time, asks you to predict who you think will win the World Cup and then after, shows you the top three most likely to win based on everyone else’s votes (currently Brazil 25%, Germany 20% and Italy 12%). Scrolling down this feed shows you games happening today or that have already happened today throughout the whole world. You can order which leagues come where with button in the top right of the app which allows you to choose to order them by class or by kick-off time. Right next to this button is a stopwatch which allows you to filter the games to matches that are currently live.

Within the side-menu you have the other options: ‘My Competitions’, ‘My Teams’ and ‘My Calendar’. These other options merely allow you to see your matches in different formats which is a nice option to have. For example, clicking ‘My Teams’ allows you to see the teams you have selected to receive notifications from. ‘My Competitions’ allows you to view the competitions you’ve selected to be able to view. Usually I merely select the big leagues such as the Premier League, Serie A, La Liga, Bundesliga etc. Along with the international competitions such as qualifiers for the two big competitions, Euros and World Cup and then obviously the Euros and World Cup matches themselves. The ‘My Calendar’ feature is one that I find very useful! It basically does what it suggests, it shows you an Agenda view of your upcoming games, which I find is a great and quick way of seeing when the teams you care about are next playing. These games also include pre-season friendlies incase these interest you, which as an avid fan, they should. To improve this section, it would be nice if you could export this to your own personal calendar, a move that I don’t think would be too difficult to replicate.

Within the settings which resides in a section just below the other choices on the menu bar you’ve got plenty of different choices to alter the application to your pleasing. First off is the ‘Match List Settings’ which allows you to tamper with the competition priority order, team priority order and the ability to show predictions of games within the applications. The next option is ‘Match Info Settings’ which allows you to choose what shows up in match previews such as ‘Peasy’ (which is a betting statistics bar, ‘Poll’ which allows you to vote who you think will win then ‘Key Players’ which I’ve not actually seen implemented within the application yet, whether this is for club games more than World Cup games I am not sure. Continuing with the settings, you can later the update frequency basically allowing you to choose how little or more battery you don’t mind taking up. However, despite there being two games a day, I’ve never found the application to be a battery drain of any sorts. Finally the last setting is the ability to choose Notification Settings such as whether to have on vibrations, sounds and which sound you’d like.

Now that’s all the essential review out of the way, let me define why this application has become my Football application of choice. I find that Sports apps in general can get quite annoying buzzing all day with loads of different notifications about the latest yellow card or penalty or other information you don’t necessarily want to know. What I like about Forza is for each team, you can set which notifications you want to come through. For example, Man United are my primary team (supported them since I was a kid because they played in red and that was my favourite colour at the time, no glory-hunting here, just pot-luck) and such, I would like to know more about the team, such as their line-up before the game, each and every goal, which players get carded, when full time is and more. However, I have Chelsea, Liverpool and other big teams down across the world merely to see the score, in this case I only have goals and full-time score down so I’m informed of this. Then I can proceed to watch any missed, lesser action on Match of the Day later that night.

This is me envisioning of course. Right now, we are in World Cup fever and therefore I merely get the red cards and goals for each match I can’t catch on ITV or BBC. I’m hoping this app will open up even more options once the new season starts and I may end up altering my notification preferences to show merely the full-time score if all the big games are on on the same day, then I can choose whether to tap on and find out more.

Forza to me feels like an application that was meant for the true football fan! It has all the details you could possibly need from who the ref, what the score is, who everyone thinks is going to win, what stadium they’re playing at, live group and table updates and so much more. If you’re a football fan, I’d highly recommend downloading Forza and giving it a try for a fortnight and see how well it fits into your needs!

Settings – 9.0

Performance - 8.7

Design – 8.9

Reliability - 9.4

OVERALL - 9.0

Life without reception

A man’s story on how life has been without precious phone reception

In September 2013, I chose Sheffield Hallam University as my University of choice. I picked this Uni for a number of reasons: the building was a modern one that had current-gen iMacs, a large amount of equipment and a very satisfactory WiFi speed; the records showed the the student satisfaction rate was high due to nice lecturers and relaxed timetables; but most importantly because it meant moving from the dire quietness of the countryside into a hustling bustling, WiFi-getting, phone reception receiving city. This last point was one that I particularly looked forward to and the lack of was a gripe I’d had to suffer with for over a decade having lived in a very out-of-the-way part of Norfolk.

