Update: Review: Fallout Shelter on Android

This is an update to my review of Fallout Shelter on iOS.  In that review, I said that the game constantly crashes on my iPad Mini.

When the game came out on Android, I had to give it a try.  I installed the game on my Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (N1080) and started it.

The game went through a quick tutorial before letting the player do what they want.  While the experience was better in the sense that it didn't crash, it was not much different from the other resource-based games like Virtual Villagers.  You have to build rooms for the resources (food, electricity, and freshwater).  Achievements are a good way to quickly build up your shelter.

I have also bought the Mr. Handy robot to gather resources when I'm offline.

Fallout Shelter gameplay.  Vault resources are shown along the top of the screen.

A notification appears when a room produces resources.

However, after a day of playing the game, I quickly became bored.  The game requires me to do the same task repeatedly.  To "spice things up," the game occasionally throw monsters at you that you have to defeat.  But it feels like a treadmill.  You'll just keep fighting the same Raiders and Radroaches you fought thirty hours ago, and maybe you'll now kill them 25% faster with all your fancy new gear.

Also, there is no peace in your life if you decide to play the game.  The game frequently prompts you to return to it.  Also, if I'm not on the game, I have a sort of withdrawal symptom where I worry that if I'm not on, my colony would be doom.  At the back of my head, I get the nagging feeling is the raider gone for too long and thus is dead?  Is my colony starving?

In the end, although the game is "better" than the other open-ended resource-based game in the sense in that you don't have to pay to "win" the game, I decided to free myself from the chain and uninstall the game from the tablet.

As Paul Tassi from Fobes.com said in A Warning To New 'Fallout Shelter' Players On Android, "It’s the dumbest kind of addiction ... . I wouldn’t have anyone else do the same before figuring out what a shallow experience the game really is.  One day is enough, and it’s the developer’s fault for not making it any deeper than that."

Rant: Samsung and the case of the disappearing MicroSD Card

I have noticed a trend with major smartphone manufacturers to exclude MicroSD card slots from their phones in order to differentiate the different varieties and sell phones of different storage capacities.

What is a MicroSD card?  Well a MicroSD card, such as the one pictured to the right, is a type of storage device that allows you to store pictures, movies, music, etc on it.  Once upon a time, when internal storage was meagre, MicroSD Card was all the rage.  It allowed manufacturers to get away with less internal storage.  However, with smartphones, the apps are typically stored in the phone's internal storage, making the MicroSD card external storage quite useless for the task.

Then came Apple, whose first smartphone, the iPhone, didn't come with external storage.  Instead of allowing expandable storage, they sold their device with varying capacity of storage, where the user have to "predict" the amount of storage they might need in the future and buy the appropriate model.  I have heard too many a tale where iPhone users have "ran out of storage" since their storage needs have grown since they last bought the phone.  Also, each iteration of the iOS operating system that powers Apple's mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) were heavier than the last.  Thus, they ate more of the internal storage, leaving less space for the user.

If the iPhone had external storage, the user could have just bought an external storage card and offload all their photos onto that.  Some may argue, "but wait there's USB OTG (on the go), which allow you to plug in your USB storage device like flash drive."  To that I say, ha!  Would you seriously want to carry a USB pendrive around just in case you want to show your friends photos or playback music that you have "archived" since you no longer use them?

But thank gods that Android phones all come with a MicroSD card slt.  But wait, it seems that the MicroSD card slot is slowly growing missing.  In the mainstream Android market, the Nexus devices were first the one to do away with the slots.  First gen Motorola G and Moto X didn't come with the slots either and neither did the HTC One (M7).  However, those companies found the error in the ways and brought back the slot in later models of the devices.

However, it seems that Samsung, whose phones had always had an MicroSD card slot, is doing away with them.  The S6 and S6 edge device didn't come with the slot, much to my chagrin.  Instead they feature a metallic look that harken to the Apple iPhones.

While I'm not a big fan of the Samsung's physical button and their layout of the back / app switcher is opposite to 99% of non Samsung devices, in the past I was willing to give Samsung phones a go (I had one but swapped it for an Xperia Z2), but without the MicroSD card, it's bye bye Samsung. I am a long time Android user and my first smartphone phone is a Samsung device.  And plus, Samsung did a backward step here with the S6 and S6 Edge. The Samsung S5 had waterproofing whereas the S6 doesn't. On the other hand, Sony has done the opposite. The Xperia M doesn't have waterproofing while the M2 Aqua and all the latest range has waterproofing. In addition, the M4 has a capless waterproofed charger port. That means the only components that are hidden behind the caps are those you rarely touch i.e. the sim card and the MicroSD card slot.  It seems Samsung is trying to mimic Apple and "be cool" with their "redesign" turned out for the worse.

But enough about Samsung, the infamous (or famous depending on how you see it) OnePlus "smartphone killers" don't have the slots either.  OnePlus also relied on a clunky invite system, but that's beside the point.

By now you might be asking why would the company do away with the slots?  There could be a couple of reasons, simplifying of designs.  But the biggest factor is profits.  The MicroSD card stood in the way of storage differentiation.  With the slot present, if you need a larger storage, you could just go to a store and get a larger capacity card.  That means less profits to the smartphone manufacturers (and more to the MicroSD card producers).  Without the slot, the smartphone manufacturers can force user to buy a more expensive phone in anticipation of the storage that the consumer may need as in the consumer's eye, it's better to have more storage than less (and this is true).

So no matter how the company spin it, taking out the MicroSD card slot is an attempt to squeeze more money from the consumers.

Review: iPad Mini

You guys may know that I am a devout Android fan.  However, I won an iPad Mini (1st Gen) from Morgan Graduates and decided to give it a go.

There is a big difference between Android and Apple.  First is the lack of customization.  Second is the specs.  On Android, I could open at least 3 tabs on the Chrome browser, but on the Mini, I could only do 1 or 2 tabs.  Any more and if you change tabs, the tab would have to be reloaded.

Also, iOS doesn't really support multitasking.  If you pull down the notification, whatever app you are using is "frozen" in time.  Another drawback to the iPad Mini is Internet speed.  I feel that the Android Internet is faster despite both devices connected to the same network.  The task switcher is also clunky since you have to double tap on the home button to bring up the cards interface.

Click here for a more in-depth review of the iOS system.

Review: Fallout Shelter on iOS

Fallout Shelter by Bethesda Studios is the hottest new game on the block.  It comes in hot heels of the highly anticipated game Fallout 4 by the same game studio.  The online reviews by Tech sites were all positive, so I decided to try it out.

I was initially impressed that I can progress the game without hitting a paywall.  But that doesn't mean there isn't any micro transactions -- there is.  Real life money could be used to buy packs that can give in game cash, resources, clothes, or weapons.  But it doesn't require the purchase of the stuff and the first two achievements give you two of the packs for free.

Five minutes into the game, I encounter my first problems: crashes.  Fallout Shelter on iPad Mini (1st Gen) crashes randomly.  It soon become more of a "when will it crash" game.  And to make matters worse, whatever you have done before the crash doesn't saves.  For example, if you "rush" -- one of the features of the game where you can get the resources faster -- and you succeed and then the game crash, the rush may not save.  And if you do the action again, there is a high chance it would fail.

The infuriating crashes happen more frequently as the game go on.  In addition, the game require you to have things right on the first go -- no messing up.  In the game you can combine the resource makers into one large plot.  However, once you build a plot, you can't move it around.  And you can only destroy the plot from the end first.  So if you want to change the middle plot, guess what, you have to build the entire row again.  So that sucks.

In the end, the random crashes just made the game too unbearable for me, so I ended up uninstalling the game.