The dialing  scheme works and while some might find it convenient, if your goal is to save time the app falls short for price.

The purpose of FaceCall is to create photo icons on your home menu for one touch dialing (or emailing). I can see the benefit of having a photo icon stored amongst the apps on your iPhone home screen for frequently called or emailed people, especially if your contacts list and favorites is inundated with names.

Setting up and using FaceCall is simple. Once installed, you simply open the app, select a name from your contacts, choose either a phone number or email address, and then assign a photo. You can use one already assigned or take a new one.

FaceCall does not give you the option of selecting multiple numbers or a number and an email, so it is rather imperative that your photo contact only have one preferred method of contact. This isn’t a problem if your friends are always attached to a single phone, but if you find yourself dialing home, cell, work to hunt down your contacts, then FaceCall isn’t going to help solve your problem.

Regardless of how easy it is to create a photo contact icon on your home screen with FaceCall, there is one major draw back to its success. It is rather slow at accessing the contact once you tap the icon. There is a considerable delay in pulling up the number and another delay to initiate the call. In most cases, I would say it is faster to find the name and number through other means – whether through your contact list, your favorites, or speed dial.

For the $2.99 price, FaceCall falls a bit short of value. There are certainly people who could find it useful, especially for very frequently called numbers. However, because it ultimately has to access the information over the web via the created link before providing the information and initiating the call, it really it is faster to find and select a number from your contacts.

FaceCall starts off with a cool idea to put photo icons of your favorite people on your home screen, and it works pretty much as described. But with a $3 price tag, you’ll have to decide if it’s a feature that’s worth paying for.

• rating: 6/10
• app_name: FaceCall

© AppCraver, 2009. | FaceCall Puts a Face to Contacts on iPhone’s Home Screen | Get our iPhone Reviews on Facebook & Twitter!

Hearing the description, Babelshot appears, for all intents and purposes, to be the ideal iPhone app for translating languages. However, it has its flaws if you’re not using the right equipment.

Let me explain.

The way the captured image text translation works is by using the iPhone’s camera to take a photo from within the Babelshot app. Note, you cannot use a previously captured image from your photo library or camera roll. Once the image is captured, a text box appears to crop the text to be recognized and translated. If it doesn’t recognize the text correctly, it asks you to manually edit the text to create the correct entry.

Babelshot’s photo translator works great if you have an iPhone 3GS, but use anything else and the images won’t be sharp enough for the optical character recognition system to work. If you want to use Babelshot with an iPhone 3G or earlier, you’ll need a way to improve the camera’s macro capabilities.

Even if you’re not blessed with an iPhone 3GS, you can still use Babelshot’s manual translation while you wait for your Clarifi case from Griffin Technology.

The other thing to remember is that the iPhone’s picture quality is limited in less than perfect lighting, so the efficiency of Babelshot may be compromised in low-light situations, such as in a restaurant, or if you need to translate a bus schedule at night.

Don’t let these warnings scare you. Babelshot is user-friendly, mostly accurate, and accepts quite a bit of text for translation. As long as you own the right phone or accessories, you’ll be pleased with the features of Babelshot. And, if you do have to type in your text for translation? Well, even if you only use it as a traditional text translator, Babelshot is still a bargain at $2.99.

There are dozens and dozens of languages supported: Danish, French, English, German, Hungarian, Swahilli, Turkish, Hebrew, Chinese, Greek, and Portuguese are but a sampling of the languages Babelshot supports.

• rating: 7/10
• app_name: Babelshot

© AppCraver, 2009. | Babelshot Takes Aim at Text Translation with Photos | Get our iPhone Reviews on Facebook & Twitter!

With Cash Trails, users can easily add expense items with a single tap. Further customize your entries with the ability to assign groups, tags, and even make notes. Users can also quickly view expense history, by daily, weekly, or monthly filtering and you can export expense data over wifi. There are several features that make Cash Trails an excellent option for a variety of users, including support of different currencies, password protection, and the ability to track separate expenses for work, home, and hobbies.

Cash Trails allows you track expenses in contrast with income, but even if you prefer to track expenses only, you aren’t limited. By ignoring the + and – features, you can simply track your expenses and quickly see where your money is going. The user interface is friendly and allows you to quickly input notes for later clarification and you can go back and edit or delete entries at any time.