Now, throughout my first years as a phone-owed - before the days of WhatsApp, SnapChat or event Facebook Messenger - I would subject myself to writing out a text message, placing my phone on my windowsill, waiting for my phone to register some signal and then hitting the send button. As a result this would mean I’d have to once again remove myself from wherever I was to reach for that windowsill to read a text message (which in those days was maximum 160 characters long as people didn’t want to spend more than 10p on a credit unless they were going to take full use of the next 160). I even, for a short period of time, rearranged my room so that my bed was along the windowsill so I didn’t have to move myself quite so far every 5 minutes. However, in terms of practicality, mainly not being able to close my curtains resulting in sleepless nights, I admitted that it was probably best to move my bed back and just yield to the powers that were practicality.

Moving to Sheffield opened up a new lease of life for me, I no longer had to ask people to WhatsApp me and then receive their text anyway when I left the house and resultantly got signal. I no longer had to ask people to call my home phone, or use my home phone to communicate with those that text was not enough for. It was a new life to live, one where I could pick up calls, receive texts off people and become a traditional phone owner and not just feel like I own a small tablet.

However, once in Sheffield, I got a new job also, a promotional job that involved using my phone quite a bit. It required that I receive calls whilst on the street to be told where to move to next. It involved receiving texts being asked to work or sending out texts asking to work. But most important of all, receiving texts about people who want to get on the guest list for a club that I work at. For every person I get through I get an agreed income so if I can get quite a few people on the guestlist, I could potentially receive a little bit of money for doing next to nothing. This for me is something i’ve strived to do every week, three times a week (the number of nights the company I work for hold events).

Once arriving back in Norfolk, I realised that this commission could well be taken away from me due to having no signal, therefore not being able to receive text messages. Now asking someone who’s never even spoken to you and may not even know what you look like to go ahead and text you asking you a question, but have you ever tried asking someone who’s never done the aforementioned to WhatsApp you? It’s a whole different ball game as they’re required to SAVE your number, not just leave it as a random in their messages app.

Receiving guestlist the day after and realising you’ve missed out on an extra tenner/fifteen quid as a teenager is the most annoying thing. You begin to think of what that could have gone towards: red bull, jager… ummm… vodka. Yeah, that’s about it; essentials.

How did I combat this need to have signal, but lack of drive to constantly pick myself up to carry my body over to my phone to check my phone every 5 seconds for texts from the girlfriend or of guest list? I simply did nothing, however by doing nothing about it, I stumbled upon an advertised tweet. Mighty Text. The publicly paid for tweet advertised it as an application that allows you to text from your laptop or tablet. Perfect! And after running a little simple set up programme, this was eventually what I went ahead and did. It allowed me to place my phone on the windowsill, but text people from my Mac via the chrome extension. For a little bit, I even received notifications on the side, however that seemed to disappear after a day. For the few days I needed this form of texting to contact my girlfriend who’d recently moved house and therefore had no WiFi set up yet and to receive guest list texts, I found this application very useful.

In fact, I still need my phone on my windowsill to send messages and therefore I’ve decided to put it up there once every night to check and respond to any incoming messages or to send out the promotional text if needed.

If you struggle for mobile phone reception, I highly suggest you simply try out Mighty Text.

UPDATE: Since writing this, PushBullet and EvolveSMS have banded together to create a very similar creation to Mighty Text. The idea is that you can currently download the beta for both applications and whenever you receive a text on your phone using the EvolveSMS Texts application, it will show up on your laptop via PushBullet and it will allow you to send a quick reply. However there is no interface element other than the quick-reply. I would still choose Mighty Text as this does not require you to download two additional applications and also allows you to be able to read previous messages and other messages from other recipients etc.

