Hello Everyone. Today, I am reviewing the DS Games Assassin's Creed Altair's Chronicles (released in 2008 by Griptonite) and Assassin's Creed 2 Discovery (released in 2009 also by Griptonite). These games were also released on various mobile platforms but have long since been removed. The only difference there was that they had faster load times and had more voice acting. I'm going to assume you're generally familiar with the main franchise as a whole when reading this but I'll try to be somewhat general and include links where needed. Note that this is a long read and I will be going pretty in-depth into both gameplay, story and occasionally lore. Spoilers ahead for the 2 DS games. Note that because of Reddit's post limits I will post a link to my blog article where the entire article is there if you wish to read the whole thing
https://mieckfram.blogspot.com/2020/10/a-review-of-assassins-creed-altairs.html
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I've played Altair's Chronicles to death as a kid. So much so that I started basically speedrunning and sequence breaking it. If there was a speedrunning community for that game in 2008, I almost certainly would be in the top 20 (sadly, the game is empty on speedrun.com so my time of 3:36 will never be appreciated). This is my first time playing Discovery though and I'm excited to play it.
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If you want a short summary of the games, Altair's Chronicles is a pretty nice Prince of Persia Game with an AC Skin (which is pretty funny given that AC was originally intended as a POP spin-off). The game is at its best when you're Speedrunning and platforming through levels like a 2D Sonic game and not when you're doing Stealth and Combat. The Story is cool but is full of holes when you think of it. Discovery plays closer to a "2D Demake of AC2" with much better integration of stealth, combat and parkour but the story feels so needless and the Insane Speed of Ezio takes a lot to get used to. I'd personally rank ACAC as better than Discovery.
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With that said, let's get into the games starting with Altair's Chronicles.
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-Presentation
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The graphics look like those of a PS1 Game (and I mean that as a compliment). Environments look nice. Altair's character model looks pretty detailed (he doesn't have a face here. Although that kinda makes it more charming in a way). I don't value graphics that much anyway so I'm not holding anything against the game here.
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The game reuses a lot of the sound effects and music from AC1. So they're pretty well done. The issue is that the game only has 1 alert theme so it starts to get repetitive. Add in that many missions require you to be in combat or otherwise be spotted for minutes, the music gets really grating. I wish there were a couple more alert themes the game could have cycled through.
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I love the UI (and how they change colour depending on your area). Instead of using an Animus Sci-fi aesthetic (except for the health bar and pause menu. The iOS version used more of AC1's aesthetic), the game uses this paper map aesthetic that's pretty cool.
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-Gameplay
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Since going for an open-world game would have been beyond the scope of the DS, the game opts for a linear platformer with an isometric perspective. So The player can move all directions but the camera is fixed.
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The people who hate Oddyessy must really hate this game because this game shows Altair as being able to jump over buildings outside the simulation of the animus which should really conflict with the lore.
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Jokes aside, the gameplay is pretty good. Altair can run, jump and triple jump like in Mario 64, stick to walls and quickly run up them, balance and swing on poles and beams (you need to hold R, the command for walking, when you're on beams to not fall off. I feel it could be cooler if the player could run on beams and risk falling off for some extra speed. But I guess you could jump while on beams instead), climb specific objects like ladders (you can't climb buildings normally like in the main games), shoot out a grappling hook to swing across gaps etc. All this gives the player a lot of tools during platforming. It may not play like AC1 but it feels more fun. Levels that let you run across rooftops and let you sequence break (which isn't too hard) sections and puzzles with platforming tend to be the best parts of the game. There's this "Sonic the Hedgehog meets Prince of Persia" feel to when this happens. Unfortunately, this starts to become rarer after the first half of the game. The game starts slowing down with combat and linear platforming sections that I feel are much less fun than the more open first half.
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Combat has been surprisingly carried over from the main game, and it is even worse. For one, you don't need to time your counter attacks, you can just mash Y or X while holding R and Altair will counter most weaker enemies automatically. Enemies that can't be countered require you to constantly repeat spamming moves because they are damage sponges. Unlike say, Odyessy which also has enemies with large health pools, there are no abilities or special moves the player can use early on to cut through enemies. You're better off running past enemies, or knocking them off ledges. Sadly, these aren't always feasible so you'll be repeating YYX until you get the YXX and then the XXY combos to deal with enemies. Conversely, Bosses are a joke. They just require QTEs so they're faster to deal with than some regular soldiers. Basically combat slows the game down to a crawl. There is some hidden technique where if you can counter a grab by a guard, Altair will assassinate them instantly with the hidden blade. But it's both random if an enemy will do a grab and they're so fast you can't do them even when they happen so it's an unreliable strat. The combat only becomes bearable when you unlock the grappling hook pulling move that knocks enemies down leaving them vulnerable to an instakill. You can collect orbs by picking them up while platforming, opening chests by blowing in the microphone and killing enemies to upgrade your health and damage.
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Stealth is present in the game. You can sneak up on sleeping guards (who are somehow sleeping while standing up) by walking (by holding R) and pressing A to stealth Kill them (Altair will even do a short prayer for them when he does this). However this is pretty rare. Other times, there are missions where Altair can't be seen either by sticking to rooftops or he's wearing a disguise. For the most part, stealth is a small part of the game.
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The player has quite a few tools and gadgets they can select using the touch screen, they have a crossbow, explosive bombs, smoke bombs, throwing knives and a grappling hook. Some of these tools are used during platforming (throwing a knife to open a platform, using a bomb to clear debris) and many of these feel like gimmicks and are only used once in the entire game like the knives. Like I said earlier the grappling hook ends up being the best tool for both combat and platforming.
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There are puzzles as you play through the game. Many are incredibly basic (push a block to get a door open), some straight-up tell you the answer. There are 2 pretty cool ones. One during the Temple of Sand (which really goes against AC1's realistic style but looks great so I'm not complaining) where the player must time their jumps to press floor tiles in the correct pattern. And one later on where you have to rearrange a floor puzzle by moving pieces but each tile moves 2 different pieces. I once ended up solving it accidentally in 2 moves by going left and middle but I still think it was neat.
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Minigames-
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There are 2 minigames the player will have to do as they play the game. A minigame for pickpocketing that has the player using the touch screen to move a key out of a target's pocket all while avoiding moving apples and coins like that board game Operation. And a minigame for interrogation where the player has to play a version of Elite Beat Agents where they touch specific spots and drag a spot. These are the game's way of paying lip service to interrogations and pickpockets from AC1. I'm glad some effort went here to make the activities more fun and distinct but its telling that said minigames are used semi-regularly in the first half of the game and completely dropped in the 2nd half.
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Also, one issue is that there's a menu that shows the player what they've unlocked. Like once the player unlocks the triple jump, they can always triple jump and the menu shows that. But some skills are so situational and limited that I wonder why they're even listed here. There's a skill called "Disguise" that says "Take on anybody's appearance". Sounds cool right? Except Altair only uses it 3 times during the whole campaign during scripted sequences. He can't take just anybody's appearance. So why have it be a skill in the menu then and why have it appear unlocked (there are other skills like blending which are similarly too situational to be worth calling unlockable skills)? I feel it would be better that, if the player can get a stealth kill, they can take on anybody's appearance for a short time so they must balance having to move fast enough to get the most of the time limit but also not arouse suspicion by moving too fast.
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-Story
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I am not going to summarize the story here. That's what the Wiki is for:
https://assassinscreed.fandom.com/wiki/Assassin%27s_Creed:_Alta%C3%AFr%27s_Chronicles
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I also recommend reading this:
https://assassinscreed.fandom.com/wiki/Adha
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It's not too long a read. But I am going to discuss the story so spoilers.
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The first main issue I want to discuss is the ending. It is very unsatisfying given that nothing is resolved nor is it climactic. The story feels unfinished, like there would be a few more chapters of Altair looking for Adha one more time.
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By the way, do you want to know what happens next with Altair and Adha and how that ties into AC1? Tough Luck. You gotta read the codex entries from AC2, the novel The Secret Crusade and play some of AC Memories (which is a card game!) to find out more (or just read the Wiki)
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From the Wiki:
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"I had thought Adha would be the one to lead me to rest, that I might lay down my blade and live as a normal man. But now I know such dreams are best left to sleep..."
―Altaïr, in his Codex.[src]
For many days and nights, Altaïr pursued the Templar ship across the Mediterranean Sea , but in the end to no avail. When he had at last nearly caught up with Adha, she was executed by the Templars, and he could do little but cradle her lifeless body in his arms once he found her.[3]
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Adha's death would go on to haunt Altaïr for the the next year or more as he embarked on a quest for revenge, hunting down each and every last man responsible for her demise. So thorough was he that not a single Crusader with any connection to her murder remained alive by the time he was finished. In spite of this, he was unable to derive any solace from their deaths, and he returned to the Assassins numbed and heartbroken from his tragedy.[3]....
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"Contrary to his expectations, the Assassins did not punish Altaïr for assassinating Harash, and he remained a respected member of the brotherhood until his transgressions compromised them the following year. While he was welcomed back with full arms, this did not allay the scorn he had begun to feel towards the Creed, fueled in part by his bitterness over his failure to live a normal life with Adha.[4]
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His defiance towards the brotherhood eventually manifested during the mission to Solomon's Temple for the Apple of Eden in 1191, where he violated all three tenets in rapid succession. Not until his subsequent mission to regain his lost esteem in the face of demotion was his respect for the Assassins revived, as the experience—and standing against his traitorous Mentor—reinvigorated his passion to resolve the conflicts of humanity.[4]"
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So basically, we don't see Adha getting killed and how that affected Altair and how that leads into his personality for AC1 and that whole story. And here's the thing, if it was a time or development constraint, then I'd rather the devs cut a few dud chapters from early on in the game if it meant that the final chapter got a lot more closure even if it ended with Adha dying and Altair killing all Templars there and the story ending on a sad note because at least it would feel complete. The game already feels like it has segments padded out anyway. If the reason was that they intended for an "Atair's Chronicles 2" with Atair finding a dead Adha and setting out to kill all the Templars responsible and were never able to make it, then that's just sad. I suspect it was more the latter given that the ending still has a fully animated CGI cutscene suggesting that was intended as the ending.
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Altair's character:
I'm a little mixed on Altair's character. On the one hand, it makes sense that he's so chill in this story and becomes a dick in AC1 given what happens to Adha. On the other hand, we don't really see that in-game since Adha's death isn't seen so it feels like Altair's character goes from chill in this game, to a dick in AC1 to back to being chill in Revelations in a more inconsistent function. I think it would have been better if Altair was written to be a bit more arrogant in this game. It would contrast well against Basilisk who's more of a gentlemen at first. And Altair being all respectful towards Adha would make their relationship feel more special to the player. At the very least, it would have made this story seem to tie into AC1 a lot better and give him a more clear arc.
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Basilisk:
As an antagonist, Basilisk starts out interesting enough. He's presented as more of a gentlemen to Altair's laser-focused approach before turning out to be more of a coward and pushover. I feel the story doesn't lean into that enough and seems confused on whether Basilisk should be a serious threat or someone who's not but is able to use underhanded tactics to get the upper hand. I say this because as a serious threat, Basilisk loses his credibility when Altair beats on 2 separate occasions, the first of which makes him run away and the second has him begging for his life and some info to spare him, And then the final encounter plays it straight and serious with Basilisk as the final Big Bad that Altair must defeat without leaning much into their past encounters. There's something with how Altair is just angry but that's never taken advantage of. I think the story here would have been better if Basislisk was consistently set up as this big guy everyone's afraid off but isn't actually that hot and instead basically uses underhanded tactics to get ahead. Like a heel wrestler that talks up himself but in matches either uses DQs and the like to make it out and gets his comeuppance later when he's trapped with the Face that the whole audience has been waiting for because even though he's not a physical threat but still has some tricks up his sleeve, his actions still make him a credible antagonist using his unique approach. Bringing this back to AC, I think it would have been better if the final encounter was presented as Basilisk throwing everything he had at Altair and hopes that they softened him enough for him to finally win. That would have been in line with his presented character and would have been a lot more interesting. It also would have lined up with the gameplay as the player knows that Basilisk's boss fights are a joke but would be so annoyed by everything thus far so like Altair, they would be all for taking him down. It's not a matter of if but when and that can be played up to make it so much sweeter.
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Adha:
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Adha is handled oddly. In terms of the story and her relationship to Altair, she's one of the more important characters possibly in the franchise given the dominoes she ends up knocking down. Yet she's barely present in the story(ies). Even in this game, she has a unique model, icon and dialogue bar (Not even Altair has all 3 given his model is reskinned for the Assassins and some Templars), yet is in the story for like 1.3 chapters at most. She's presented as being someone Altair loves so much he's willing to leave the Assassins behind for her (something Revelations shows Altair wouldn't do given how "it's the only life he knows")
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"It was then that the two, in love as they were, agreed to flee together to a faraway place, away from the conflict between the Templars and Assassins, so as to settle down and pursue lives of normalcy.[2][3] "
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Yet in-game she shows up 3/4 through the story, Altair immediately recognizes her there even though it's the first the audience has ever seen her (I remember as a kid going on the wiki for this game wondering if I had skipped anything but no. That is her first appearance even though the story suggests they met before). We the audience have no connection to her. She's described as "the chalice" that can unite the Holy Land based on who controls the Chalice yet that's never shown how. It also makes the first half of the story a waste since Altair had to go around to different cities to find keys to go to the sand temple to open a chest to find the chalice only for it to be empty and for Basilisk to show up and say "No. The Chalice isn't an object, it's a woman" like the audience is supposed to figure it out (also, if Baslisk already knew that, why was he even at the Temple? Why were there keys in the first place? The whole thing feels like a waste).