When I first gave Cash Trails a spin, I set it up to track holiday expenses. By assigning a budgeted amount from the beginning, I was able to enter expenses as I incurred them, make notes on what I had bought, and see how much I had left over. This is only one simple example of the expense tracking options available to Cash Trail users, but I’m finding it quite useful. What further impresses me is the option to first try the free version, Cash Trails Lite, which contains all the features of the paid version, but limits users to 30 entries. If you like the Cash Trails interface, simply purchase the full version and you’ll be able to import your expenses from Cash Trails Lite.

No doubt, personal finance and expense tracking apps aren’t for everyone, but if you have been looking for an expense tracker that allows you maximum control, ease of use, and the ability to separate expense categories, then Cash Trails is well worth a look. It may just help you revise your entire personal finance strategies and at the very least, it will help you see where your money goes.

• rating: 9/10
• app_name: Cash Trails – Expense Tracker

© AppCraver, 2009. | Cash Trails – Expense Tracker is Hot on the Trail of Where Your Money Goes | Get our iPhone Reviews on Facebook & Twitter!

Storm Attack gives players a simple goal – score as many points as possible before the blocks stack up to the top of the screen. Points are scored by connecting blocks of the same color and tapping to eliminate groups of ten or higher. The more blocks connected in a group, the more points you score. If you eliminate groups of fewer than six blocks, you lose ammo and if your ammo gets too low, you can’t destroy any blocks. You can drag blocks to anywhere on the screen to maximize point opportunities, but don’t let any one column stack up too high or it could be game over.

This premise alone would make Storm Attack another mundane match and destroy block game, but the addition of features like a storm that rains down blocks at lightening speed every minute, plus the ability to accomplish and track achievement awards, shake to create mini-storms and compare high scores with friends through AGON integration make Storm Attack anything but mundane. Easy to follow onscreen instructions guide new players through the first few levels and it couldn’t be simpler.

Storm Attack is responsive to touch screen control and is vibrant in color and appearance. The information panel across the top of the screen lets players know their score and counts down the time to the next storm of blocks. Through the setting options players can use the music from their library and adjust the sound levels of the background music and sound effects. You can also access your achievement awards and high scores from the main menu.

Seeing as how the iTunes Store has no shortage of these types of games available for iPhone, it’s nice to see new developers throwing users a bone by making trial versions available for free before you buy. Try Storm Attack Lite to get a taste of the game play and user interface. Storm Attack is well done and provides a solid replay value, with the full version you get a fun and slightly different block game that combines arcade and puzzle action, requires a bit of strategy, and is addictive gameplay.

• rating: 8/10
• app_name: Storm Attack

© AppCraver, 2009. | Storm Attack is Fast Paced Block Blasting Action | Get our iPhone Reviews on Facebook & Twitter!

For some people, a creative option may not be on their list of things they want in a mobile alarm clock but it is definitely an interesting inclusion. The developer, Stephen Gray, claims to have incorporated the drawing engine into his clock app so he could take a little piece of his child’s doodled imagination with him when he travels away from home. Sweet as that inspiration must have been, I’m inclined to believe Stephen himself has a bit of a creative side, too.

The drawing engine implemented in Doodle Clock isn’t all that different from other drawing apps and though it is limited in some ways, you can still make some neat designs if you are patient and persistent. You can select from various transparencies, colors, shapes, and brush stroke sizes to doodle your own numbers 0-9, write the days of the week, and even customize those flashing dots between the numbers. Doodle Clock also allows you to customize your clock’s background. Doodle and color your own background or use a picture from your phone’s camera roll. You can create and save more than one theme and use them whenever you like.

If designing your own clock seems a bit over the top for you, there is a well-designed “sand” theme included or you can simply elect to use the default mode, which is your basic digital clock theme.

Other features in Doodle Clock include settings for 12- or 24-hour time, military time, time zones, and customization of the display format. The two biggest bonuses, in my opinion, are the ability to shut off autolock so your clock keeps ticking away, even while you sleep and the alarm with snooze function. There are only three alarm sound selections, which mimic traditional ringtone options more than alarm sounds, but they are audible and both the alarm and snooze functions work perfectly. There are on-screen instructions included that make the app easy to navigate and not at all confusing to set up or use.

If I have any complaints, it’s the inability to rotate pictures loaded into the app from the camera roll. The clock’s background is displayed in landscape mode so any pictures taken in portrait mode won’t display properly as the background. Aside from this oversight, I’m pretty sure this app is a keeper. With a launch price of just $0.99, Doodle Clock provides a great service and value. Your iPhone (or even iPod touch) becomes a working travel alarm clock as well as a creative outlet.

