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Apple has published their own review of the app on its Awards page and the company echoes our views:

The developers of the app, Serif (Europe) Ltd., are extremely elated with this recognition but they didn’t forget to thank their fans for its success.

Affinity Designer is making great progress with regular updates that improve existing functionality and offer new features. The latest update supports Force Touch trackpad on the MacBook and MacBook Pro. With the new technology users can use pressure sensitivity to paint on the canvas.

We are very happy for Affinity Designer and look forward to future updates and wish them great success.

Affinity Designer for Mac is now available for a 20% discount to celebrate the award.

Affinity Designer

Professional Graphic Design Software for the Mac.
Affinity Designer is the fastest, smoothest, most precise vector graphic design software available. Whether you’re working on graphics for marketing materials, websites, icons, UI design or just like creating cool concept art, Affinity Designer will revolutionize how you work.

It takes full advantage of OS X technologies such as OpenGL, Grand Central Dispatch, Core Graphics and is fully optimized for 64-bit and multi-core processors to squeeze every ounce of available performance from your hardware – so it’s seriously fast. Whether it’s a 100 megapixel image or the most complex vector drawing with thousands of curves, you still pan and zoom at 60fps, move objects in correct z-order and see live views of all adjustments, brushes and effects as you’re working with no compromise.

Experience the best PSD import engine out there – making it easy to collaborate with other creative professionals. Along with support for PSD, PDF, SVG, AI (PDF Stream), Freehand and EPS files you get all the flexibility you need so whether you switch to Affinity Designer for all your work, or just elements of what you do, it’s completely painless.

With professional color model support, full 16-bit per channel editing, real-time pixel preview, image slices, masks, adjustment layers and tablet support, Affinity Designer is a serious tool for creative professionals.

Real-time performance
• Panning and zooming is always live at 60fps
• Live gradients, transforms, effects and adjustments
• Optimized for documents of any complexity, zoom to over 1,000,000% for absolute precision
• Live pixel and retina view of vector artwork, wireframe view, split screen mode
• Seamless switching between tools and editing modes for frustration-free design

Perfect color and output
• Professional CMYK, LAB, RGB and Grayscale color models
• Full 16-bit per channel editing
• End-to-end ICC color management
• Advanced Lanczos 3 image resampling plus Bicubic, Bilinear and Nearest Neighbor methods

Truly multi-discipline
• Rock solid vector tools that work just the way you want them to
• Live effects, blend modes, image adjustments, and raster and vector masks for any part of your design
• Use the strengths of vector and raster behaviors for the best of both worlds
• The best pen tool, node tool, curve editing, geometry operations, and smart shape tools available
• Flexible text handling including comprehensive support for OpenType
• High quality raster tools for texturing, masking and finishing artwork. Create your own brushes too.
• Optimized workspaces give focus to design disciplines including web graphics, UI/UX, print, and concept art

iCoverSkin Review

The are more cases on the market than you can shake a stick at but for some people adding bulk to their iPhone is not an option, yet they still want to add some individual creativity to their iPhone to make it unique or add protection.

For those people there are skins, thin, sticky covers that adhere securely and can be as creative as any mind can be.

One company that provides such things is iCoverSkin who not only provide skins for iPhones but also for iPads and MacBooks as well as other non-Apple products too.

Their latest range of skins are the brushed metal and carbon fiber range which give a great look and feel to your iOS Device when applied. They also come in a range of colors, blue, black, titanium, steal and even brushed gold if you want to go for some serious bling.

Applying them is easy too, just four easy steps, clean, peel, align and apply will have your new skin on in next to no time. I use a screen protector with my iPhone and while iCoverSkin.com advises that you can apply the skin over the screen protector I chose not to and applied it directly to my iPhone 4S. An option to have a screen protector cut to fit or included with the skin would be a nice option.

The iCoverSkin’s use quality 3M products which provide great adhesion to your iPhone and yet if your placement is initially off a little you can easily re-align it with no problems and without spoiling the look. In fact this is exactly what I did and even after 3 attempts to align the skin correctly it still stuck securely and looks great.

What’s really nice about iCoverSkin is that you can purchase as little or as much of the skin as you need. You can buy just the back, back and front or the complete kit which will provide front, back and side skins.

As you would expect all relevant cut outs are provided including a cut out for the Apple logo on the back of you iPhone which is a nice touch and leaves everything accessible.

The skins change the texture of the iPhone and while it’s debatable as to whether or not it provides you with more grip it’s certainly a nice change to the naked feel of the ‘nude’ iPhone.

If you are looking for a stylish and easy way to customize your iPhone without the bulk of a case then head on over to iCoverSkin.com now and pick yourself out a style and design that suits you.