My Train Journey with Technology

I sit here on a train - obviously as the title suggests such. I sit here opposite the girlfriend as she listens to music on my Dr Dre Beats Studios in White listening to music from my 2013 13” Macbook Pro whilst she laughs at pictures on Twitter on her iPhone 5s Sixteen Gigabyte in Gold (her choice of description, not mine). We are encompassed by technology. I’ve sat here on my laptop playing Football Manager 2014 for a good hour or so now, taking some time to appreciate the speed of my laptop as there’s no WiFi and as such i’ve decided to close down all other running apps as they require WiFi.

What made me decide to write this is that I’ve just peered to my right, a moment taken from adjusting my team on Football Manager, and the woman to the right of me is reading what I first thought to be a magazine from the corner of my eye, but later turned out to be an iPad (what looks to be a pre-Air model). It got me thinking that nearly everything we do these days requires a battery to run electricity through a board that runs an OS/interface that runs what we do and whether we are entertained or not. Within the four people within my vision I can count 9 different devices that are either being used or are laid out upon the table.

Escaping technology is like escaping human interaction in the modern world. Both require you to submit to your own world; both submit you to live a lesser life that isn’t quite as fulfilling if you had either and both submit you to a being of lesser intelligence and potentially (depending on your level of passion for technology/human interaction) lesser contentedness. Applying yourself to this choice would arguably allow you to open up alternative parts of your imagination where you don’t have to type, scroll, swipe, tap, double-tap or click to proceed further. Therefore allowing for alternative creativeness such as drawings, imaginative story lines etc.

As I look around, I realise the many uses of technology and how it has developed the way we consume and produce the content that before would take many different devices to achieve. The consumption of this information is now of a greater mass now also. When we open our devices, we have many places to find information from news feeds, timelines, boards, forums, videos and so much more.

I believe we choose iPhones/iPads/Laptops as a form of portable communication is the reason aforementioned. We can consume so much different forms of media in a 4-10” screen than we can in a newspaper/magazine or some form of other physical media.

I implore you to think over the past hour, just how many different devices and different applications/programmes you have used to consume technology. Right now you’re using a digital device to digitally consume information, whether it’s a laptop, desktop, mobile or tablet. Just have a think and realise that digital devices are the new news, the new world and the new you.

EDIT: - Hi, I’m Abi, Luke’s Girlfriend, I have an Apple iPhone 5s 16gb in Gold. I am on a 4g contract so despite having no wifi the journey is bearable as this allows me to still go on basic apps such as Twitter, Instagram and my personal favourite Depop. That’s all, thank you.

Comparing the Biggest and Best ToDo Applications on Android

Which ToDo application is the best for you

I absolutely love lists. I love creating a list of tasks even more. I love creating a list of tasks even more when it’s just for a single day and I’ve got 3 or 4 things I want to do. Therefore, I’m constantly looking for ToD0/Task list applications in the Google Play Store that can fulfil this need. Every time a new tasks applications pops up in my news feed or featured on the Play Store, I download it, play around with it and attempt to make it my daily application to see how it handles itself. I can’t help but fulfil that need to have application that is quick, can send me notifications, satisfies my need for good aesthetics and simply does what I want it to do.

Thinking of this, I’ve decided to comprise my personal selection of To Do applications that have either have a good reputation, rated highly on the Play Store or applications that I’ve found that I think could be potential contenders against the big-boys. These applications are all downloadable from the Google Play Store and in addition, all these applications are absolutely FREE.

I’ve chosen four applications that I feel stand out from the crowd. These four applications are: Agile, Any.Do, ToDoist and the great Wunderlist. The only tasks application you may not recognise from this list is Agile which is a new application that released in the last couple of weeks on the Play Store and has raised gains for its simple but eye-pleasing aesthetics and design style, but more on that one later.

How I shall be comparing these applications is by not comparing them at all really. To compare ToDo applications these days isn’t easy as they all have their very own unique selling point. What I shall be doing however is describing what the application can do, how the app could improve and what each application’s unique selling point is. I presume that a lot of you reading will jump straight to the USP as this is what will define which application is best for you. We’ll go in alphabetical order and so therefore shall begin with Agile.

Agile

This app is the one that I can imagine the most of you won’t recognise. It was released into the Google Play Store only a few weeks ago and therefore hasn’t gained enough traction yet to become as popular as the other contenders on this list. However saying that, it has accumulated 10,000+ downloads on Google Play with an overall 4.2 star review.