• rating: 8/10
• app_name: Doodle Clock

© AppCraver, 2009. | Doodle Clock – Clock-a-Doodle-do! | Get our iPhone Reviews on Facebook & Twitter!

When you launch iFlashReady you have instant access to photos saved on your iPhone or touch. You simply select a photo and then choose a flash setting to apply and save the enhanced image back to your device.

I was skeptical at first, but discovered I was able to use iFlashReady to significantly lighten and brighten a picture I took outdoors at dusk. I suspect it may work better with outdoor pictures, but I also observed some improvements to indoor photos as well. The overall effect was to brighten the photo without losing contrast or washing out the image. In some cases, it made an altogether bad picture decent enough to keep.

iFlashReady seems to adequately adjust a photo’s lighting to reduce shadows and enhance focused parts with lighter reflection. I can’t say I observed anything spectacular when using it, but at the least iFlashReady improved the overall quality of some pictures I took with my iPhone in less than adequate lighting.

One thing I did find bothersome with iFlashReady was the frequency at which it became disabled when saving flash enhanced pictures. It crashed on me about 30 percent of the time. Hard reset is supposed to correct this problem, but I still experience it. The bigger problem is that when this happens, you have to start all over with selecting a photo, selecting a flash level, and then try saving again. The process doesn’t take a terribly long time, but is still frustrating.

Providing you can get the picture to save, iFlashReady definitely helps improve images taken with the iPhone camera in low lighting. It’s not a song and dance I would bother with or rely on if I were planning on taking good pictures, but to quickly enhance the photos I take on the fly with my iPhone I can see where iFlashReady has its uses.

• app_name: iFlashReady
• rating: 7/10

© AppCraver, 2009. | iFlashReady Helps Correct Pictures in Low Lighting | Get our iPhone Reviews on Facebook & Twitter!

Sketch Dungeon is a role-playing game with hand drawn graphics set in descending levels of a dungeon. As an adventure explorer armed with a crossbow, you advance through 15 levels of play racking up points and kills by shooting the bad guys. Oddly enough, if you watch the You Tube video of Sketch Dungeon’s game play, it doesn’t really do the experience justice. It is actually quite responsive to the iPhone and touch accelerometer feature, making the controls simple. You merely tilt your way through the levels, touching to shoot, and zooming in and out where necessary.

The instructions for playing Sketch Dungeon are written on the floors of each level, making it as close to a pick-up-and-play game as it could be. If you find the game unstable and not responding accordingly, which happened to me a few times,  try closing and restarting it. The crossbow-wielding adventurer should move smoothly about the screen, picking up speed the further you tilt your device. As you advance, you will encounter a myriad of dungeon creatures, like spiders, snakes, bats, and ogres that thwart your progress and take away your health. Simply tap the creatures to shoot or touch and hold in their direction for continuous bow-firing action. You also have to pick up gold treasure chests, keys to unlock doors, and look for food to replenish health. Be careful not to shoot the food, because it will disappear.

As the developer’s name implies, Sketch Dungeon is a casual distraction game. It’s not difficult to play, but is fun enough to ease a bit more than a few moments boredom. Each time you die, you’ll start over at the beginning, so the challenge is to get through all levels – a feat that I think would be easier to do if you didn’t lose the turkey leg health power up when you accidentally shoot your food. Making it through all 15 levels could even be deemed a challenge for novice gamers. Be aware that while the hand-drawn features lend no air of reality to the game, particle explosions of blood do occur and thus, Sketch Dungeon may not be appropriate for younger children even though it’s simple enough for nearly any age to play.

Are you going to be impressed by Sketch Dungeon if you’re a hardcore RPG gamer? Not likely, but as a casual game, it’s not bad at all. As their debut title, I think it will be interesting to see whether Casual Distraction Games puts together any further titles because right out of the gate, Sketch Dungeon might be able to hold its own. Its only major drawbacks are the absence of a save feature and the loading glitch that seems to sometimes impact the accelerometer.

• app_name: Sketch Dungeon
• rating: 7/10

© AppCraver, 2009. | Discover Casual and Basic RPG Fun With Sketch Dungeon | Get our iPhone Reviews on Facebook & Twitter!

Even with its clean adaptation to iPhone and touch, if you have no interest in retro games Ball & Bat Retro won’t impress you much. Even for someone who appreciates the classic games, revisiting some of them on a device that can do all that the iPhone can do is a bit like baking a freezer pizza in a convection oven. Nonetheless, Ball & Bat Retro – Pong Included is a set of four games – tennis, football, squash, and squash practice – for your iPhone or touch that is pretty much as retro as it gets.