Prices for the iPhone Carbon Fiber and Brushed Metal skins start at $29.95 and can be purchased from www.iCoverSkin.com for immediate delivery.

For a limited time readers of Touch Reviews can get 50% off of any skin from iCoverSkin.com. To redeem the coupon:

iPad 3 is rumored to use Dual-Core A5X SoC that will not only be faster but also deliver enhanced graphics and include 1GB RAM. The design is not expected to see major changes however, it is believed that the new iPad will be 0.8 mm thicker when compared with the second gen tablet.

Apple could share an update related to iOS 5.1 software update and could announce its immediate availability. While we haven’t heard about any conclusive evidence which points to inclusion of Siri in iPad 3 Apple could be looking at bringing the “personal voice assistant” to the tablet.

What are your expectations from this years event? Let us know in the comments section.

08:00AM – Hawaii
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12:00PM – Central
01:00PM – Eastern
06:00PM – London
07:00PM – Paris
09:00PM – Moscow
03:00AM – Tokyo (March 8th)

We strongly believe in providing our readers with the most comprehensive reviews which help them decide their next purchase and also keep you updated with the latest news you should care about.

Touch Reviews was completely redesigned recently. Our focus was to offer the best reading experience and we were able to accomplish this by increasing the width of the content, reducing the space occupied by advertisements and offer a very clean layout.

Last month we performed a major server upgrade in order to keep up with our growth and made some under the hood tweaks to make our site load much faster. These changes enhanced our readers overall experience and allowed them to browse more content easily.

We also want to take this opportunity to thank all our sponsors who have shown their support and helped us to focus on creating the best content for our readers. We want to specifically mention Vivid Apps (developers of LifeCards), HappyMaau Studious (developers of MathRef), Full Sail University, EA Mobile and Glu Mobile who have supported our efforts.

Touch Reviews team has shown great dedication and we want to acknowledge them for their diligent and meticulous work – Stephen Northcott, Killian Bell, Oliver Haslam and JJ McMahon.

As we step into the third year we will be highlighting even more noteworthy apps, bringing you the latest news stories, hold weekly giveaways and lots more!

P.S If you want to be a part of our team as a news contributor or reviewer please visit this page. If you are a developer looking for advertisement opportunity then please contact us directly with details about your campaign.

With a spring in our step and our heads held high, we are proud to announce that Touch Reviews has turned 1 year old. The year before, at about this time we were busy setting up our blog, which over the past 12 months has witnessed a phenomenal growth.

Our goal has been to provide our readers comprehensive app reviews, latest news, strategy analysis, opinions and cool giveaways. It has been and will continue to be our endeavor to continually offer our readers the best content in this field. The iPhone app industry is fairly new in the mobile application world and we feel privileged to be a part of this revolution started by Apple.

Our review and news team members are very experienced and proficient individuals who follow a professional writing style and a comprehensive set of guidelines laid down by us. The reviews and articles go through several phases of quality checks before being published. The Touch Reviews team is very focused but passionate and eager to deliver its best – we consistently strive to get better each day.

It is heartening to note that some of our sponsors have been supporting us for almost 12 months – for which we are grateful. Vivid Apps (developers of Lifecards) and HappyMaau Studios (developers of MathRef) were one of the earliest sponsors; Slappmedotcom Pty Ltd and WindSolutions LLC have been our sponsors for more than 6 months. We also wish to acknowledge Red Cabana Studios (developers of R.O.F.F.L.E), Fossil Software LLC (developers of Appzilla) and RyMobile (developers of MailRoom) who’ve encouraged us by supporting our efforts.

Last but not the least, we take this opportunity to especially mention and thank each member of the Touch Reviews team – Craig Willis (games specialist), Erin Peterson (news specialist), Stephen Northcott (news specialist) and Jane Jones (app reviewer) – for their diligent and meticulous work.

To celebrate our First Anniversary we contacted a few iPhone app developers/publishers yesterday for promo code giveaway and they were very kind to respond to our request at such a short notice. We will be updating this page with all the promo codes so you can Retweet this page and share it with your friends on Facebook to redeem the promo codes.

Touch Reviews compared the loading screens of 6 Popular/Best Twitter Apps to find out which one is the fastest!

Twitter Apps Compared: Tweetie, TwitterFon Pro, SimplyTweet, Twittelator Pro, Twitterrific, TweetDeck

Is it because the perfect twitter app does not exist or you just love to try out new twitter apps?

Vote for the best twitter app and leave a comment below. Two comments will be randomly chosen as app promo code winners!

SimplyTweet developer @simplytweet has made more than 25 changes in the latest version 1.5

We reviewed SimplyTweet almost a month back. Since then this app has seen a number of updates and with version 1.4 we could not help but write a fresh post about it!