Agile comes with a very simplistic user interface that does suggest that it has just been released and was purely built to be fast and effective before it was built to have plenty of features. The two main pages to Agile are the Projects page that allows you to group your tasks into different Projects such as ‘Life’, ’School’ ‘Blog’ etc. Once you’ve selected a Project you are then brought to a page that shows “To-Do”, “Doing”, and “Done”. The idea of these is that you swipe your task in the correction direction depending on which stage your task is at. This I found to be an interesting concept and one that I don’t believe any other task management applications have yet implemented. It eliminates the process of currently doing the task, but it taking more than an instant so you don’t want to check it off completely. For example, I have chosen to put writing this article down in the “Doing” section currently and when I’m satisfied with the result, I shall swipe it into “Done”. Another example may be if you were to set to watch a film or do a University assignment or revise or to go do some shopping for someone’s birthday. These are prime examples of when this “Doing” section would come in handy. The application actually comes with no settings, purely a “Delete all tasks in list” option when the menu button is hit.

When creating tasks, you have the option to write a title, a description and set a reminder with date and time for when you want the task to produce a notification at the right time. As I mentioned earlier, this application is clearly new and right now lacks on any deep integrated features such as the ability to add an attachment to each task or even any setting such as themes, account sync or anything of the such.

Positives

Clean and simple UI

Fast and responsive

Interesting USP

Negatives

Lacks synchronisation across multiple devices

Incredibly light on features and settings

Unique Selling Point

The interesting concept of allowing a task’s progress to be set to “Doing” is what I believe will bring people to this application. As aforementioned in the mini review, this allows users the option to not have to set a task as “Done” and then potentially not complete it or click it accidentally and it never be available again.

You can probably guess the summary for Agile: it’s a simple and clean application with a unique take on the stages of tasks and with some more features and some clever progression on it’s USP, it could really stand out against the market.

Any.Do

Any.Do is arguably the most reputable application on this list with a great set of features and is many people’s first choice when it comes to a ToDo application that forces you to be productive. The application comes with an incredible record on the Google Play Store with 5,000,000+ downloads and an overall rating of 4.3 stars.

Any.Do comes with a user interface that a lot of people consider “beautiful” and don’t get me wrong, it’s not an ugly application, but I would never consider it a “beautiful” application. I wouldn’t even consider it the best looking out of the four applications that I’ve chosen to compare in this article. The layout of Any.Do is rather simple in that you have your text box at the top to enter your tasks, you can choose to do this by voice if you wish. Below that is your tasks categorised into “Today”, “Tomorrow”, “Upcoming”, and “Someday”. This for me is too many options, I don’t really need to know when everything is happening, I just want to know if it’s done, needs doing or in progress. However, some people may prefer this method who have a lot of tasks who also need to know which day each task is set for. To remove tasks, you simply swipe to the right and it crosses out the task.When you tap on a task it gives you a few options: the ability to highlight it’s importance; the ability to do a search; the ability to set a reminder, the ability to attach a description and the ability to tag other people via their email addresses.

The settings button bring downs options to decide which view you want: date or folder. It also gives you the option to do something that Any.do called an Any Do Moment, this option basically gives you a run down of your tasks allowing you to put them in the right state. There’s also an option to sync which is something that I think a lot of people will like about Any.Do; you can get a Chrome extension and other apps on other platforms which will synchronise with your Android version. Within the actual settings you have plenty of options to customise your experience within Any.Do which already sets it wide apart from Agile. You can choose which folders there are which is the same ideas as ‘Projects’ within Agile; you can choose to do the ‘Any.Do Moment’ action again; pick a theme from dark or light; choose whether to show or hide the status bar when viewing the app; there’s an option to have Any.Do pop a reminder when you have a Missed Call which is an incredibly cool feature; ‘Shake’ allows you to shake your phone to get rid of any completed tasks and ‘First day’ allows you to pick which day you want to be the first day of the week. The other settings are simple ones such as: language, done tasks, sound, backups, kliip rewards and Google Glass options.