Putting aside the argument of whether classic games like Pong are still fun to play, Ball & Bat Retro – Pong Included has a few features that take advantage of the iPhone technology. For starters, the touch screen controls work well – simply use your finger to control your paddle. You can play one or two player versions of each game and choose a small or large bat size. You can also elect to change the background color and the color of the ball. The most appealing feature of Ball & Bat Retro – Pong Included is the ability to set any picture in your camera roll as the background.

There isn’t a great deal to say about Ball & Bat Retro aside from the obvious. If you’re not into new games, but want an easy to figure out, easy to play, somewhat unexciting game to help you pass the time, then Ball & Bat Retro is a good place to start. I sort of figured out that I could set up Squash to play and position my paddle so that I could actually walk away and the game would stay in progress, simply batting the ball back and forth at nearly the same angle so that moving my paddle was unnecessary. True, I couldn’t score any points this way, but I just wanted to see if the AI player would respond by changing the position of its bat.

Ball & Bat Retro – Pong Included isn’t for everyone. It’s a decent revival of the classic ball and paddle games and at least it operates cleanly. I found it more entertaining to come up with different photo backgrounds for the playing field than actually playing the game for any extended period of time, but to each their own. Still, in all fairness, Ball & Bat Retro wasn’t designed to be a new take on a classic, it was intended to be exactly what it is.

• rating: 7/10
• app_name: Ball & Bat Retro – Pong Included

© AppCraver, 2009. | Ball & Bat Retro – Pong Included | Get our iPhone Reviews on Facebook & Twitter!

Developed by Portable Zoo, Karuki is a game based on lines and physics and you have to basically draw your way through each level. But you don’t have to be good at it. That’s the beauty of Karuki. The overall objective of the game is the challenge, but the game is remarkably forgiving while you achieve it.

Set against a chalkboard background, Karuki is this little blue blob that needs you to draw his way from the bottom up. By drawing lines for Karuki to use, he will bounce on them and move up and around the board. Your objective is to get him to collect gems and his little blue spore-like offspring. Karuki has to get a minimum number of mini-hims to the exit on each board before proceeding to the next.

As Karuki bounces off your hand drawn chalk lines, which you try to draw at various angles and lengths to better control him, he also has to avoid the bad guys. Evil wizards and skulls that steal Karuki’s life and his mini followers randomly appear on the board. Avoiding them can be difficult, but if you bounce at just the right angle or just the right speed, you might just achieve your goal. Though the game gets more challenging as you advance, there are plenty of opportunities to collect the miniature Karukis and get them to safety. Just remember to stay out of the water.

Karuki is a fun, clever game with simple interface and responsive play. Its sound effects back up the experience making it an all around pleasant game to play. Once you’ve got the hang of it, see how long you can last and compare your high scores to those of other users.

• app_name: Karuki
• rating: 8/10

© AppCraver, 2009. | Bouncing Around With Karuki is Simple Fun | Get our iPhone Reviews on Facebook & Twitter!

While the overall concept of Kaloki Adventure was first proven with the Xbox 360 version, the translation to iPhone is both rewarding and at the same time, disappointing. The game is well made, strategically speaking. You play through 14 levels attempting to manage your resources and money to build a better space station and keep your intergalactic customers happy. Managing energy resources, intelligence resources and building trading posts and lemonade stands will keep you hopping as you try to work through each level successfully. There are also six bonus scenarios with the promise of more to come. 

The gameplay in Kaloki Adventure is well suited to this type of game and makes a good mobile title. The user interface consists of nothing more than watching your information windows and adjusting things accordingly by simply tapping to access the building and management tools. As your money grows, you must continue to expand until meeting the objectives for each level.

While Kaloki Adventure is an optimum tycoon/resource management game and is available for a decent price, the stability that was supposed to be addressed in the recent update remains a problem as far as I can see. While some users complained that the auto-save feature doesn’t work – and it didn’t for me– the manual save option caused my game to spontaneously close and then restart the level I had just completed. Regardless, it seems clear that the developer, NinjaBee,  is intent on standing behind their release and so I am hopeful that the stability issues will be resolved. Once this is the case, Kaloki Adventure should prove a worthwhile addition to the games available for iPhone. In the mean time, you can always check out Kaloki Free, which provides users with limited levels and brief ads.

• app_name: Kaloki Adventure
• rating: 8/10

© AppCraver, 2009. | The Kaloki Universe is Brought to iPhone With Kaloki Adventure | Get our iPhone Reviews on Facebook & Twitter!