“Real” Gaming on Android/Mobile

There is no singular definition of real gaming. That being said there are a few things that tend to differentiate what most think of as a PC or console experience from a mobile one. The 3 things that tend to differentiate are Free 2 Play, Micro transactions and amount of content. While there is clearly a blurring of the lines these days there is still a clear delineation between the two experiences that most people can see and point to. So with that defined I’m on a quest to find the best experiences on Android that replicate that full game experience. Lets get started with my first pick.

Horn

by Phosphor Games Studio

This game is an oldie but a goody. Released back in August 2012 for iOS and Android it is inspired by the likes of Zelda, Infinity Blade and Fable. This was one of the earliest games to use the Unreal Engine when it was ported for mobile.

A Week With The LG G Pad 8.3 Google Play Edition

First things first I had to take the beast out of the box. So here’s that.

Most people would probably lead off talking about the size and shape of the device since that is what you typically notice first. The reason I’m not going to do that is because I want you to have the good news first. The quad core Snapdragon 600 at 1.7Ghz is very fast. It’s consistent with a premium device. Apps fire what feels like instantly and games run silky smooth. 2GB of ram as we’ve seen seems to be the key amount to keep a device from feeling slow.

Glass – Not As Popular As The Cell Phone

Please stop trying to over sell “wearable computing” and more specifically Google Glass. The reason isn’t that I hate the idea of wearable computing or Google glass, simply that there is historical proof of it’s limited desire and usability. Moving the processing closer to the input and output isn’t going to change the comfort or social acceptability of the input/output. It never has. Why would you expect it to now? In short, learn from the past!

Bluetooth headsets are considered obnoxious and only really useful when you’re driving or otherwise have to have your hands full. Every one knows the dbags that walk around looking smug and talking to themselves while ignoring the rest of humanity that isn’t in their ear.

LG Optimus L9 Review – Sweet Spot Mid-range Phone?

So what is the LG Optimus L9? Lets have a look at some specs and pics.

GENERAL
2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G Network HSDPA 900 / 2100
SIM Mini-SIM
Announced 2012, August
Status Available. Released 2012, November
BODY
Dimensions 131.9 x 68.2 x 9.1 mm (5.19 x 2.69 x 0.36 in)
Weight 125 g (4.41 oz)
DISPLAY
Type IPS LCD, capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
Size 540 x 960 pixels, 4.7 inches (~234 ppi pixel density)
Multitouch Yes
MEMORY
Card slot microSD, up to 32 GB
Internal 4 GB, 1 GB RAM
FEATURES
OS Android OS, v4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich), upgradable to v4.1.2 (Jelly Bean)
Chipset TI OMAP 4430
CPU Dual-core 1 GHz Cortex-A9
GPU PowerVR SGX540

As you can see this phone isn’t half bad. Dual core at 1ghz isn’t breaking speed records but it’s also not the slowest thing on the market. For a phone at this price point 1GB of ram is pretty decent. Outside of the absolute newest phones anything that runs decent has a 1GB or more.

The one thing I was really worried about was the display not being 720p. IPS means good color and nice dark blacks so the sharpness was at question. I was pleased to find that the combination of display density at 234ppi plus the good quality of the panel results in a very nice looking image. I even compared it side by side with a friends Galaxy Nexus and speed was comparable and the image quality was as good or better.

My final point of concern was Ice Cream Sandwich. I know quite a few people ascribe to “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” but Jelly Bean does bring quite a few performance enhancements and new features. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the phone moves along very quickly and smoothly. This means if you root and re-rom to Jelly Bean you should be getting even better performance.

All around this is a large, sharp looking, fast and affordable phone that just works well. We’ll enough to satiate my gadget lust for an HTC One and rest assured that’s tough to do. Of course this is subjective.

So let’s see how it stacks up in a couple of synthetic tests Antutu and Quadrant.