Positives

Plenty of features

Three unique features that no other apps include

Any.Do Moments is a useful feature for those who need reminding to be productive

Negatives

Not the best looking application

Doesn’t feel native to Android

Hasn’t been updated properly in a while due to developers working on other apps

Unique Selling Points

Any.Do comes with what I believe to be three very key selling's points. These three points are: Any.Do moments, Missed Call notifications and Kliip Rewards. Kliip Rewards are simply rewards such as a free month of Netflix/Amazon Prime and other services when you complete a sufficient amount of tasks in a day. Missed Call Notifications pop up when you open your phone after a missed call, there are the options to Dismiss it (if you purposefully meant to ignore the person); Call Later option which will add a reminder to call the person back at a time you choose; Send Text which is a good option if you can’t call them back now but want to know what they wanted; then the final option to Call Now which obviously just redials them. The final USP is Any.Do Moment which is bar far the neatest feature that Any.Do offers and is an option that I’m shocked hasn’t been replicated in any way by any other ToDo application. This feature basically allows you to set a time of day to remind you to do all of your tasks. It will pop up with the reminder which will then take you through your tasks allowing you to choose which you want to do, which you want to delay, which you don’t know when you will do them and which you have already done or don’t want/need to do anymore.

What we have here is an application that is opposite from Agile in almost every way possible. It offers lots of features for customisation, it offers three interesting USPs and comes with arguably an ugly design compared to Agile’s simple and clean UI.

ToDoist

Any.Do may be the biggest seller on the Google Play Store, but ToDoist is a fast grower due to it’s Android design ethic and ability to synchronise across multiple device. The application has 500,000+ downloads on the Play Store so a 50x what Agile has to offer, but only 10% of the downloads that Any.Do has accumulated. The application comes with a an average star rating of 4.3 stars which is the exact same as Any.Do and only a .1 higher than Agile averages. This suggests that all three applications are of high quality in the ToDo application market.

I’m a big fan of ToDoist’s UI as it sticks closely to the latest Android Holo guidelines with a slide out menu bar and modern fonts. To guide you through the layout; to the left we have the menu slide-out navigation. Within this we have: Inbox which allows you to view all of your tasks; Today which shows you tasks purely set for today; Next 7 Days which is obvious; Projects which works the same as Agile’s do with the ability to categorise your tasks into categories; Labels which shows you the labels you’ve used and then once chosen, which tasks relate to these articles and finally Filters which has a set amount of filters to define your tasks if you have many.

Within the top bar you have a simple button to add a task and your menu button which allows you to refresh, search, see your notifications and go to the settings. There are plenty of options which mainly include notification settings, account settings and to ability to Upgrade to Premium which is something I’ll touch on later.

When creating a task you are given the option to title it, choose where the task should be held (which project or just in your Inbox), the due date, labels, priority of the task and any sub-tasks within the task to complete. As you can see, you’re given plenty of options with ToDoist which is why a lot of people are starting to like it.

However, let me reveal why this is not currently my tasks application. ToDoist requires a Premium account to use some quite necessary features such as: Notifications, synchronisation across multiple devices, attach files to tasks or even add notes to a task. All these things I’ve mentioned are available in Any.Do which is a 100% free and subscription free alternative to ToDoist. Agile which is a brand new application offers push notifications to your device for when a task needs completing. The subscription is 18.99/year which isn’t a large amount to ask for, but in my opinion is a fee that needs to be eradicated if the application is ever to blow up in success. However, I do believe that ToDoist is aimed more at business and people who are managing tasks within groups.

Positives

Arguably the best looking app in our list/most Android-like

Offers plenty of feature such as Projects, filters and labels

If subscription IS paid for there are apps for almost every platform, native and otherwise

Allows you to write a reminder in phonetical form such as “tomorrow at 12”

Negatives

Unnecessary yearly fee for features that other applications allow for free

Unique Selling Point

I think ToDoist's USP is it's look and feel. It offers quite a lot in terms of features but doesn't really offer anything outside the box in terms of features. But it does offer up the cleanest and fastest experience from any of the applications on the list.