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Perhaps this was the best the story could be due to the nature of the game's development. I can't fault the devs here. But let's say I could improve it. How would I rewrite the story so it flows and works a lot better? I'll assume it's within reason and limits of the DS.
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Firstly, I would have Altair written like how I said earlier. Make him more arrogant. The story has people like Basilisk and the Templar already hyping up Altair so it would be good characterization to have Altair as that arrogant yet loyal member. It would also make it all the more impactful when he changes his tune around Adha. It's a small touch so it shouldn't be too hard to implement.
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For Adha, I'd change it so Altair meets her early on in the story. Drop the whole mystery. We learn that she has magical blood (i.e Isu DNA) and that when she holds a special chalice, she gets special powers that can help whoever controls her win in the Holy Land. Her powers can be basically anything but I'd pick something like she can see the future or can see through people's eyes like the Observatory from AC4 or she can see thoughts or whatever. Something that's useful enough for people to be fighting over her but not powerful enough that she can just fight out and would need to comply with her captors. Basilisk and the Templars and the Sacrsens are all looking for both Adha and the Chalice so Altair must set out to find the Chalice. I'd also have it that Adha has a way to communicate telepathically with Altair throughout the adventure. She can help Altair with figuring out where to go and things like that as well as having some fun banter between the 2. I'm imagining 2 particular sequences where in one, she tells Altair a password to get through an area unscathed and another where there's like 6 sleeping guards and she tells Altair which one has the key he needs to pickpocket. The idea is that since Adha is so useful to both Altair and the player, the player is likely to connect with Adha and thus feels more like how Altair feels when she gets kidnapped and later killed. Her also having a tangible power provides a reason for the player to care if she falls into the wrong hands (this is set up for something later as well) as well as leaning into AC1 and Rev as to show why Altair might be willing to take responsibility for Isu powers and artifacts to not fall into the wrong hands.
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The story then mostly proceeds the same until you get to the end. Now Basilisk has both the Chalice and Adha and uses her power to help him leave traps and ambushes for Altair. Altair barely overcomes this and Baslisk is confident he can win this given how much he's tried to stack the deck. This should make it all the more satisfying to take him down given that he was working around his weakness in combat and it had an impact. Ideally, I'd have a chapter after this where Altair tries to rescue Adha, she gets killed in the chaos. Altair is devastated and kills all the Templars on the boat. The story fast forwards some time later when Altair kills all the Templars connected Adha's death, returns home to Masyaf to a hero's welcome for all his good work but he's become bitter as a result. Leading nicely into AC1.
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I think my version of the story is an improvement while still being reasonable to pull off on the DS, at most requiring a few cuts to some lacklustre levels and maybe a few more months of development. Altair's characterization is more on display and he even has an arc somewhat reminiscent of a standard hero's journey. Adha is now as important as the story thinks she is and helps connect the player and Altair. Basilisk is made a lot more interesting. The story now also avoids the issues of its first half being a waste, the chalice and importance not going anywhere and the ending becomes somewhat satisfactory.
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There are some issues with this. For one, I lean quite a fair bit into the powers whereas AC1 is quite grounded for 90% of its runtime. I think this is still a better approach because ACAC is already quite ungrounded at times (literally the whole Temple of Sand, Altair's gameplay, the premise of an artifact that can control the Holy Land) so why not take advantage of it? It's also the only way to make most of the gameplay the same while making Adha present and important without her having to tag along which would make the missions unwieldy.
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The ending still has issues. Once Adha dies in this hypothetical version, Altair will quickly kill all the targets and then the game ends. It still feels rushed but that's probably pushing the DS and amount of data anyway.
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So there you have it. Assassin's Creed Altair's Chronicles. An Ok game with some neat ideas but inconsistent all around. Had it spent more time in development and had a bit more focus, it could have been a lot more special. It feels unfinished in places but is still fun. I wouldn't recommend it unless you're curious and/or a huge fan of the series though.
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Now, onto the next game I'm going to cover, Assassin's Creed 2 Discovery.
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Discovery is a 2D Side-Scrolling Game that plays like a 2D demake of AC2 + Sonic the Hedgehog. I know that sounds weird but hear me out.
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Unlike ACAC which was more POP than AC, Dis has levels where the player is expected to move through and use stealth, there are multiple ways to move through levels. You can climb buildings. Combat is counter based on timing. Stealth kills, hiding spots, throwing knives, the leap of faith are all useful and quick to activate. Completing Optional Objectives awards you bonus synch (oh, and it actually takes place in the animus). Again, most of AC2 is translated here instead of being more on the periphery like in ACAC.
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And like Classic Sonic, you have insane speed that builds up as you run. You have momentum-based platforming that requires you to build up momentum before you make jumps (unlike AC2 where you could jump your max distance from a standstill), slopes you can run down to run even faster so you can jump even farther, a kind of homing attack when moving at high speeds to magnetize to an enemy to kill them. Multi-tiered level design with different vertical routes based on how you play that incentivize exploration to find collectibles and other items. There's a scoring system that tracks how you play. You're expected to play through levels multiple times to get the best run. There are even little white rings (these don't do anything except highlight a path you can take though). Basically, like Sonic, there's a mix of speed, platforming and exploration in one game only now Stealth is a thing.
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That last one is what makes the game feel inhospitable at first. You're constantly forced to go from supersonic speeds to a crawl as there's an enemy ahead and you don't want to be spotted, often feeling like the worst 2D Sonic levels like Marble Zone. And unlike ACAC, the minimap is a joke. It's so zoomed in that it can be hard to quickly switch between looking at the top screen where the game is being played so fast to the bottom screen where you'll learn an enemy is ahead of you only when you're almost in their sightlines. The iOS version does display the arrow on the screen so that's something but I wish the game had an option to zoom out more when running for both screens and the map actually showed you the path ahead and enemy locations before you got to them. You might argue this might break the game but this is how AC2 worked and it at least made the experience more consistent and fun. Your minimap gave you a massive heads up and let you proceed accordingly. Discovery does have a "walk/sneak" command that slows Ezio down and zooms out the top screen by holding L but I wish I didn't have to rely on it as much as a crutch as opposed to a tool. You also can't assassinate from hiding spots (which was one of AC2's whole selling points) which further hurts the pacing especially early on when you must wait for enemies to turn around or say screw it and take the score penalty and run past or jump over them getting detected.
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Eventually, you may get used to most of the quirks of the game. You can learn routes to minimize interaction with enemies or let you get the drop on them for those kill requirements. You can throw knives to instakill enemies who haven't seen you yet to keep the pace up. You can explore to find the collectibles and refills. It eventually gets quite fun. But there are things that keep me from fully getting sucked in like minimap, the stop and go nature and how the game will force you to get spotted sometimes so you get pelted with arrows and brutes and have few ways to respond. Had these issues been addressed, I can see this as being a better game to play than ACAC.
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Now regarding the combat, you might think based on everything I've ever said about the franchise that I hate this combat system. After all, it's basically AC2's combat system. The surprising thing is no. This might be the best implementation of Assassin's Creed's traditional combat and I don't mean that in a backhanded way. I mean it actually accomplishes the point of the counter based system.
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With most stealth-action games, the purpose of stealth is to be slower but safer while getting into combat is supposed to be faster but riskier. Look at say, Metal Gear Solid V. You can choose to slowly sneak your way through camps, taking care of enemies. You're at no risk of dying as long as you ain't spotted. In Combat, you can fight through enemies much faster, clearing them out sooner as well. But enemies are tough. They can use tactics like flanking, pincer movements etc to trap the player. The player also doesn't have a lot of health and enemies can call in reinforcements for backup. And if enemies are sufficiently geared up, they may even be more difficult to take down. It's often better to use stealth to clear out most enemies so if the player gets into combat it's more manageable.
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AC hasn't ever gotten this right (until Origins onwards which simply made both stealth and combat RPG paths you must invest in separately). Because while stealth is the slow way to play, combat is both faster and less risky. The timings are very lenient, you 1 hit kill enemies, enemies are scripted to attack one after the other as to not overwhelm the player. Said attacks also do pitiful damage. The player also has a ton of health that can easily be restored by dirt-common potions. Add in Brotherhood's chain kills and there is no danger or challenge. The player can cleave through armies like a hot knife through butter. And since enemy AI tends to be very basic, the player is more likely to get spotted and thus enter fights which brings more enemies so killing them all is always the most easy and efficient way to progress.
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In Discovery. When the player is fighting an enemy, they can either hold R and time Y with an enemy's attack to counter them. Counters aren't an instant kill on stronger enemies but they do the most damage. The player can time Y to do strikes that do some damage and can knock the enemy down but these take a longer time than doing counters. This also leaves you vulnerable to attack from archers and enemies surrounding you. Counters also require very precise timing and mistakes cost a lot of health. There's no potion or way to heal during fights. Some enemies like the ones with spears can't be jumped over. The end result is that the player can get through fights quickly but it's tough because it requires the player to stand in the middle of enemies timing perfect counters one after the other while mistakes can be fatal and the easier approaches may waste time. As a bonus, it makes all the cool combat finishers and animations all the sweeter because the player actually earned them and there was a huge risk of failure as opposed to the main games where they lack that impact. Anyway, Combat is actually challenging here (all it took was not making counters so OP, requiring players to have to actually time their moves, add a risk of failure and remove a whole dimension) which leads it to work well with stealth. Stealth is now the slow and safe way to progress while combat is fast and dangerous if you're not prepared. Hell, there's an actual benefit to running away from fights, something you only did in past AC games for the Hell of it rather than as a real decision. Of course, there are some issues here. Most standard mooks are easy to deal with. And combat can become frustrating if you avoid it for most of the game only to get forced into mandatory fights near the end that demand you instantly get good if you want to be fast or cheese a little to get through them. Still, like I said earlier this is the best implementation thus far. I wish there had been a training mode with the Animus sections so players could really test the combat system.
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Some other gameplay stuff (normally, I wouldn't copy from the wiki directly but whatever I would have written would have basically repeated the same points):
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Memories were played out in missions, similar to Assassin's Creed II, in that players were given synchronization points by clearing the mission, provided the required objectives were met in the mission's structure. These specific factors were the following: Time cleared, kills, damage taken, and notoriety. In order to achieve perfect synchronization with the requirements, the player had to complete the level as fast as possible, kill as many as they could, and take minimal damage respectively, though the required values varied from mission to mission.
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MissionTypes
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Several mission archetypes are present in game
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There were several mission types set in a specific memory, which defined how Ezio should have approached them, or the mission would be a failure. In all, there were three mission types in the game:
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Normal - Players could approach the mission however they liked and take their time to explore the environment for collectibles, however the basic mission factors were still present.
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Chase - Players had to run towards the objective whilst trying to avoid combat with any hostile enemies, determining the best route to reach the objective with speed. The player was followed by a rain of arrows that could only be avoided once Ezio was indoors or in a hiding spot.
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Stealth - Players were required to avoid open confrontation with hostile enemies at all costs, resorting only to using a stealth execution move. Enemies were indicated by arrows that appeared whenever Ezio was near to them, and the player was permitted to be spotted 3 times in total. Exceeding the given limit would result in the mission being a failure.
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[I'm glad there are no tailing or escort missions from the main game]
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There were also challenge rooms present in the game, which required Ezio to clear a specific objective. The challenge rooms were played through in the Animus corridor, similar to the tutorial levels in the game. Cheats, dubbed "Animus hacks", were present within the game, which could be unlocked by obtaining enough synchronization points. These cheats ranged from character skins to boosted gameplay movement and perks, which gave the player an advantage or allowed them to customize Ezio.
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However, only one hack could be used at a time, and once a level was finished with a hack activated, the level wouldn't continue automatically to the next, instead returning the player to the level menu.
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Collectibles were also present in game, with there being a total of 5 different variations: Memory paths, which could be used as a guide to show a player where to progress; Renaissance maps, which unlocked the aforementioned challenge rooms; Knives, which refilled Ezio's throwing knives supply; Wanted posters, which could be torn off to increase the health meter once the required amount was met, and finally art pieces, which could be collected by unlocking hidden rooms in missions.
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The iPhone and Nintendo DSi versions of the game allowed the player to integrate their facial likeness into the game through photos, replacing Ezio's placeholder image in the wanted posters with the player's own image. Also, the art pieces found in the iPhone version could be imported for use as wallpapers.
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I'm kinda sad I never played this game as a kid. I know kid me would have absolutely loved this and almost certainly would have 100% this multiple times. I was always a fan of AC, Sonic and 2D Stealth games so this was a wild match for me.
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-Presentation
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The game looks quite nice. You have that nice Renaissance look with Animus UI. Buildings, models, animations etc all look detailed and nice. The music seems to pull from AC1, even reusing that same alter them from ACAC that I'm quite sick off now. Still, I'd call it a step above ACAC.
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I do feel the game starts to look visually repetitive at times. Much of the Italy and Spain we see looks very similar with only the countryside and night areas providing more variation at the expense of more interesting level design (a flat countryside doesn't have as many buildings to climb on.
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..........
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Sadly, this is the extent of what I can post on Reddit. If you want to read what remains, the link to the article is here
https://mieckfram.blogspot.com/2020/10/a-review-of-assassins-creed-altairs.html