SimplyTweet has successfully transformed from being a simple twitter client to an app which does almost everything what a twitter app should do.

User Interface

SimplyTweet has a very clean and simple UI which displays tweets is large chat bubbles. It also supports mutiple accounts which you can access through ‘More’ option. When you click on an account it will ask you to confirm using that account. SimplyTweet displays tweets from your friends, mentions. messages (sent & received), Trends and Favorites. The ‘More’ option can be edited to rearrange your preferred view. The app has a refresh option on the top left and compose tweet option on the top right.

Reply, Post & User Profile

Once you choose to compose a tweet you have an option to attach pics and address multiple users in your tweet. While attaching a picture SimplyTweet also gives an option to Move & Scale the picture. It’s easy to switch accounts while composing the tweet by simply taping on your account name in the middle.

When you tap on a tweet you can either Reply, Retweet, Mark Favorite or View the conversation. SimplyTweet does not offer TweetShrink, TwitLonger or updating location services in this version. Clicking on a link brings up an inline web browser which gives you an option to either ‘Read Later’ or ‘Email Link’ but no ‘Repost Link’ option.

Taping on the twitter avatar of a user brings up their profile and there you can view their latest tweets, short bio, followers, friends and choose to follow or unfollow them. It also shows you if the user is following you or not. The more option on the top right in the user profile view gives you further options to Send Message, Send Public Reply, Add to Saved View and Edit Note.

Trends, Save Search, Saved Views & Notes

SimplyTweet also adds Trends and the ability to save search. Saved Views can be used to create different groups to track different sets of people and is a very helpful feature. Creating notes is a handy feature to quickly keep your ideas safe!

Verdict!

SimplyTweet has evolved from being a simple twitter client to a very useful twitter client. Saved View and Notes are the strongest features of this app.

Price $3.99

The Good

The Not So Good

Promo Codes

SimplyTweet Screenshots

Version 1.0 features four play modes; Pass ‘N’ Play, Pursuit Mode, Classic Game and Wi-Fi Multiplayer. After you choose your preferred mode, you are presented a series of game customization options.

Start by creating one or multiple Player Profiles, here you can Edit name, Color and Mascot (choose to be a pirate, tribal girl, geek & many more). This is followed by setting up your selected game mode; choose Level, Wedges needed, Earn Wedge (on HQ Tile or All Tile), A.I Opponent (None, Easy, Med or Hard) and Time Limit (6,9, 12, 15 or No)

Once you are through with the set up, you roll the dice (use touch or accelerometer) on a board with different colored blocks representing six different categories of questions ranging from Entertainment, History, Geography, Sports & Leisure, Arts & Literature, Science & Nature and a Random category too. The objective of this game in general is to answer questions correctly in each category and get your piece of the pie.

Trivial Pursuit contains a wide range of questions with 3 answers to choose from. These are a mixed bag of text and picture based trivia. It’s replay value is very high as you can continue to play and improve your statistics which include Accuracy, Questions seen, Largest Streak, Wedges Collected and more.

Trivial Pursuit is a must have for trivia game lovers, on the other hand it presents an exciting and engaging game format to gain knowledge for the rest of us.

The Good

The Not So Good

Trivial Pursuit Screenshots

I searched for “Tickle” in the app store before I began writing this review and I wasn’t surprised to see more than 7 apps based on tickling! iPhone developers have always been giving us some unusual and never thought of apps in the entertainment category of App Store.

Tickle Monster is a very basic app which displays a green color Monster who gets tickled no matter where you touch. The Monster jiggles, joggles, giggles, wiggles and twitches with a simple touch. Though the developer strictly warns not to shake the monster, you might end up doing that the very first time you open the app. When you shake the monster it feels like you are actually shaking a real ****!

Use Tickle Monster after a tiring day or use it to amuse your kid or gift it to your girl/boy friend, it will never let you down with it’s cute and adorable laughter.

*A research by Tickle Monster Health Organization (TMHO) states if you use this app twice daily it will improve your sense of humor and keep you healthy!

Price $0.99

The Good

The Not So Good

*no such research was done. Tickle Monster Health Organization (TMHO) does not exist at the moment.

Tickle Monster Promo Codes

Tickle Monster Screenshots

EZ Loan Pro is a great loan calculator to have, it includes all the fields that you need to fill in so that you know what your monthly payments will be, it will also break it down so that you know how much of each payment goes to interest and how much goes to the principal. The strongest features of EZ Loan Pro are save and name calculated loans so that you can compare before you make your big purchase.

The interface is very simple, once you start the app you go right to the blank fields you need to fill out, fill in all the necessary fields, hit the calculate button and there you have it, a total of what your going to pay and a breakdown of your monthly payments for every month down to the penny. If you’re buying a home, there is a separate tab for you, because of all the extra costs involved.