In summary, I think that ToDoist would be my jump-to application if the yearly subscription fee was gotten rid of as it’s unnecessary and just a money-making scheme because they know they’ve created a brilliant and reliable service and applications that people may genuinely want to pay £20 a year to get the full features of. If I were not a student and had real reasons for the additional features that a premium account uses then this would potentially be my first choice application.

Wunderlist

Finally on our rundown of the top four ToDo applications on the Google Play Store in my opinion is Wunderlist. The reason I’ve brought Wunderlist into the equation is due to it’s continuing popularity within business users and mobile users and it’s ability to synchronise across nearly every device and platform. In terms of popularity, it’s the second most downloaded application on our list with 1,000,000+ downloads in the Play Store. However, this application has averaged the highest score for users with a rating of 4.4. Let’s try and show you the reasons why.

Let’s begin how we have with the past four applications with a review of the UI of the application to allow you a view on how it works. In my personal opinion, Wunderlist is laid out well but is is nowhere near the prettiest application on this list using 3d graphics and attempting replications of the likes of paper and allowing backgrounds behind your notes. In a world where everyone is navigation towards very minimlastic and simplistic white background with text and think navigation buttons, Wunderlist’s take just doesn’t do it for me. Wunderlist uses a swipe-out navigational bar which shows the shortcuts to all the different views for your notes. You have Inbox, Today, Week and then any additional groups you can create to narrow down where your tasks belong. 

On the main page you have the option to add an item along the top by typing in the task. Once the task is created, you can tap on it to do the following: Set a due date, set a reminder, add a subtask, add notes, attach a file or even add a comment. The last option is the most interesting here as it suggests highly a group co-operation element to the application that would appeal to businesses whom seek to work on tasks together.

Within Wunderlist’s settings you have the option to sign in with an account which will allow you to synchronise your taks across multiple platforms. You can aldo change some aesthetic options such as changing the background, choosing where new items are added to, changing length of snooze and the sound a notification makes. Wunderlist also gives you the option to Import tasks from Astrid or Any.Do. The support for Astrid is where Wunderlist begins to show it’s age when it comes to the fact it hasn’t been properly updated since 29th November 2013 and even then that was an incremental update of bug fixes and such.

Positives

Plenty of features to satisfy your needs

Has an application on nearly every platform

Account support for synchronisation across multiple OS’

Negatives

Ugly UI

Not been updated properly in a while and doesn’t look like it will receive one anytime soon

Unique Selling Point

Wunderlist's unique selling point for me is the ability to comment on a task. This allows for people to either converse about the task or to make a comment or suggestion that they feel might help or quicken the task. This for me is what I feel sets Wunderlist apart from the other ToDo applications on this list.

In summary, I believe that Wunderlist is the tasks application of choice for those who don’t care about aesthetics and are content with everything that the app currently supports. It also is a great application for those that like to be able to add/remove tasks whatever platform or OS they’re working on. However, for those who care about aesthetics and want next-gen features like a reminder to sort out your tasks or progressional stages for your task should deter from this application and look elsewhere.

Now, you’re probably wondering if there’s a perfect note-taking application and unfortunately I’m yet to find one that I’m completely content with. Agile comes with the perfect look and great features, but lacks any support on other platforms or any customisation. Any.Do DOES come with support for synchronisation across multiple platforms and plenty of features but lacks what I would call a modern UI. ToDoist comes with a beautiful UI that would look amazing in any Android application, it also supports synchronisation across multiple devices, but only when you pay a silly amount of money a year to do so. Wunderlist has free synchronisation and lots of features but similar to Any.Do, it lacks a UI that I would deem modern and acceptable on Android.

Want to know which of these applications I use? Currently it is Agile. Want to know why? Because I find myself often doing tasks that are simpler than a one minute job and so the ability to choose “Doing” is brilliant as it doesn’t remove it from my notification shade, but within myself I feel like I am still being productive and I won’t forget to complete the task. However, Any.Do was my application of choice for a long time, the features, synchronisation and platform support were what kept me with it. I also highly appreciated the Any.Do moment as it reminded me to set myself tasks and reminded me what I needed to complete that day.

POST EDIT:

Since writing this article, the developer of Agile has got back to me and has told me that after his next update which is the support of a widget, he shall be working on a desktop-able client that will synchronise with the application.