I visited my local Verizon store today and spent a good half an hour with the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL. I tried to find out some of the lesser-known things about the device, and reiterate some of the things you all probably already know along with my opinions.
This might be a long read; note that I'm writing this towards enthusiasts.
The Display
As expected, both the phones adhere to the sRGB color gamut right out of the box, extending to support wider color if an app calls for it. I posted a comment earlier about this:

If you're coming from an iPhone, you're not going to have a problem with the display at all. You're going to love it. The people that report that the display is "washed out" come from a display that over-saturates the display, which is pretty much every other OEM out there that uses OLED displays, with Samsung being the main "offender". Google, like Apple, are targeting color accuracy on the Pixel 2. The colors on the Pixel adhere to sRGB and support wide color if an app calls for it. The Pixel 2 is definitely pushing a more serious tone with their decision of targeting sRGB, but pairing it along with arguably the best camera out there truly makes the Pixel 2 more "professional" than other displays and cameras out there that love to over-saturate and over-sharpen. The colors that you see are the colors that you're SUPPOSED to be seeing. Perhaps the Pixel 2 is "less fun", but it will give you the most accurate/serious experience that won't leave you wondering why the photos you took aren't as colorful on your friend's iPhone like Samsung's phones do.

Now having personally spent more time with the phones, they are absolutely gorgeous.
The colors are fantastically calibrated to sRGB, besides the white point, which on the 2 XL is nearly unignorably cold while being much more tolerable on the regular Pixel 2; I would say that the Pixel 2 is just at about 6800k with the iPhone 7, and the 2 XL sitting at around 7200K.
The grayscale is fantastic, which Pixel 1 owners should be relieved to see coming from a horrendously green grayscale. Saturation across the brightness levels is consistent. I checked for banding and uniformity issues using a dark gray (#626262) and solid white color, and the 2 XL unit at my Verizon store was nearly flawless with zero banding and only a very slight bleed on the bottom left (literal) corner. This was tested at 0%, 10%, 20%, 30%, and 40% brightness, with Adaptive Brightness off. I did notice, however, that even the minimum brightness wasn't that dim and I was still able to use the panel within the store lights.
The maximum brightness gets decently bright, slightly brighter than my 1 XL. I was disappointed, however, to see that flashing my flashlight on the 2 XL's ambient light sensor did not trigger the display to enter brightness overdrive, even with Adaptive Brightness enabled. This may leave us demanding more from the display in sunlight compared to the V30 and S8(+)/Note 8 OLED panels.
There is an option called "Vivid Colors" in the Display settings that slightly push the saturation and leaving the white point alone, though it still won't be as punchy as Samsung's panels.
There has been a concern by many towards the display seeming "sunken in", popularized by MKBHD. I heard of this before seeing the Pixel 2, but it's not something I noticed until I remembered that it was supposed to be an issue. I then saw it, but only when focusing on the display's curved corners. Otherwise, the display definitely seems plastered to the screen, and the corners sort of fade out and become unnoticeable. They don't bother me a bit.
I expect many reviewers to bag on the display for not being as punchy or saturated as other OLED panels, but for those of us that love accurate displays, the Pixel 2 will not disappoint.
Speakers
They're okay. Google played it extremely safe here. They get decently loud without distortion. The profile is pretty flat, so for you EDM junkies out there the media equalizer will be your friend. The regular Pixel 2 sounds fuller and tighter than the 2 XL, though neither are going to win any "Best Speakers" awards--that still belongs to the Axon 7. Sound separation is discernible, but the hollowness of the 2 XL may sort of offset it. The main pro for the speakers is that they're front facing, leaving them unsusceptible to cupping mute. I tried to test the DAC but I couldn't because Google's head was so far up that jack and there was an alarm attached to the USB-C, which for some reason the Verizon employees would not allow me to remove.
Microphone
From what I've seen and heard, they're pretty good. Unfortunately there wasn't any concerts going on in my local Verizon store so I was not able to capture any bass-heavy settings to test for distortion. But, the mics feed back pretty loud and clear, unlike the muffled and hard-to-hear microphones on the Pixel 1.
Haptic Feedback
Very solid. Tight and noiseless. Strong and demanding when needed be. At short vibration lengths, these phones' vibration feels just like the iPhone's Taptic Engine. However, the stronger vibrations fail to maintain this tightness. Typing on GBoard with vibration at 1-2ms feels great and tappy. Pressing on the softkeys also lets out a pleasing, subtle tap when you release your finger from the key along with the initial vibration of pressing the button. This could be my first phone that I enable "Vibrate on tap" around the system.
Touch Latency
Touch latency is just about the same as the Pixel 1, so still pretty good and among the best. iPhone still manages to beat everyone out by in scroll/swipe latency.
RGB Notification LED
It's there, and very similar to the one found on the OP3.
OS
I would like to preface this section by saying that it's misleading to call the Pixels' OS's "pure stock android", because it's not, and it's definitely not just AOSP. It's Google's take on what they believe is the best revision of Android. It's Google's "skin" on Android, made in-house with the hardware being permanent residents. I can write an entire other post about this, but I will spare the details unless someone wishes for me to elaborate.
The use of Product Sans all over the OS is a change I liked a lot. It's now used as the typeface for title text in many places. It complements the curvy theme of the Pixel 2 XL really well, on top of just being a gorgeous display typeface. The most prominent use of it is right on the lock screen, where it replaces Roboto Light for the time text.
The status/notification icons (including the time) are inset about double of AOSP's inset, and the spacing between the icons has slightly increased. Also, either the size of the icons got a tad smaller, or the height of the status bar got taller. These changes together tidied up the status bar, making it look overall much cleaner than before. These are all actually changes I made myself using xposed on Android L/M, so it's great that Google incorporated it in the Pixel and that my design choice received reaffirmation by Google; a small personal victory for me. The battery icon in the status bar is also now curved at its corners and the entire icon slimmed up a bit. Something that still annoys me is how the colon between the hour and the minute text (eg 1:26) is still not vertically centered like it should be (126 with a bit of spacing fixes), and how Google still hasn't made a ligature for it on Roboto like Apple has for their San Francisco font family. It is vertically centered on the lock screen however, but that uses its own vertically-centered unicode symbol that Google could use in the status bar time but choose not to.
As noticed, using a dark wallpaper will enable a dark system interface. Other lighter wallpapers will leave it the system interface the same white color, with the notification tray being slightly transparent instead of being completely solid opaque white like on AOSP. These are triggered using overlays in /vendooverlay with Oreo's new overlay capabilities.
There was also some sort of weird, lenient (smart?) memory management going on. There were two apps in particular that I found would load their main activity instantly as if it was never removed from memory, even if I force stopped them and cleared them from recenfs: Snapchat and Google Play Store. Snapchat won't even show the splash screen. I suspect that Google is now keeping a list of some vital app activities to remain in memory for quick launching. Video: https://photos.app.goo.gl/4eexI731SPGph6M33
UI Performance is excellent, as expected. I thought Snapchat performance was smooth on the Pixel, but it's even better on the Pixel 2, and Facebook is smoother as well. Best of all, however, is that I was finally happy to see that Google Maps ran insanely smooth too, on par with Apple Maps on iPhones. Panning crazily around northern California yielded no hiccups, though with some very aggressive flinging I was able to make it drop a few frames. Developer Options was not enable-able on the Verizon units, so I didn't test the GPU Profiling.
Google Lens was interesting, though I didn't have much to test it on. Active Edge squeeze felt simple, intuitive and second-nature and gave off a satisfying tap on both sides of the phone to tell you that you managed to do at least something right.
As the Pixel 2 uses the Snapdragon 835, it now runs on Linux kernel version 4.4 and sports the new schedutil cpufreq instead of sched on the Pixel 1. It should be running on EAS r1.3 or r1.4 and it shows--this thing is smooth. In addition, the Pixel 2 does not underclock their SoC as some may have been led to believe; it runs the whole 2.5ghz.
Size, Ergonomics, & Opinions
These are more opinionated subjects, and these are merely my thoughts and opinions that you shouldn't take concretely.
I've never been a "big phone guy", and hated my transition to using big phones, but I've grown to like the 5.5" range. This year I was pretty much set on going back to 5">= phones coming from Pixel XL. I came into Verizon using the regular Pixel 2 first, enjoyingly using with just a single hand, but it didn't quite satisfy me as much as the Pixel 2 XL. The 2 XL is just the more beautiful device to me, and I can still manage to use the 2 XL pretty well with one hand coming from the Pixel XL; they're pretty much the same widths. The Pixel 2's bezels to me were still quite substantial in person, and even with the superior speakers, the really sharp display and better white point, it just didn't hold its own to the Pixel 2 XL's aesthetic as the thing I will be looking at for hundreds of hours.
The feel in the hand of both devices were fantastic to me, with the regular Pixel 2 having more heft for its size and feeling more solid. This was the aspect I was most afraid of, because having had a Nexus 6, I absolutely HATED holding that thing. I would say I have average-size hands, but I'd say I'm pretty damn good at leveraging my fingers in ways to hold a big phone in any way I want and be comfortable. The Nexus 6 was just too big and I didn't like that it almost forces you to use two hands and to move your palm when you just want to reach something on the other side of the screen. I didn't have that feeling with the Pixel 2 XL; it still feels compact and very similar to the Pixel 1 XL width-wise and top isn't that much further either, despite having a screen that's .5" larger.
The material on the back feels fine. I read way too many comments about how it feels cheap and plasticy. This was not my thought or experience at all; it feels very premium. It's much grippier than the metal on the Pixel 1.
As I've said, the bezels on the regular Pixel 2 were still quite overwhelming to me. The Pixel 2 XL is my second favorite-looking device from the front, following the V30. I absolutely hate Samsung's curved edges and I was glad to see that the 2 XL doesn't curve the display around them. The bezels on the Pixel 2 XL are perfect to me.
Camera
it's good

WWDC 2020 potential be on-line on my own this yr for available motives, but we are still assured Apple to naked its iOS 14 amend on time table in June, with a abounding cycle out in September. A brace of new leaks adumbration that delivered Home awning customizations are on the way with the brand new software.
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Some digging into aboriginal iOS 14 cipher by using 9to5Mac has appear that Apple is at atomic experimenting with the abstraction of Home awning widgets – now not aloof a ancillary console as in iPadOS, but really fledged widgets that can be repositioned as required.
Android telephones accept provided widgets for years of direction, and in contempo software program updates Apple has apparent some alertness to transport abroad from the well matched rows and columns of icons on iPhones and iPads.
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9to5Mac says the love remains in trying out and potential be scrapped, so don’t get your hopes up too abundant aloof but. Added aggrandized absoluteness look and a new app switcher are moreover reality angled for iOS 14.
We’ve additionally got an aboriginal attending at a remodeled wallpaper picker for iOS 14, as appear with the aid of @DongleBookPro on Twitter (a leaker with a appropriately admirable clue almanac returned it involves Apple well-knownshows).
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As able-bodied as assuming off a few new wallpaper designs for iOS 14, this time breach up into abstracted categories for added aboveboard browsing, the photographs additionally acknowledge delivered options for a way wallpapers are applied.
You’ll be able to set wallpapers as dynamic, or as flat, or as a gradient, consistent with the screenshots. You’ll moreover be able to dim wallpapers returned your telephone’s in aphotic mode, article you may already do in iOS thirteen.
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Apple hasn’t seem specific dates for WWDC 2020, or stated truely how the web architecture will work, however the twist of fate generally takes dwelling house in aboriginal June. As able-bodied as account on iOS 14, we should additionally apprehend about software program updates to all Apple’s brought articles too.
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Capitalist businesses exist to make profits, and they do so by trying to get as many sales of their product or service as possible.
The thing is, in order to maximize sales, businesses must encourage to buy their products as much as possible. Take Apple for instance. They produce iPhones year on year to sell to consumers, who chances are, already have a perfectly functioning mobile device. But already existing customers must be encouraged to buy the latest products, and so methods of increasing sales are applied like planned obsolescence, where a company will design a product so that it will either break or malfunction in time for new products to release, or will just be flat out inferior albeit marginally so (capitalism gravitates towards monopolies which aren't exactly the figureheads of innovation). Add aggressive marketing to the mix and you have a consumer culture.
Consumerism is overall bad for not just our planet but for society in general. Brand loyalty is an example of cult like behaviour people exhibit in a consumer culture. People will defend a company or brand even if it sells inferior products or is a bad actor (has poor working conditions, little concern for the environment etc). Consumerism is only detrimental to the world we live off of to sustain ourselves. In order to produce as many products as possible, you need to use more and more resources, which is inherently unsustainable because resources are finite.
It doesn't have to be this way at all. Production for profit is unsustainable because it requires forever increasing consumption. The thing is, we don't necessarily need to increase the use of resources in order to meet people's demands.
In an NLRBE, we would meet people's needs and wants in the most efficient way possible. When you remove the profit motive from production, it soon becomes apparent that producing as much goods as possible, year on year with minimal improvement, is a grotesquely inefficient use of resources. We can meet the same need for, say electronics, by producing devices that are built to last and are modular, allowing for upgrades and repairs down the line without replacing the entire device, and ensuring that everyone's needs are met for an extended period.
For example, imagine that in your home, you didn't have a TV, but intead had interactive wall surfaces that could project a screen on a portion of a wall in your home. By using this method, you are able to meet everyone's demand for television without actually needing to produce any TVs. The demand is met, and resources are saved. You could use the same technology to eliminate the need for things like paint and wallpaper. You want your walls to be red or green? You could do that, all without the need to use resources to produce paint. This is just one example, but I think it illustrates well how we can design our economy better to use technology to meet people's demands while radically reducing resource use.