This is one pretty slick game with good graphics, which could be argued as more isometric than 3D. Gameplay generally is pretty solid and challenging however some of the later levels tend to pitter out into “move the blocks into something accessible then put them in the Goal” making the level one third challenge, 2 thirds chore but before you get to that stage you’ve gone through a lot of fun levels. While on the subject of gameplay this game does have a habit of being unstable, crashing, occasionally jerky framerate and for some reason you can walk through the moveable pieces after you stop pushing them around, while not sure if it’s a bug but it’s pretty handy sometimes. All that aside this is a challenging and fun puzzle game for you Vulcans logical people but could do with some tweaking, for example when the blocks are in place why not have the game character walk out the door as opposed to just raising his arms and letting out a cheer, he is after all trying to escape from an Inca ruin. Levels could always be made more interesting with things like falling floor blocks, cave in and other traps because all ruins have security devices to them

Moving on to controls, here you have two options, swipe and a slightly rotated D pad (to suit the isometric perspective). Now the problem with the D pad option is that it releases the character from moving in straight lines which doesn’t really suit the nature of this interface. It would be better locking the character to straight lines ala traditional Sokoban and having a third option with a virtual analogue stick in the form of two circles, as for swipe I find it too slow for my liking but again that’s in it’s nature as an interface.

BeastFace Photo MashUp is a photo editor for fun which can transform your friends into great looking beasts!

This is one simple and fun photo manipulator, essentially you choose your picture, either from your library or take one straight from your iPhone’s camera (sorry Touch owners, this app is limited for you) choose a face from an extensive list of mammals, fish and reptiles (59 faces in total). Using familiar gestures you then manipulate the animal layer over the face of your victim subject, more advanced controls are available including brightness, contrast, hue, saturation and sharpness however they are only applied to the animal layer, making this app somewhat clever but rather self limiting as you can’t even rotate or zoom in on a large background to make the layers fit better.

With your manipulation masterpiece complete you now have option of either saving it back to the photoroll or emailing it directly to who you want.

This application is very effective and fun, making monkeys (as well as birds, lizards) out of your mates, I would also like to see the scope for this application expanded into things like editable labels banners and borders maybe, the sky really is the limit.

Price $0.99

The Good

The Not so Good

Promo Codes

Tweet this “Visit https://touchreviews.net for #iPhone app reviews and promo codes. I want BeastFace Photo MashUp”

BeastFace Photo MashUp Screenshots

Build-a-lot is an exceptionally well built game for all who love real estate development simulation games!

Build-a-lot is a very addictive strategy game with an objective to earn money by constructing, buying, renting, repairing, selling houses and hiring work force

In the beginning you are alloted some lots and you begin by buying blueprints for buildings or houses, construct them to collect rent and earn money. Houses you build can be upgraded up-to three times which sometimes require more work force than you actually have. Constructing and upgrading houses requires to maintain stock of materials you have. So as you earn more money you can hire more work force to enable constructing and upgrading your houses faster and also purchase additional material. Over a period of time as your houses get older you might have to repair them to continue collecting rent. Upgrading buildings also increases their value and rent. In the end the total rent collected and value of all buildings is added to your score.

In Career Mode your objective is to earn money as per the goal allotted by the Mayor of the city by building specific buildings and accomplish the given task in limited time.

In Casual Mode your objective to earn specific amount of money with no time limit.

Build-a-lot compels you to strategize your next move. Your objective is to maximize money therefore you have to make careful choices over your next blue print, construction, work force, and upgrade keeping cost, material, time and work force required to build in mind.

The game also features a detailed tutorial so it won’t take much time to get familiar with the gameplay and in no time you will get engaged in generating money! The graphics, animation and sound effects are also very well done.

Build-a-lot is a highly impressive strategy game which has amazing replay value.

Price: $ 4.99

The Good

The Not So Good

Promo Codes

Build-a-lot Screenshots

BlackJack Run adds a very interesting twist to the traditional BlackJack game making it fun to play and an entirely new game!

BlackJack Run is basically based on the rules of traditional BlackJack game with time limit, levels and additional rules. The gameplay is very simple and easy to understand with the detailed ‘How To Play’ within the app.

You get 30 seconds to get a high score in all five rows without busting even once (achieve a total close or equal to 21 ). The game also offers various Bonus points to be earned if Base Score is 95 points or higher.

Now, this application works and works well with a responsive interface. The game also supports various customization options (Gameplay and Background customization ) for all those who love to personalize their games or apps. The game also gives you an option to view and submit High Scores.

BlackJack Run certainly adds freshness to the traditional BlackJack game, making it fast paced and addictive!