0vigilate: 0.0.1 • Required for Palert to work.
3DNoDiv10: 1.2 • remove separators from 3d-touch menus, cleaner look.
AdBlock for YouTube: 1.0.7 • self-explanatory.
Anemone: 2.1.8-1 • well known.
AnimationsBeFast: 1.4.1 • get rid of ios 11 animations, especially when opening/closing apps or locking/unlocking the phone.
AppColorBadges: 1.0 • change badge colors based on the icon of the app.
AppHide: 0.2.3-2 • hide apps.
AppList: 1.5.14 • dependency.
Apps Manager: 1.4.0-36 • backup, restore and wipe apps. Very very useful.
AppSync Unified: 31.1 • install fake-signed apps.
Artsy: 1.2 • puts the music artwork everywhere, literally.
Aspect: 1.9 • theme
AudioSnapshotServer: 1.0.0 • dependency for MitsuhaXI.
AutoShiftFix: 0.1 • fixes that annoying auto shift when you type a capital letter then delete it.
BatteryLife: 1.7.0 • well known.
BatteryPercentX [Public]: 1.2.1-1 • show battery percentage instead of the icon, for iPhone X or older devices with littleX or home gestures.
Bazzi: 1.1.2 • custom battery icons for iPhone X, littleX and home gestures.
BetterCCXI: 1.3.9 • enhances the CC.
betterFiveColumnHomescreen: 1.0.1 • self-explanatory.
BlackOutCC: 0.0.8 • pitch black CC.
Bloard: 0.1.2-1 • system-wide dark keyboard.
Bolders: 0.0.4-2 • a better look for folders, like this (blur is applied by Safi)
CallBar X: 0.1-1 • tiny calling UI, well designed and developed!
Camera Tools: 1.4 • enhances your camera app, you can completely change the look of it.
Cask: 0.2 • animated UITableView elements.
CCModules: 1.2-14 • add custom modules for your CC.
CCMusicArtwork: 1.0 • adds the album artwork to your CC, useful if you only want it in the CC, otherwise use artsy.
CCSupport: 1.1.1 • rearrange CC modules.
CellularUsageOrderXI: 1.0.4 • sorts the cellular usage based on the amount of data used by the app (highest on top).
Cephei: 1.12 • dependency.
Cercube for YouTube: 4.2.2.5 • enhances the YouTube app, allows to download vids and also import audio to your music library.
ChargePulse: 0.2 • cool charging animation for the battery icon, does not work for iPhone X.
CloseCam: 0.0~beta1 • kill the camera app upon closing it, saves battery as the app continues to run in the background.
Clotus Theme: 5.0 • theme.
CocoaTop [Electra]: 2.0.2-1debug • see what’s using your CPU and kill running tasks, useful for troubleshooting.
ColorBadges: 1.2.0 • like AppColorBadges but has options to choose from.
ColorBanners 2: 1.1.1 • change the color of your notification banners based on the color of the icon.
colormycc: 2.0.0 • Color your CC.
ConfirmWACall: 1.0.0 • stalk people in WhatsApp and worry less about accidental calls.
CrashReporter: 1.16.0-1 • useful for troubleshooting.
Culvert: 0.0.5 • get a new wallpaper everyday from Bing, UnSplash, Vellum or Imgur.
Cuttlefish: 1.1.3 • change 3d-touch screen blur to match the color of the app.
cyground: 1.2.0 • leave cydia while it’s refreshing sources and it will not stop, finally!
Cylinder: 1.0.6 • a ton of icon animations while swiping through your HS pages.
DarkBot: 0.1.2 • dark mode for Tweetbot.
DateUnderTimeX: 1.1 • for iPhone x, littleX and home gestures.
DetailedPowerUsage: 1.0.2-1b • gives you more info about your battery and allows you to see which apps/daemons are using it the most, useful for troubleshooting.
DismissProgress: 1.0.3 • dismiss the installation screen in cydia.
DockAlpha: 1.0-1 • change the transparency of your dock.
DoubleTapLock [Public]: 0.0.3 • double tap a blank area of your SB to lock the device.
EasySwitcherX [Public]: 0.0.4-5 • swipe up apps to close them without holding first, also swiping down an app brings more options (close all apps, respring and reboot)
Eclipse X (iOS 11): 5.0.9-2 • system-wide dark mode.
EmojiKey: 1.4 • replace the dictation key with an emoji key, useful when using more than one language to easily access the emojis.
Ext3nder Installer: 021a • install and resign apps from your phone without the need of cydia impactor.
EZCCX: 1.0.1 • brings up your CC instead of reachability.
FacebookDarkMode: 2.0.1 • self-explanatory.
Fast Copy: 1.0 • there’s an annoying delay when you click on “cut/copy/paste/select all” from that tiny menu, this tweak kills that delay. Seriously see for yourself!
Filza File Manager 64-bit: 3.5.2-4 well known.
FiveIconDockXI: 0.0.1-20 • self-explanatory.
Flame: 1.3 • export your tweak list from within cydia and much more.
FlatSafariURL: 0.0.1 • like the earth. /s
Flex 3 Beta: 1:3~Beta48 • well known.
FrontCamUnMirror: 2.2 • adds a new button inside your camera app, to unmirror it.
FuckOffCCGrabber: 0.0.1 • yeah fuck off CC grabber.
FUGap: 1.1.2-1 • remove the top gap from your CC.
HapLock: 0.0.2-1 • haptic feedback when locking or unlocking your phone.
HapticKeypad: 1.2.1 • haptic feedback inside the phone app.
iCleaner Pro: 7.7.0 well known.
IconCert: 1.4-1 • like this
IconSupport: 1.11.0-1 • dependency.
IGDarkMode: 1.3 • dark mode for instagram.
Intelix: 1.3.4 • grouped notifications.
Jetslammed: 1.2 • there’s a memory limit set by iOS and when it’s reached JetSam (Jetsam is a system that monitors memory use in OSX and iOS.) would start killing the running tasks, causing random freezes and reboots, this tweak allows you to increase the memory allocation instead of doing it manually through filza.
KarenLocalizer: 1.0.4 • dependency.
KarenPrefs: 1.4 • dependency.
KITTLoader: 1.0.2-1 • replaces the statusbar spinning wheel with a cool tiny dot, like this, and you can adjust the speed, size and location
LatchKey: 1.1.1-1+debug • change the location of the lock glyph in the LS.
LD64: 274.2 • dependency. libbulletin: 0.1-142 • dependency. libCercube: 1.0.9-hotfix1 • dependency. libcolorpicker: 1.6-1 • dependency. libcrashreport: 1.1.0-1 • dependency. libpackageinfo: 1.1.0.1-1 • dependency. libRocket: 1.0.2 • dependency. libSparkAppList: 0.0.6 • dependency. libswift4: 4.1.2-1 • dependency. libsymbolicate: 1.9.0-1 • dependency.
LittleX: 1.3.7 • get the iPhone X UI and gestures on your device.
LiveFish: 1.2 • brings back the live Betta fish wallpapers.
LockAnim: 0.0~beta3 • cool animations when locking the phone.
Lotus: 1.0 • theme
MakeRespringsGreatAgain: 1.4 • shows the apple logo in the respring screen.
Malipo: 1.0.2-1 • custom charging sounds.
MiDevice: 0.0.1-6+debug • many system-wide options.
mikoto: 4.0.3 • many system-wide options.
Milkshake: 1.6 • theme
MImport: 0.0~beta34a • import music from within the music app.
MitsuhaXI: 0.5.3 • a visual music equalizer for the music app, spotify, SoundCloud, HS, LS and CC.
ModernXI: 0.1.0 • modern look for the notification banners.
MusiLyric: 0.5~beta4 • click on the album artwork to show lyrics like in spotify.
Muze 3: 1.1 • theme.
NewTerm 2 (iOS 7 – 11): 2.0 • well known.
NO PLS RECOVERY: 2.1.2 • so iTunes would randomly force-send your device to recovery mode and attempt to update it, this tweak prevents that from happening, only works while jailbroken.
NoCCBlurXI: 1.0 • get rid of the CC blur entirely.
NoctisXI: 1.5.4 • dark mode, better used for banners, folders, 3d-touch menus and widgets.. for apps use eclipse X.
NoPageDots7: 1.0 • self-explanatory.
NoRuinMyWP: 0.0.1-3+debug • remove the wallpaper contrast that is automatically set by iOS.
NoSharePlz: 1.0 • remove the share option from 3d-touch menus.
NoSlowAnimationsXI: 3.0 • speeds up your device.
NoSubstitute (Electra): 1.0-1 • well known.
Notchification: 1.1-5 • cool animations when receiving a notification, seriously check it out!
NtSpeed: 0.2~beta6 • shows your internet speed anywhere on the screen like this
NudeKeys: 4.3 • customize the color of the keyboard.
OnlineNotify: 2.3.19 • stalk people in WhatsApp.
Palert: 1.1.0-2 • well, one of my favorite tweaks ever! TvOS pop ups! example1 example2 example3 example 4
Palette: 1.0 • like Colorbanners2 but free, and also has an extra option to color the widgets.
PauseOnMute: 1.1.2 • pause music when you mute the volume and auto plays when you increase it.
PowerSelector (CCSupport): 1.1-1 • a useful module for CC to quickly respring, reboot, run uicache, go to safe mode and more.
PreferenceLoader: 2.2.4~alpha1 • dependency.
PreferenceOrganizer 2: 4.0.5 • organizes your settings by creating 3 categories: system apps, tweaks and appstore apps.
PrefixUI: 0.5 • dependency.
PurpleBar: 0.0.1-2 • purple color for the statusbar when do not disturb mode is on.
RealCC: 1.0.1 • completely turn off wifi and bluetooth from the CC.
RespringProgress: 1.3 • progress bar for resprings. Better used with MakeRespringsGreatAgain.
Rocket for Instagram: 3.0.16 • enhances the instagram app.
RocketBootstrap: 1.0.6 • dependency.
RoundScreenCorners: 1.1-1 • self-explanatory.
Safari Plus: 1.5.5 • enhances Safari, seriously it’s a must have.
Safi: 1.0 • custom blur for folders.
SilentScreenshot: 1.1-2 • self-explanatory.
Sileo Icon: 1.0 • not sure why i like sileo’s icon, it replaces cydia’s icon with it., Applied via anemone.
SizeFinder: 1.0 • shows app size instead of the “x”, like this
Slushi: 1.0 • theme.
SmallSiri: 1.0.0 • tiny Siri UI
SmartLPM: 1.3.0-1 • smart low power mode, need I say more?
Smooth3D: 1.1 • get rid of the blur in 3d-touch menus like this
SmoothCursor: 1.1.2 • the microsoft office cursor. It’s cool.
SpringChanger: 0.3 • change the background of your respring screen! example
SpringPlus11: 1.2 • many system-wide options.
SSGestures: 1.0.0 • bring gestures to the screenshot preview, swipe right to delete it or up to edit it.
SugarCane: 1.0.0-1+debug • shows percentage inside the brightness and volume modules in CC.
SwipeForMore: 1.1.7 • swipe tweaks inside cydia for more options.
SwipeSelection Pro: 1.0.3-1 • swipe across the keyboard letters to move the cursor or select text, makes life easier tbh.
System Info: 2.0.0-1 • adds more info inside the settings app.
TapTapFlip: 1.4.2 • double tap to switch between the front and rear camera.
TapticKeys: 0.0.1-5+debug • haptic feedback for the keyboard, a must have IMHO.
togglesafe: 1.0.2 • quickly go to safe mode by turning on/off the mute switch 3 times.
Trampoline: 2.0 • cool animations when opening and closing apps, but barely noticeable when you use a tweak to speed up animations.
TranslucentCydia: 0.9.0-1 • instead of the black screen.
TSS Saver: 1.2.0 • self-explanatory.
Tweak Count 2: 1.0.1 • self-explanatory, I’m at 165 packages atm!
tweakCompatible: 0.1.0 • shows if the tweak is compatible with your iOS version or not.
Twig: 1.0.1 • add weather to your lock screen.
TwitterDarkMode: 1.9.0.1-1 • self-explanatory.
VideoHUD: 2.3 • this volume HUD
WatusiTools: 1.5.0 • dependency for OnlineNotify.
Wifi Passwords List: 1.0.1-1 • self-explanatory.
WiJoin: 1.2 • small banner that tell you when you are disconnected/connected to wifi, like this
Yosemite Loading Wheel: 1.0 • like this and this

Continued from Part 6
◄ Bernie's Master Plan for 2020 ► The Prominent Players & Their Roles - Part 7
My Introduction to WayOfTheBern. My Political History AKA My Journey to The Revolution. [Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11] Now here's ONE MORE of The Prominent Elected Players in Bernie's Master Plan & Their Roles within it.

◄Rashida Tlaib = The Assist of The Squad► Rashida Tlaib from Detroit, Michigan—the oldest of 14 children (7 girls, 7 boys) of Palestinian immigrant parents—has been taking care of people all of her life. Her father worked on a Ford assembly line with the United Auto Workers union while her mother was mainly a homemaker raising those 14 kids (14?!). But with 14 (14?! WHAT?!) kids in the household, 1st child Rashida was thrust into the role of Junior Parent as she assisted her mother around the house. This upbringing at home & in the neighborhoods of Detroit, home of Motown & a HQ of the Civil Rights Movement, shaped Rashida for the rest of her life. Growing up a Palestinian-American Muslim in the predominantly Black area did not at all make Rashida feel out of place. She felt inspired by the legacy of equality well-preserved & documented all over Detroit & the diversity of peoples there made her proud of being from "The D".
After graduating from public school, Rashida went to Detroit's Wayne State University with a major in Political Science then after achieving her Bachelor's degree went on to Western Michigan University's Cooley Law School in Kalamazoo to get her Juris Doctor law degree. There's a pretty good reason why Rashida decided to go into law. September 11th happened & insane Islamophobia had a chokehold on the country. It got so bad that her own family was detained BY GUN & interrogated by the FBI at their own home. It was the first time Rashida was truly afraid of her own government. Where in the late 1990s she worked in a Civil Rights non-profit organization while earning her law degree, the aftermath of 9/11 TRULY motivated her to get into action as a 'no holds barred' activist fighting for justice in all of its forms.
In 2003, working at ACCESS, the Arab-American Community Center for Economic and Social Services, law school student/soon law school graduate Rashida met Steve Tobocman, a newly-elected Michigan State Representative. Rashida's work with immigrants was important to Tobocman, grandson of Jewish immigrants. Steve & Rashida hit it off instantly with him being greatly impressed with her knowledge & ability in handling social justice issues, a topic dear to his heart. No doubt that Steve was thrilled when Rashida joined his State Representative office as an intern in 2004 freshly graduated from law school. Jewish-American Tobocman & Palestinian-American Tlaib showed a potential hope for the Israel/Palestine situation as they worked together for justice. By 2008, now-Majority Floor Leader Tobocman at the end of his 3rd of 3 terms (term limits) had urged his now-Senior Policy Advisor Tlaib to run for his seat. But she was reluctant because of her distrust of electoral politics. Steve worked his magic & 7 different people nudged her before she finally decided to run. It was hard imagining a Palestinian Muslim Woman getting elected in Michigan but it's 2008 & some half-Black/half-White guy named Barack Hussein Obama II is making his historic run for the Presidency. If he could do it, then so could she. Motivated & inspired, Rashida became Obama's Michigan Arab-American Outreach Coordinator as she ran. And in her race, Rashida exceeded ALL expectations coming out with 44% of the vote in a 8-way Democratic Primary & winning the General Election with 90% of the vote! She made history becoming the 1st Palestinian-American (with Justin Amash) & the 1st Muslim Woman ever elected in the Michigan Legislature.
Making history was just the beginning for the firebrand Rashida who broke all the rules expected of an elected official acting more like activist than politician. Shouting loud with Bullhorn in hand, Rashida LITERALLY put her body on the line taking on local & multinational assaults on the community. Physically gathering for removal the toxic PetCoke of the Koch Brothers & Marathon Oil that runs in the waters of the riverfront, laying down on the streets in front of the public high school she graduated from to protest & prevent its intended shuttering, putting the freeze on ICE—Immigration & Customs Enforcement, railing against racism & religious bigotry, collapsing the local evil bridge-owning billionaire Matty Moroun & his endless community-harming schemes, all while serving her community to the utmost in each & every social/economical/environmental way she possibly can. And it didn't stop when her 3 terms were up with her joining the legendary Maurice & Jane Sugar Law Center as a lawyer in 2014. Taking care of people is what she has done all of her life & Rashida did whatever she could inside & outside the system to bring substantial change. And she found one who could truly bring that change she could believe in through Bernie Sanders as he began his unlikely revolutionary 2016 campaign. Rashida joins The Bernie Movement in 2015 as a supporter on fire as she Feels The Bern & was a part of his SHOCK primary upset of Hillary Clinton in Michigan. But after the SHOCK rise of Donald Trump (which she furiously protested), Rashida had a chance to make change on a level like never before.
Decades-long U.S. Representative & Civil Rights icon the late John Conyers stepped down in 2017 & his nearly 53-year held seat was up for grabs. As 2018 began, Rashida entered both crowded Democratic Primaries for the Special Election to finish his term & the General Election to succeed him. Then in April, she joined the rising Justice Democrats to eek out a hard-fought win in the Primary for the General Election, auto-winning the General to become the 1st Palestinian-American Woman & one of the 1st Muslim Women (with Ilhan Omar of Minnesota) EVER Elected to U.S. Congress. HISTORIC! Rashida Tlaib boosts The Bernie Movement for Medicare For All champion John Conyers in the 2018 Midterms as part of the new Justice Democrats Squad. Another sign of hope for Palestine/Israel with a Palestinian Muslim like Rashida working with a Jew like Bernie.
Rashida Tlaib, the Brown Palestinian Arab Muslim Woman, SHOULD be THE prime target for Lightning Rod-style treatment especially with Israel situation. But she's the one who DOESN'T normally wear a hijab. Harder to make a Boogeywoman out of a lawyer wearing a blazer. All they have to go on is her strong Palestinian Arab looks & her various associations. But Six Degrees of Rashida Tlaib won't beat the Kevin Bacon edition. So instead, she is usually paired with Ilhan Omar in a two-pack of Islamophobia as a signal booster for the lightning strikes. Two Boogeywomen for the fright of One! Rashida assists in creating the Horror Matinee for "The General Right" & "The Establishment Left".
And this function is why Rashida is The Assist of The Squad. She's the TAG-TEAM PARTNER willing to boost & amplify the efforts of The Squad. In basketball, an assist is made when one player makes an alley-oop for another player to slam dunk. Any play that sets up a Goal. You'll see Rashida right in the mix with the Green New Deal, Abolishing ICE, backing up Ilhan on AIPAC, matching AOC on Trump's impeachment, & more. But unlike AOC The Leader & Ilhan The Lightning Rod, Rashida The Assist splits time between the Spotlight & the Background. For every "IMPEACH THE MOTHERFUCKER!", there's also a periodic lull in the headlines for Rashida #TweetYourThobe. The Assist doesn't want to draw too much unnecessary attention to herself. As much of a fireball she can be, she knows when to go incognito. Rashida, called Mama Bear by the rest of The Squad, is very protective of her Squad Sisters taking good care of them & The Revolution's mission. The most passionate one who wears her heart on her sleeve, Rashida is aware that her flame-fueled nature can be counterproductive to the Master Plan. So in order to not cause any unintended distractions, she likes to stay close to Detroit 13th District Strong & let the others get most of the shine. Her split time between Spotlight & Background is why she has the 3rd largest following in the group (with 884 thousand Twitter followers & rising). In persistence, The Assist of The Squad will provide the Assistance against the #Resistance to The Revolution. Amo Bernie is one proud Chief.
​
Continued in Part 8 John Lucas

Hi you all,
Made different simple suggestions to improve Elementary OS in the future and I repost them here. If nothing else, please read my final two paragraphs. Thank you.
1 - If the top-panel is translucent, and adapts itself according to the different wallpapers, so should do the dock, the notification-bubbles and the slingshot menu, no?
2 - Users should be able to change the number of indicators in the wingpanel, by turning on and off switchers in the settings (in sound settings, the sound and mic indicators; in the Bluetooth settings, the bluetooth indicator; and in the Display, the Night Light; same for languages) ;
3 - Users should also be able to change the order of the indicators in the wingpanel. The order pre-established is not necessarily the one users desire;
4 - Files: the folder colours, in the right click contextual menu, should be reviewed: the number of colours as well as the order of display. First : find a logic in how the colours are disposed, maybe from warm colours to cold colours, or vice-versa. I suggest you to use the colours from the palette of Calendar events. Second : Darker colors (like brown) should be excluded. The goal of this feature is to have popping colours that help the user to easily identify the files it is looking for. Darker colors do not pop. Third: the users should be able to mark Files/Folders with more than one colour. Fourth : once marked, the marked Files/Folders should all easily and quicky be « findable » by colour-categories, by clicking in the relevant colour within the Files sidebar (like Deepin and MacOS do). Otherwise, why would Files have such feature if the Files/Folders we marked are still lost within the file system?
5 - Files: eOS has progressive lines for sound, for mic, for night light, why not for the size of the icons, both in Files and in Plank?
6 - Files: small design problems: the distance between the address bar and the view-modes should be the same as the size of the “+” squared-button to add a new tab. Same between the navigation arrows and the files-view-modes.
7 - Files: Files should have its own gear-icon, to display the different settings, if for nothing else then at least to select how one wants to organise the different files/folders (name, size, type) and to show the “About”;
8 - Photos: the color scale should be integrated and be displayed in a side-menu of the app.
9 - Photos: photos should also comprise a small number of standard filters to be applied. This would speed up the users work. Something like this: https://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2012/12/twitter-filters.jpg
10 - Photos: like for Terminal and Code, the users should be able to choose the colours mode of the app. Especially in photos where “colour” is particularly important. I would suggest adding to the Photos settings a light and dark mode ;
11 - Photos: the navigation arrows in Files are in the left side and monocolor. Why would it be any different for Photos? The navigation arrows in Photos are in the right side (and after the search bar!) and coloured ;
12 - Photos: in Music, in Code, in Epiphany and in Photos, the gear-icon for settings should be flat and monocolored like the ones of Terminal and in the keyboard shortcuts. Same thing for the magnifying-glasses. The use of both icons has to harmonized throughout the OS;
13 - Photos : by default, I would make the right side bar much larger and align it with the left extremity of the search bar ;
14 - Music: small design problems. The square in which is written “Library” is a tiny bit smaller than the square in which is written “Personal” (in Files). Same thing for “Playlists” square. The sizes should be harmonised ;
15 - Music: What was said here-before about the distances between the address bar and the view-modes, is also valid for the distances between the music progress-bar and the music-files view-modes;
16 - Music: in the new list side-bar, the time-length of a song should be aligned with the square of the album art.
17 - Music: if users are able to rate songs with stars, why not display those ratings in the centre of the app, where every album is displayed, under the author name? I did not try whether or not it is possible, but users should be able to list songs by order of ratings ;
18 - Music: music app should also be a client for streaming music (namely spotify) and for radio. We are in an age where we don’t physically owe the music we listen... maybe I am wrong but no body uses the “View in columns” and it could be transformed into a button for Radio. A Fourth button would be added for Streaming ;
19 - Music : in Music, in Code, in Epiphany and in Photos, the gear-icon for settings should be flat and monocolored like the ones of Terminal and in the keyboard shortcuts. Same thing for the magnifying-glasses. The use of both icons has to harmonised throughout the OS;
20 - Music : why is the “Enable Shuffle” in one side of the progressive bar and the “Enable Repeat” in the other side of the progressive bar. It makes no sense. They should be side by side, on the same side of the progressive bar, as they are both related to the way the songs are going to be read;
21 - Music : I would suggest adding to the Music settings a light and dark mode ;
22 - Music : in the “View as Albums”, I suggest adding a bar to adjust the size of the thumbnails, like in Photos;
23 - Music : a sound bar, to raise and lower the sound from Music, should be made available to the user;
24 - Music : the list view in Files is much more spacious than the list view of files. This also should be harmonised ;
25 - Epiphany : in Music, in Code, in Epiphany and in Photos, the gear-icon for settings should be flat and monocolored like the ones of Terminal and in the keyboard shortcuts. Same thing for the magnifying-glasses. The use of both icons has to harmonised throughout the OS;
26 - Epiphany: the popup windows from epiphany settings, as well as the network > advanced settings, are gnome apps lacking work in order for them to fit within the whole eOS environment;
27 - Settings : the gear icon in the selected display is in flat dark grey. And while it is consistent with the rest of the OS, I would rather make the gear in flat white in that specific part: it would be more visible;
28 - Settings : the popup windows from epiphany settings, as well as the wifi settings, are gnome apps lacking work in order for them to fit within the whole eOS environment;
29 - Settings : a lot of small design problems under Sound > Output. In “Balance”, the word “Left” is aligned with the extremity of the bar, but the word “Right” is not. Also, the middle point of the different bars should somehow be aligned with the middle line between the buttons “Output” and “Input”. It seems also that the “Output Volume” bar is not quite between the two points “:” of “Output Volume:”. The distance between “Events Sounds” and “Output Port” seems to be bigger than the one between “Output Volume” and “Balance”. This also requires harmonisation. Under Sound > Input, the “Recording Volume” bar is not quite between the two points “:” of “Recording Volume:”. Also, the middle point of the Recording Volume” bar should somehow be aligned with the middle line between the buttons “Output” and “Input" ;
30 - Settings : small design problems : In "Printers" as well as in "Language and Region" the "+" button is not at the same distance from the extremety of the window as the "+" button in Music. I think the latter looks better ;
31 - Settings : small design problems : in User Accounts > Guest Session the "Log in automatically" is not aligned with anything. I would suggest to align it with the text "The Guest session allows someone...". Btw, this text contains a gramatical mistake : it first refers to someone (who is allowed to use a temporary default account), which is a singular person, and then it says that "once they log out...". Who is they? The "someone", I suppose, but "someone" is a singular person. So it should rather be : "once he or she logs out...". Also, if you enable the Guest Session, every reference to the Guest Session is made with majuscules - G-uest S-ession -except in the yellow info bar ;
32 - Settings : the high contrast theme just doesn't work well ;
33 - Settings : small design problems : In Display, the line between the buttons “Sunset to Sunrise” and “Manual” should somehow be aligned with the line between the buttons “Displays” and “Night Light”. In “Color Temperature”, the words “More Cold” are aligned with the extremity of the bar, but the words “More Warm” are not.
34 - Settings : small design problems : the middle point of the different bars should somehow struck the middle point of the button "Shortcuts" (up) ;
35 - Settings : a lot of small design problems : all switchers should be aligned. The "Reveal pointer" switcher and the "Middle click paste" switcher are not aligned with the remaining switchers ;
36 - Settings : In Time, allow users to change the time and date format. Maybe they want to display it in a different way in the Wingpanel. XFCE allows this ;
37 - Settings : In security and privacy, maybe a microphone section, a camera section and User file section to forbid or allow installed aps to access to those. In the "Locking" section, allow or forbid to see notification bubbles and/or the notification center from the Greeter ;
38 - Calendar : the default event color should not be rose but some other more popping colour. Red maybe?
39 - Calendar : when clicking in the month (up in the headings) or in the year, a poppup menu should open in order for the user to select a specific month or year. And why are those buttons so big anyway?
40 - Why are there icons with more thin and refined lines, and others that look brutally designed and careless? As an example: the refresh button in Epiphany seems really thick as well as the arrows (back, forth, down, up) and the sound waves of the sound icon (when you click in the sound icon in the wingpanel);
41 - why are the arrows “down” and “up” of a different style than those from the “back” and “fourth” in the Files headings?
42 - the horizontal line of the “+” button (to add stuffs) seems smaller than the horizontal line of the “-“ button (to remove stuffs). If so, it is unnecessarily inconsistent ;
43 - Code: the Code buttons in the middle of the tools bar (headings) are in this more clear or white color, so that they stand out from the grey tool bar. This is a nice touch: buttons stand out, are easily identifiable and are not confused with the headings (which also could mean that they are not available or working - such as a grey search-bar). I wonder: why is it not so for the view-mode buttons in Files and Music; why is it not so with the back and forth buttons in the Settings or with the Home and Installed buttons in the AppCenter? In any case, this is not harmonised throughout eOS;
44 - the switch buttons are just a little bit too big. I will try to explain why. The small balls to raise or lower the sound (of microphones or stereo) are much smaller than the balls of the switchers. So either one of the two things is true: either the size of the balls from the progressive bars is too small or the switcher balls are over-dimensioned. I tend to favor this last theory. No OS has such big switchers. Again, they are just a littler too big, but balls harmonisation is required in my opinion. To further precise my point, check this screeshot from an iphone: https://img.gadgethacks.com/img/44/60/63638471308232/0/turn-your-iphones-auto-brightness-off-ios-12.w1456.jpg The ball from the brightness bar has the same size as the balls from the switchers....
45 - In Music, click in “Import Music”. A dialog window will open. In its superior right corner, you have an icon that allows the users to “Create Folder”. Now, lets go to Videos. Lets click in “Open File” (btw F-ile is written here with the minuscule). A dialog window will open. In its superior right corner, you will NOT have an icon that allows the users to “Create Folder”. Why this difference? Plus in the inferior left corner of the Videos dialog window you will get to choose between “Video files” and “All files”. In the inferior left corner of the Music dialog window you will NOT get to choose between “Music files” and “All files”. Why? The Photos dialog window is even a different thing : it does contain an option to “Create Folder” but it does not allow to select between “Photo files” and “All files”. This requires harmonisation... Also, in all dialog windows, why are the sidebar icons displayed in a different order than the icons of Files?!
46 - The multitasking view needs two things : the desktop thumbnails need to go up. The user is usually under the PC, and what is down the screen is the first thing he/she sees. And he needs first to see and have control over the Desktop than over the thumbnails. Also, the user should be able to drag the thumbnails and decide of the order of the different open desktops ;
47 - The black ball, with the cross, to close notifications bubbles and the open desktops (in multitasking view) is too big. It should be of the same size as the balls from the switchers (check issue under bullet 43 here-before) ;
48 - a general OS “dark mode” or “light mode” in the settings;
49 - maintain picture-in-picture fully working even when the app it is following is closed.
Remember: the linux market is mainly one of machines with lower specs and/or of people who are privacy concerned (because of the data that is being absorbed by Google, Microsoft and/or Apple). Being light (as light as possible), yet responsive, privacy-friendly and privacy-conscientious should be the aims of eOS. Deepin has reduced the size of its OS in the last published version. They also pulled off some features collecting data. I am not sure what efforts the eOS team has made to reduce the size of the OS, and of make it more responsive, but I can say that many efforts have been made to make it more privacy friendly. It is yet insufficient: if theres any app collecting personal data, the user cannot just be informed that the app is going to collect data. The user has to be informed, with precision, what kind of data is going to be collected; who, behind the app, is going to collect and keep that data; for what specific purposes is that data being collected; for how long that data is going to be kept; how the user can retract consent given to any data collection (by switching off whatever-switcher); and that user can ask that data to be erased at any time. This is not only necessary to show that eOS is privacy-friendly, but also to comply with the European laws. I may be able to help you in advising you.
Also, the eOS privacy-friendliness has to be respected throughout the system, and ensured also by the published apps in the App Center. eOS team has to make sure those apps inform the user about what I listed above or (temporarily) exclude them. In complement to this, the eOS team should also exclude the eOS responsibility in case those apps stop respecting the requirements for some reason (you never know...) and implement disclaimers concerning the data collected by the apps available in the app store.
Long live to the eOS project.
Thank you.

So finally. Motorola came through. I wasn't expecting them to actually stick to the July 1st deadline. They did. And that makes me happy.
Anyways, talking about expectations, I think the phone has surpassed them, in general.
The original Moto X has been an excellent phone. There are often times when you actually look at a piece of technology and you can see that it is a carefully planned and well engineered device. It is one of the few phones that you can call truly ergonomic.
After using the Moto X for a couple of years, everytime I pick up another phone, any phone like the Nexus 5, or even an Iphone, it just feels so much more difficult to handle. Motorola, has it the nail on its head in terms of design. Allow me to list the things that delight me when I pick up my Moto X:

• 4.7 inch touch screen: Perfect.
  
• Active Display: Perfect
  
• Body design: Perfect,
  
• Headphone jack placement: perfect,
  
• Moto Voice: Not perfect but pretty cool once you get used to it;
  
• and last, but not the least; Power and Volume Rockr buttons placement: Bloody Perfect
  

Then there are things like the built in equaliser, the amazingly thin bezels on its sides, and its water repelling capabilities that just feel like cherries on the top.
It does have its problems, but the things it does, it does well. I got the Lollipop update yesterday, and as much as I was waiting for it eagerly, I know for a fact that I would have used the phone with Kitkat till I could. It is that good.
Now, coming to the topic at hand, Lollipop.
As much as the Moto X did not need it, Lollipop, has, in this case, breathe new life into the phone. It feels so much more smoother. There are times when it is skipping frames here and there, but that is okay I guess. The animations have become a delight to see and the material UI with the black app drawer is looking pretty sleek. I have been using Tapet as my wallpaper app for the past few weeks and I must say, it looks beautiful on the amoled screen. Fucking beautiful.
The display brightness issue that was ever so present in Kitkat seems to have been solved. I used it on auto brightness and in completely dark rooms, unlike on Kitkat, it does dim down to comfortable levels without the screen going purple. I see people complaining about high brightness levels on Lollipop for the 2014 models. Guys, just use Lux.
The UI overhaul for Moto Voice is also a welcome change, and it feels good to be able to call the phone any name other than OK Google Now. I, for now, have been calling it Moto X but would love name suggestions if you have any. Hahaha!
Active Display tho, has been kind of a disappointment. I feel that the original Active Display on Kitkat was better. But thats just my opinion. They have removed the animation of the dots that used to appear when you would tap on the center of the screen and now the lock just disappears and the unlocked icon appears below it. Also, I just hate the way they show the battery and the time on top 1/20th of the screen in small font with a line below it.
They have also removed the wave to wake functionality that used to be so useful when you have your phone on the table. Now active display just lights up when you have a notification or when you pick up the phone.
There have been no major improvements on the camera side, but they had already updated the app before lollipop came out so that is all good there.
In the battery department, the screen on times are the same, but standby times seem to have improved. ,Drastically. For 4 hours, while I was at work, the phone was sitting on the table. No notifications came in. I did not switch it on or even pick it up. So no active display either. It was just there and it lost about 3% battery.
On kitkat, it used to go from 75 percent to 65 percent in a matter of 4 hours doing nothing. So that is a HUGE improvement. But it still does not last a full day. It will need a top up in the middle of the day if you are using it heavy.
The equaliser, though, seems to have lost some of its effectiveness. The audio has been sounding a little wee bit flat since the upgrade. I tried playing around with the audio setting but it never really came at par with how music sounded on Kitkat. Not a deal breaker tho. It was one of those cherries on the top and there is still an in built equaliser that you can play around with.
That was just the Motorola goodness. You also get the Lollipop goodness then. Pinning tabs, better privacy controls, better notification handling, the amazing system font. They have also included a invert colurs thingy where you can go and invert the phone's colours. Pretty neat if you have colour blindness.
One thing I would recommend is going into the settings and turning the system font size down to Small. They have done an amazing job scaling the fonts and the screen just feels bigger and cleaner when you are reading text now.
Then Moto X (2013) has always been the underdog in the world of flagships. It had a relatively lower end processor, small memory, a lower res. (albeit a beautiful one) display and as much as you can hate Motorola for their delays in delivering and what not, one has to understand, this was their first flagship. And their love and commitment towards it, even today, is very much visible.
PS: I might have missed a few things, but this post was purely because I feel there are certain things that need to be appreciated about this phone. Thanks!
Edit 1: So I am having this issue where the phone disconnects from WiFi when it is on standby. But this problem is happening only when the phone is on the office network. This issue does not happen on my home network and it wasn't happening when I was on KitKat in the office. Weird.
Edit 2: The problem was with the wifi router. Phone is all good.
Edit 3: While talking on the phone, I realized that the volume controls don't work. You can't turn the speaker volume down or up. It's pretty loud IMO.

Today I am releasing my first indie game, MatchCraft, for free on iOS. MatchCraft is a match-3 game with beautiful art that gives the player control of the four elements. As the game progresses, the player gains levels, unlocks new elemental spells and earns coins to buy magical items.

• iTunes Link for MatchCraft
• Screenshot - iPad and iPhone

What did I learn during the development of my first game? What went right? What went wrong and what I do I wish I'd have known before I started? My first source control check-in was over a year ago, but the real work spanned about five months after accounting for contract work that helped pay bills. The choice to ultimately release the game as Freemium was not an easy one, but I explain a bit of what my thought process was later. I'll update after a month with my revenue numbers.
.
What Went Right

1. I finished a game - I started with a simple game concept (one that's probably been done to death) and put my own spin on it. I did this because I wanted to learn Unity and felt a simple game concept would allow me to focus on learning the tools. Knowing that I stuck with it and finished a game is something that makes me proud.
   
2. I hired an artist - I'm decent in PhotoShop but I'm no artist. I knew that if I wanted something polished and professional looking I would need to hire someone. At the very beginning I knew that I wanted Warcraft 3 / WoW style icons for the game. I contacted people from Deviant Art, various art agencies around the world, etc trying to find something I could afford. I got quotes as high as $100 per icon. Ultimately I found a great artist on a Warcraft 3 modding site. My artist Anton made hundreds of WC3 icons for the site and had exactly the art style I wanted. I provided concepts, but what he actually made was much better than I had imagined. Screenshot - Icons
   In the end, I paid around $1500 for art. I did quite a bit of the UI (modals, main menu, store) myself to save costs. Check out Anton's site here
   
3. I didn't write my own tools, I used the Asset Store - I have a CS degree and I have written game engines in the past, but my goal was to write a game not tools. Fighting the urge to roll my own tools or to heavily modify the ones I bought was probably the hardest thing for me to do. Here's a list of tools I bought or used during the creation of MatchCraft.
   
   • EZ Gui / SpriteManager 2 - $400 - 2D Sprites - Would buy something else, too expensive, does too much
   • GlyphDesigner - $30 - Fonts - Would buy again
   • TimelineFX - $50 - Bitmapped Particle Effects - Would buy again
   • Prime31 Assets - $Various - StoreKit, Etcetera 1, Flurry Analytics - Would buy again
4. I used the Unity WebPlayer for feedback - I was able to send out builds of my game to friends and family using the Unity WebPlayer. The feedback I got during this process was helpful.
   
5. I used source control - I recall one occasion where my Unity project file became corrupted and none of the scene files worked. It would have been a nightmare to rebuild the scenes from scratch, but I was able to restore to an older version from source control. GitHub gets $7 a month from me and I'm happy!
   
6. I got an office outside my home - This is a success/failure wrapped up into one point. I find it very difficult to focus on work when at home. I work better in the afternoon/evenings and my work schedule shifted to 11am-7pm. I got so much more done when I got in my car, drove to an office and sat down at the same computer that used to be at my house. Initially I thought the idea was absurd. Why would I pay for an office when I had one at home? Why would I choose to drive if I didn't have to? It turns out the drive afforded me the ability to change my mental state to one of work and to think about the tasks to complete for the day.
   The reason this is also a failure is that I ended my lease on the office space when I thought I was near completion (several months ago). This was before I discovered performance issues and started the iPhone UI. I should have stayed in the office until I shipped. The current plan is to get another out-of-the-house office as soon as possible.
   
7. Checking off to-do lists - I think one sign of a good developer is the ability to see the software problem from a few miles up. A good developer can look at one chunk of code and think through how changing it will affect something else. Having this "mile high" look at the game laid out in front of me also caused analysis paralysis at times. There were times where I realized just how much work was left to do and it was very difficult to figure out what elephant to eat. Making a to-do list of tasks helped because it allowed me to stop looking at the big picture and only look at what was next on the list. When overloaded mentally, to-do lists are a better at getting work done than my alternative.. taking a nap and "thinking".
   
8. Versioned Game Save - Honestly, my biggest fear is releasing an update and overwriting someone's hard work and all the virtual currency they've earned or purchased. I put in extra time to add a version number to my "game save" code so that when I release updates I can increment that number and it will ensure I don't mess up the previous version's game state. Now, of course, I could forget to update that number.. Perhaps I should figure out how to tie the version # to an auto generated build #. Bah.
   

.
What Went Wrong

1. I made too many screens and themed UIs - I would wager that I spent over 60% of my time creating and implementing the UI. I thought I would be clever and make themed skins for my game: Earth, Fire, Wind, Water. I did this, and they look beautiful, but I should have never done it. I spent way too much time doing art and not enough time creating products that could earn my business money. I avoided the trappings of creating my own tools but I fell into the comfort of designing UI (it's what I am paid professionally to do). You are your own worst enemy when it comes to time management. All of my games in the future will have two screens: the main menu and the game.
   Screenshot - Fire & Earth | Screenshot - Wind & Water
   
2. I created iPhone and iPad Versions - Ever wonder why Angry birds was only on iPhone for so long? I don't any more! I wanted to showcase the artwork by making two different versions, but this took an extraordinary amount of time to do. If I would have simply done the iPhone version and taken advantage of the "2x" feature on the iPad, perhaps I could have used that extra time to make an Android version available today. Future iOS titles will be iPhone only.
   
3. I didn't test early enough on the iPad 1 - I have no good explanation for this. I tested my iPad code on the iPad 3, but when I finally deployed to the iPad 1 I was forced to aggressively optimize. The iPad 1 has limited memory so all my beautiful graphics which took up precious memory resulted in me having to split my Unity project into scenes and strictly control resource loading/unloading. Managing art, sound and texture resolutions across multiple scenes in Unity was not fun.
   
4. I thought I could do sound myself - I did the sound myself, and I'm very happy with how it turned out; however, I wish I would have paid someone else to design the sound for me. Sound is somewhat foreign to me and I spent at least one week surfing the net, buying audio and editing it for my game. I spent about $400 on audio, primarily because I had to throw away a lot of sounds that I thought were good but sounded annoying after they were in my game. I finally found a great website that let you download preview tracks and it saved so much money: Pond5.com
   
5. My UI is not flexible - My process for UI was generally: Create something in PhotoShop, slice it up and put it in the game. This made the Kindle Fire version much harder to make (it's on hold for now). My future games will borrow much more from CSS style "sliding door" elements that expand / repeat to fill space. All positioning should be relative to the screen edge and not absolutely placed. This should hopefully allow me to target Android at the same time as iOS.
   
6. I didn't implement a 'Free Code' system - My game is free to play but has in app purchases. I wish I would have implemented a way for me to give away product keys that unlocked portions of the game or gave away IAP so I could send out fully unlocked versions to review sites or give to friends.
   
7. Analytics were an afterthought - Analytics should have been inserted early during development. Simply adding event logging after the fact will not give me actionable information. Also, I haven't tested the analytics to my liking. I will probably abandon Flurry for future projects and create something for myself that can monitor user activity more closely. Flurry gives me great overall analytics like retention, but I'm more interested in things like finding out what state was the player's game in when they spent money?
   

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Freemium - aka - I hope I make money
I had planned on MatchCraft being a $0.99 game, but there were a few factors that changed my mind:

• The sheer number of free downloads dwarfs paid apps. I have a wallpaper app that earns me a few dollars a day at $0.99 that got 25,000 downloads in one weekend of being free.
  
• The majority of Top Grossing apps are freemium
  
• My teenage family members and all their friends primarily download and play free apps, but they manage to buy IAP with things like iTunes Gift Cards after enjoying a game for a while. Kids these days don't get money or presents on their birthday, they get iTunes Gift Cards... (though match-3 demographics isn't exactly young teenagers)
  
• I'm just flat out curious what it would look like when compared to stats of paid apps that I have access to
  

When I first implemented the virtual currency "Coins" in my game, I inadvertently hid the fact that you could spend the in-game currency. I don't know if this was my dislike for games that were so in your face about buying their virtual coin, but after observing numerous people play the game it was clear that no one was spending the in-game currency.
Enter Stage Left: The blog post from the indie game devs about going bankrupt with their freemium game. After reading their post I realized that I suffered from a similar issue, simply my IAP were not easy for the user to find. Sure I had them in a section called "Store", but no one went to the Store! Also, there were other game modes that could be unlocked for coins, but when the user didn't have enough coins to unlock it, I did what a good UI person did and disabled the buttons. WRONG!
My Solution:

• All buttons are enabled at all times - If you don't have enough coins to perform the action, then you are presented with the option to buy more coins. Immediately I saw people using this to unlock all the game modes on the main menu.
• Change the way main UI elements work based on context - While playing, there was an icon that you could tap to refill your magic in exchange for some coins. The button wasn't used as often as I'd like because it was out of the way of normal game play. I removed the "refill magic icon" and made the big huge buttons that the players did use to cast spells change to a "Refill Magic" button when the user was out of magic. Realize: The same button that was previously disabled when out of magic was changed so the user could use it to buy magic. Doing this simplified the UI and made a significant difference in the amount of in-game currency that was spent.
• Add more IAP and Virtual Currency Items - Previously all I had was the ability to spend coins on in game items that slightly improve gameplay and the IAP were packs of coins enabling you to buy those items. I expanded the IAP offerings to include Unlock All Game Modes and a Coin Doubler. I expanded the Virtual Currency offerings to allow the user to buy level advancement with coins in the game. This lets people with currency quickly unlock new spells which I'm OK with since it's Single Player only.

.
What would you tell other developers as they start a new game?
Choose a game topic that you will be proud to make. Plan for development to take you one month and expect for it to take you three. - I feel like I chose this match-3 style because of inertia. I had written a basic version of "elemental bejeweled" in Torque2D in 2007 but scrapped it when PuzzleQuest launched.
When I decided to make games in Unity I wanted to learn my tools, so I chose to finish this game since I had the matching algorithms already written in TorqueScript. The downside to this is that I was not as motivated early on as I should have been. "Learning tools" can only motivate you so much. I would have abandoned this project if it were not for the great art that my artist made. Seeing the art running on an iPad 3 gave me the kick to finish MatchCraft. I'm proud to call it my first game and I look forward to writing many more.
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Thank you all for reading this. I really enjoy /gamedev and I hope that you will all ask me questions. Help me climb the rankings by downloading MatchCraft (It's free after all) and sharing this post with your friends.
tl;dr - Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors
Edit - If you want to play it online or don't have an iOS device use the webplayer.

Yeah… another one of those posts. I’d like to think my opinion will somehow be different and special and that I may embark some new wisdom on your purchasing decision. But that’s unlikely. So with expectations sufficiently lowered, let's get to it...
 
*long post warning*
 

Why I switched?

Similar to many, iOS had become stale… almost too familiar, my once loved grid of icons actively annoyed me when I looked at them. Add in my growing reliance on Google services (Gmail, Docs, Drive, Calendar, Maps) it started to make more sense… I became you could say, Pixel curious. Then Apple announced the iPhone 8/X, either uninspiring (the same design AGAIN) or absurdly expensive. THEN the Pixel 2 reviews came out showing off the amazing camera and its bloat free OS.
The itch had become a full grown rash and I just had to give it a try.  
Any hardware comparisons below are against an iPhone 7, which seems fair as it retails for a similar price as the Pixel 2 even though it’s over a year older.

Hardware/Ergonomics

Out the box Pixel 2 feels satisfying solid. I like the slightly sharper edges than the iPhone 7 it replaces. It has more of a ‘slab’ versus ‘pebble’ feel to it. It’s noticeably thicker, which makes the iPhone feel like a more modern device when held side-by-side.
 
I LOVE the fingerprint position. Scrolling down for notifications is brilliant. It feels like the natural position after years of crabbing my thumb at odd angles with various iPhones. It does require you to pick up the device to unlock which made using it in the car less ergonomic… more on that later.
 
It took a while to get used to the volume button positions - they sit a little low than I’m used to and aren’t clearly defined. After two weeks I still occasionally hit the power switch instead of volume up. I prefer them being on opposite sides on the iPhone.
 
Unique to the Pixel 2 is the squeeze to bring up Google Assitant feature. I’ve found this very intuitive. Haptics give a nice feedback and it’s nice to have more physical ways to interact with a phone. Proves that everything being touch isn’t always the best way and I’ve used Google Assistant much more because of it.  
I do miss 3D touch on my iPhone though. It adds a genuinely useful level of interaction to the interface with the right UI design and feels like it’s starting to come into its stride. The haptic feedback on iPhone feels better IMO too.
 
Talking of touch, I find the Pixel 2 touch screen less accurate. I didn’t even think this would be a thing… I thought we reached the stage where all touchscreens were as good as they get. But I’ve found a few others with similar problems. I’m hoping it’s just a software thing but I’ve been stuck trying to click a link too many times for it to be fatty-finger problems.
 
Bezels shmezels. I’ve lived with them for 10 years, a few more won’t hurt me.
 
Winner: Tie. * Sigh *. I know, first category and I’m already on the fence but the pros/cons I feel balance each other out.

Screen

You can basically skip this section as you know the outcome.
I will say. It’s not that bad, at all. On the most part it’s pretty good!
I’m Pixel 2 so no tint issues.
The iPhone has more accurate colour. Pixel 2 in ‘boosted’ mode does a good enough job but I value accuracy, especially when it comes to editing/sharing photos. Compared to my calibrated displays iPhone is much much closer. Hoping Google address more with software updates.
 
More of an issue is my Pixel 2 black-crush. Farewell shadow detail. In dark scenes… take any number from Stranger Things and it starts to get very ugly. Even the opening of Blue Planet is cocked-up. Don’t mess with my Attenborough Google. It’s something you’re going to be sensitive to or not. I’m sensitive to it.
Of course OLED has its pros. The always on display is particularly great as a nightstand or being able to glance at the time or notification while driving. Letter-box content and overall contrast are wins.
 
Winner: iPhone 7. Sorry Pixel 2.

OS

The two operating systems are actually much more alike than I imagined they would be. Any iOS users shouldn’t have too much an issue swapping to Android 8.0. Within 24 hours I felt at home. The obvious difference is the app drawer which houses all your apps, but tucks them away rather than spreading them all over your homescreen. No amount of folders could make my iPhone feel ‘organised’. Apple need to get on and change this SOON.
 
Pixel 2 feels as fast and efficient as iPhones of old. I’m not sure what Apple have been doing with their software recently but for the first time iOS11 feels heavy. Small things like animations skipping. It just doesn’t feel 100% fluid. I really value that feeling again. It makes a touchscreen device feel so much more, without wanting to sound too apple-wanky; organic.
 
Splitscreen/multi-tasking on Pixel 2 is very neat and intuitive to use. Being able to watch a YouTube clip while browsing Reddit, or have a Chrome tab open while making notes. I think phone screens are just about big enough now that this should be a feature everywhere. Now lets bring drag and drop while we are at it. Apple has been making good progress on their iPad software here. Shame about their phones.
 
Notifications. Oh my sweet sweet child. They are handled SO much better on Pixel 2. I love all the options of being able to individually mute an app for a set period. I’m not sure if this is a testament to Androids UI design or just how much Apple have bodged up something that should be relatively simple.
 
Notification Dots though... I don’t really see their function on Pixel. On iPhone they let me know, for example, how many emails I have unread. On Pixel they just tell me that I have any number of emails unread, but I knew that already as there’s a Gmail icon in the top left. And then if I discard that notification from the notification draw, which I quite often do in a ‘will read it later’ way, it also gets rid of the dot. And if you’ve got a short-term memory like me, 5 mins later I look at my phone and think I have no unread emails in my inbox.
 
Widgets. I’ve got a love/hate view on both devices. Customisation is welcome on Pixel 2 but it’s very easy to turn your phone into a hot mess. Like someone left a load of random programs open in windows 98. There’s only so much you can usefully fit on one page, and I’m not a fan of scrolling through multiple pages to get to a widget.
On iOS all your widgets live in one screen and you scroll through them as a list, they feel more part of the OS design language but you have a lot less options and choice. I’m sure I’ve barely scratched the surface on Android widgets and there’s a bit of a learning curve/research needed to a widget that functions and fits in with the rest of the UI design. I’m not interested in going the Nova launcher route - yet.
 
Google Feed - I’m not really sure what it’s for. Feels a bit like the ‘News’ App on iPhone. Tempted to turn it off.
 
Google Assistant is much better than Siri. Like it understands what I’m saying. I’d got so used to not using a voice assistant because of Siri that I’m having to train myself to use it. But for things like controlling my Hue lights and giving quick directions in Maps it has been a god send.
 
A few smaller points:

• Chrome/Safari. Chrome feels a fraction faster. Safari UI feels better. I miss swipe to go forward/back, it’s quicker and I will never accidentally dump myself to the homescreen. The tabs screen on Chrome is quite ‘flat’. Can make it hard to see where one tab ends and the next begins in some cases.
• Visual Voicemail. I miss it. Alot. Feels very old fashioned having to dial a number and listen to a list of messages. This was a carrier specific feature on iPhone.
• WiFi calling. I think this feature might also be carrier dependent but for someone that doesn’t always get amazing reception at home fallback to WiFi calling without anyone having to use an app or service was very helpful feature on my iPhone.
• ‘Look Up’ - Google, please give us a system wide dictionary like iPhone. It’s helpful for illiterates like me.
• iMessage - This one has been beaten to death. As far as I can tell there’s nothing that quite functions the same way.
• Wallpapers - Google ones are stunning. Much more choice.

 
Winner: Pixel 2/Android.
Pros: Cleaner. Faster. Functional. My home screen actually looks good!Notifications are infinitely better. Widgets open a new world of customisation.
I miss Visual Voicemail and iMessage quite a bit… :(
EDIT: was a carrier issue! Now fixed. Call your carrier :)
 

Integration

AKA pulling off the plaster.
Depending how far ‘in’ you are this will vary. I’m about as far ‘in’ the Apple eco-system you can be. Macbook, iPad Pro, Apple TV, Apple Music etc. But before you label me an [insert dumb name here] I also own a Windows 10 machine, and am quite invested in Google services already… hence why I’m giving Pixel 2 a shot. I just genuinely think up until maybe a few years ago Apple has been ahead of the game with hardware/software.
 
iMessage - It’s worth noting that I work in the creative industry and basically everyone has an iPhone and uses iMessage. I often use iMessage as a sort of mini-email on my Macbook or iPad with colleagues. It’s always been very solid for sending documents/images quickly. WhatsApp can do the most of it but any future group iMessages and I’m the one screwing things up. If you use iMessage a lot it will be a pain. If you don’t, it won’t. Simple.
 
Drive vs iCloud - I already use both. As a storage service they are pretty much equal, albeit Drive being cheaper as you go up the subscription ladder. I use Drive to backup personal photos/videos. I use iCloud for work projects. There’s cross pollination when it comes to using services but unfortunately Drive can’t do what iCloud can for me. Which is seamlessly integrate with my Macbook file system - namely being able to ‘tag’ files. I use this a ton with my work. It’s rare that I’d ever do ‘serious’ work on my phone but it’s worth noting if it is part of your workflow.
 
Docs/Sheets/Slides - This is where I may actually do a bit of work while on a train or something. I’ve not noticed any difference on either device. Both supported well across both systems. I really rate the services. Kudos to Google for continuing to support iOS. I wonder if they’ll ever offer ‘premium’ features for their own devices. I’ve actually swapped to Keep now too and prefer it over Notes.
 
Car - My Pixel 2 just doesn’t play as nice with my car. Connected via USB it acts the same as my iPhone does on Bluetooth which is limited. This means no searchable file system, I can only skip to previous/next track, and it displays track name and artist but no album artwork. My iPhone connected via USB displays artwork and lets me fully scroll through tracklists/playlists. This is in a 2012 BMW for what it’s worth.
 
Home - My ‘smart’ home goes as far as hue lights. Not that smart. These are easier to control with voice on Pixel 2, due to the much better assistant, but easier to control with touch on my iPhone, due to HomeKit and 3D touch. If I had to pick it would be the iPhone integration, that 3D touch to bring up a dimmer and quick access to all my scenes is just that bit more silky and I can’t find a widget as nice as what iPhone has built in.
 
AirPlay/Chromecast - As far as I can tell they are functionally the same? Again it’s down to what eco-system you’re most in. No comment.
 
Winner: iPhone (no suprises as I’ve used it for 10 years)

Sound

Pixel 2 - The front firing speakers certainly give better directional audio but the quality was a bit of a letdown. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but the iPhone sounds a little fuller, Pixel 2 a little thinner. Neither are ‘good’ if I’m honest. Good enough to watch a quick video or live stream, but I’d never listen to any music on them.
 
Winner: Tie

Camera

I’ve saved the best of the Pixel until last. It’s as good as everyone says it is. I’m in love with this thing.
The camera is a large part of why I wanted to give the Pixel 2 a chance. Just being bored of iOS wasn’t enough, but a tangible leap in camera quality definitely got my debit card quivering.
Images are sharp, the colours are natural, the portrait mode is a software marvel, it actually blows my mind to the point where I could see myself leaving my Fuji X100 behind on trips and I LOVE that thing.
The speed at which I can launch the camera with a double-tap of the power button is near instant. This the fastest digital camera I’ve ever had. That speed really suits my photography.
 
Video I’ve yet to test - I rarely shoot video clips on my phone but the stabilisation seems very impressive.
 
Honestly it’s so good it almost makes all of the rest of my points null + void.
It beats my iPhone 7 in every aspect.
If I had any negatives it would be that the WB is frequently a little too cool. But this is really nitpicking. The iPhone on the other hand is often too warm, overexposes, is oversaturated, has a less natural HDR mode and is way too aggressive noise with reduction.
It actively makes me excited to shoot photos on my phone, which is a first and for someone that loves photography the convenience of having a photography device with that power ALWAYS on me can’t be understated.
 
Winner: Pixel 2, by a country mile.  

Conclusion

Can I live with Android after being in the iOS ecosystem so long? For sure I can. Am I as productive with it? Probably not. But that’s because I work with MacOS and specifically use the ‘tag’ file system function like crazy and iMessage like a file transfer service.
There’s a bunch to love about stock android on Pixel 2. It’s a faster, cleaner OS. Something iOS used to pride itself on. And it does so while being aesthetically more appealing.
It’s annoying that it doesn’t play nice with my car. It’s annoying that the screen crushes black.
There’s a bunch of small things android does nicer than iOS. There’s a bunch of small things iOS does nicer than andorid.
Lets not ignore cost either. It’s doing all this at a cheaper price point than a more-than-a-year-old iPhone.
If someone offered me an iPhone with the Pixel 2 camera stuck in it I’d probably take it for said eco-system reasons. But that phone doesn’t exist - yet. Until it does I’m sticking with TeamPixel.
*looks at iMessage longingly*  
TL;DR - I really like the Pixel 2. The camera is as amazing as everyone says it is. I wish I could combine the best of iOS with the best of Android. All told it’s a brilliant phone, albeit with a not so great screen. Shock revelation; iOS > Android will make you whine about iMessage.

Hi I made some wallpapers today and I wanted to share them here. Hope you like them
The size is the one of a parallax wallpaper for the iPhone X so they should fit almost every phone, but if you need some specific dimensions let me know!
The first one is inspired by one of the images that you can find under the "Press Kit" on the Substratum website
https://imgur.com/FPmGMHZ
Then I made other two cause I love flat design and hope you do too:
Version with text: https://imgur.com/2tA8QQw Version w/o text: https://imgur.com/yQ9xs39
If you want some altered version or if you want something else just let me know and I'll see what I can do.
If you want to show some love: 0x9553141FE95aa3FFed3F8907e3aB6a8ea3CE5858
Happy Hodling and Merry Christmas

Hi I just made some wallpaper for my phone and wanted to share them with you. Hope you'll like 'em
The dimension is the one for a parallax wallpaper of an iPhone X so it should fit almost every phone
I love flat design so I made them as minimalistic as possible. I also made some for Substratum today so if you want check them out on SubstratumNetwork
Dark Blue (my favorite): https://imgur.com/xx0tQac https://imgur.com/DzH6oJd
Green: https://imgur.com/hCBFvip https://imgur.com/Od1jdr8
If you need other dimension/other colors or if you would have something specific just let me know and I'll see what I can do!
If you want to show some love: CXYIJUKMYYBNHUZFZ99FPFWVHAMXLIBOXQ9JDWQJDFGWZVRXSNUWEVVGMZSPA9WTF9UPHUFNYDHREWJUZFEEQIJ9ZX
Happy Hodling and Merry Christmas!

Hey fellow Gunners,
As a fun design challenge, I decided to create these mobile backgrounds based on this season's kit. If you like them, feel free to download them. I'm also open to creating any other designs (for free) you all have in mind (kind of like a AMA format, I'll do my best to get to all the requests and produce high-quality work).
Since I have a iPhone 6s, all the wallpapers should work on that screen size. If you have another phone, then just let me know and I'll do my best to get you the proper image, so it fits beautifully with your screen's size.
Here's the home kit mobile wallpaper: http://i.imgur.com/OnWIy0f.png
Away kit: http://i.imgur.com/ez1NnNZ.png
EDIT: Actual Third kit: http://i.imgur.com/t0FuZzN.png
Third kit: http://i.imgur.com/MsSfblY.png
Random one that I made for fun: http://i.imgur.com/JFZeWGa.png
-- Viraj
P.S. - FYI, since I use Sketch 3 to produce these, I can't do the whole "can you get Mesut Ozil's face on this background?" ideas, since Sketch is used more for flat or dynamic user interface design. So anything with wording, our club's crest, etc. should work for me, but embedding players into the wallpapers will be mostly impossible. Hope that's fine.

/alcatelwatch restricts submissions, so I posted this as a comment there and I'm copying it into an actual post here. I pre-ordered the Alcatel Watch and it arrived on May 15. I got the Small/Medium Black band. I am using it with an iPhone 5.
So far, I like it. it's got a few quirks and things I would have designed differently, but that's not uncommon and as a developer myself I know there were probably a LOT of discussions and trade-offs and ideas thrown out during the design process. I'm not going to try and armchair-quarterback them!!
Physical characteristics: Looks nice on my wrist. No issues or problems with the looks of it at all (both with the screen active and the screen dark, it's a nice size and looks nice on my wrist). it's relatively thin and not awkward to wear at all.

• orange/red background: http://i.imgur.com/aCsoWjR.jpg
• blue/back background: http://i.imgur.com/arQVEMX.jpg

The connection points for the band are a hair wider than I'd like - which causes the band to gap just a little bit right by the watch itself. The band itself is a textured rubber with the inside (red part in the pics) has raised ridges that the connector snaps into. The ridges help the watch stay in one place on your wrist -- it doesn't shift or roll around at all on your wrist. The small/medium band fits me (6'1", 195 lbs, fairly thin wrists for a guy) OK but I'm pretty close to the end of the band:

• on wrist: http://i.imgur.com/5vyBBmT.jpg
• open clasp: http://i.imgur.com/0iZOnWK.jpg

I do have one issue with the clasp though. It's got a sharp edge you have to watch out for. Look at the open clasp picture, above. See the squared-off vertical edge pieces to the clasp? They're sharp and I actually scraped my thumb the first time I put it on: http://i.imgur.com/VpAkxKr.jpg. I found if you roll the watch over so you put it on while the watchface is on the inside of your wrist then you don't catch that edge at all (note the slight airgap between the edge of the clasp and my wrist as shown here: http://i.imgur.com/a7TIRdP.jpg ) I'm going to take a dremel and round off that edge though. That'll make a big difference.
The watch bezel looked thick in the pictures, but in real life it's about the perfect width. The 'flat tire' on the bottom is also not a problem - I thought that'd be annoying but it doesn't bother me at all - especially if you select a dark/black background you don't even notice it. It is apparent if you have a bright colored background though (but again, it kind of emphasizes the 'back' button that way so I'm fine with that too).
The charger on the end of the band works just fine. I have charged it twice now in the 5 days I've had it - and both times I charged it up before I got a low battery warning (probably at 30% remaining). Charging via the band does have one annoyance: it makes the watchface upside down when it's in a standard charger. http://i.imgur.com/NgQbxd1.jpg. just seems a little odd sitting there like that. And if you flip it around so the watchface is up, then the band flips the wrong way so you still can't see it. They should have put the charge connector on the 'top' band instead of the 'bottom' band.
Interface: The watch screen looks nice - no issues with low resolution or blockiness at all. Wallpapers look good. The icons are a little confusing and hard to distinguish between (but this is probably due to the fact that the watch is brand new and I'm not familiar with them yet) -- the most obvious one is the stopwatch and the face selector icons. Take a look at the top-left icon in both of these pictures:

• stopwatch: http://i.imgur.com/7gRQ9Pn.jpg
• watchface: http://i.imgur.com/Ucl2Y0q.jpg

These icons are very similar to each other and neither of them is meaningful to me. They are both 'some kind of watch/clock thing' is about it.
The interface operates smoothly. Swiping left/right and selecting an app is responsive. No issues there at all. Swiping up for notifications is also smooth and notifications scroll nicely too.
Notifications: FAST. Really fast response. My watch vibrates before my iPhone buzzes when I get a message. Lots of notification options too -- txtmsgs, calls, gmail, facebook, twitter, skype, linkedIn, google+, hangouts, etc. all provide notifications. On the iPhone, the notifications are driven by the Notification widget (swipe down from the top, select notifications). it's actually useful now! If you clear out the notifications on the phone, they automatically clear out on the watch too. Most apps auto-clear as soon as you open the app. Occasionally one won't though (twitter was the one that didn't clear out on my phone) and manually closing that notification in the Notification widget on the phone cleared out the watch for me.
You scroll left-right to move between the various notifications (messages/gmail/twitter etc) and then scroll up/down to move through the messages within that particular app. that's intuitive and works nicely, no issues there at all. It would be nice to have the notification clear on the phone when you read it on the watch though. I might read a txtmsg on my watch, but my phone will still show an unread message. It would also be nice to have the notification automatically open on your watch as soon as it comes in. As it's designed now, the watch buzzes and then you have to swipe up to read it. Being able to just glance at your watch when it buzzes on your wrist would be a nice enhancement. phonecalls and Calendar reminders work this way. Your phone buzzes and the calendar reminder is immediately displayed.
Apps:

• Weather: weather app doesn't always connect for some reason. it'll spin for a few seconds then show 'cannot connect. check your phone' but I don't know where to look on my phone to figure out what the problem is. When it does connect, it's easy to read and you can swipe left to get daily weather forecasts for the next 5 days.
• heartrate: works fine, seems accurate. It only checks the heartrate upon request though. It'd be nice to have the watch automatically check every 15 minutes or something throughout the day.
• Activities. I don't know what the first Activity is for (a green zigzag that looks like a heartbeat? and showing a percentage - it reads 44% right now). Stepcounts seem accurate - within a couple hundred of what my phone itself is telling me. Calorie count, distance, workout time are all in there as well. The last Activity is Sleep tracking and I REALLY wish that were on a separate icon instead of embedded at the end of Activities. You have to Start the sleep tracking (and Stop it when you wake up) -- to do that you activate the watch screen, select Activities, swipe right 5 times, then click Start. A little awkward for something you'd do every night. Having its own icon would help a lot.
• Workout. has start/pause and lapcount icons. Swipe right to show a workout summary -- total time, distance, speed, stepcount
• stopwatch. Confusing icon (see above) but works fine. start/pause/reset options. The stopwatch isn't all that useful though because the screen blanks after 15 seconds so you can't just keep it open to watch the elapsed time.
• compass. A little slow response on it, but seems accurate. It shows compass rose, direction in degrees, and altitude. I haven't really used it much though.
• music. Shows song title and artist. Has play/pause/ff/rew/volume controls. it's responsive and seems to work well.
• camera shutter. You have to open the Watch app on your phone, then clicking the shutter starts a 3 second timer before snapping the picture. I'd prefer it took the picture immediately though. Not a big deal but I don't think I'll use it much. I don't take selfies.
• Watchface selector. There are 3 watchfaces to choose from and you can change them from the phone. Works fine. You have to use the phone app to change the background picture though. Again, not a big deal. Confusing icon as I mentioned earlier
• Find iphone. Click it and your phone buzzes. nice little feature. Similarly the watch buzzes if you walk away from your phone and displays "Don't forget your phone"
• configuration icons: mute/airplane mode/brightness/color. no comments. they work.

Phone app: Simple to use, paired very easily with the watch. Can set alarms, turn on/off notifications on a per-app basis (so I have messages & gmail enabled, twitter & linkedIn disabled for example), change your wallpaper etc. It has an easy-to-read dashboard that aggregates all the data from the watch. I do wish that it integrated with the HealthKit though. It's a standalone app as it is now. I had some trouble keeping the watch connected to the phone last night though. I don't know why -- every few minutes it'd lose the connection. Opening the app immediately re-established connectivity though. It's working fine today too. The battery was getting a little low last night so maybe it doesn't broadcast as strong of a signal with a weak battery?? I don't know....
Summary: I'm happy with it. I like the look and I like the features. There are some quirks and a few things I wish it'd do differently/better. Due to the lack of an appstore and the emphasis on notifications, I would label this a Notification Watch as opposed to a SmartWatch though. And for the price, I'm JUST FINE with that. You want a full-featured smartwatch that can play video games and has Siri connectivity? Spend $350-$500 on an applewatch. Want to see who's texting you without digging your phone out of your pocket? $150 is a good price for what you get here and I'm satisfied. No regrets on buying this watch. Just set your expectations appropriately I guess :) My brother bought one too based on my comments...