How to save money buying apps and games
How to save money buying apps and games
OK, so some of the best iOS apps and best Android apps aren't particularly expensive, but boy there are a lot of them, and if you're regularly trying and buying new ones it can certainly add up — and some of the higher-quality ones can still set you back upwards of $20. Here we've listed some of the ways that you can save when it comes to buying the coolest and the latest apps.
Promo Codes
Developers and publishers often give out promo codes when a game or app is first released, so it can be worth following them on Twitter or, for games in particular, checking out popular forums such as those at TouchArcade for threads about newly-released games. With a bit of luck, you may be able to snag one — and if you do, it's generally considered good etiquette to leave an unbiased review on Google Play or the App Store in return.
Discounts
Unlike tech hardware, it's not uncommon for mobile games and apps to get discounted within a month or two of release. So for new releases both big and small, it can be worth waiting — developers will often try to boost their overall app sales ranking (and a higher ranking equals more visibility, which equates to more sales) by temporarily dropping the price.
Sales and Promotions
In terms of more predictable price decreases, mobile app stores often have big sales around the time of holidays, such as Christmas and New Year, but you'll also find that developers can sometimes throw their own holiday-based sales without any prompting from Apple or Google. These are usually based around US dates (such as the Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving and so on), so if a big US holiday is coming up, it could be worth holding off on a purchase until then.
Refunds: Android
On the Google Play Store, after purchase, the 'Buy' button changes into a 'Refund' button, which you have 2 hours after purchase to make use of. This gives you some time to assess the app or game and make sure it meets the requirements of the law.
Refunds: iOS
A somewhat complex process, you need to use iTunes' built in 'Report a Problem' tool after selecting the app from your Purchase History (on the PC/Mac iTunes client, this can be found under 'Store > View account') and then fill out the form and argue the case that it doesn't function as it should. Know that it can take some time for these refund requests to be processed by Apple.
iOS: AppShopper
If you're an iPhone and/or iPad user, the best way to keep track of price drops is to head to AppShopper where you can add the apps and games you're after to the site's built-in wish list. You can configure AppShopper to send you email alerts upon wish list price decreases. Note that by default, AppShopper uses the US App Store and currency, but you can change it to the region of your choice using the Country/Currency box. AppShopper also shows the full price history of a product which you can use as a guide to anticipate both how frequently a developer puts its apps on sale, and how low its previously been priced.
iOS: Country Exclusive Deals
Often, developers don't apply free promos to all regions — sometimes it's country specific. If that's the case, you can create a US (or UK, or any nationality) Apple ID account and, during sign up, change the Country/Region to 'United States' and then enter a US address (we'd suggest using Google Maps to find a street address). It's a good idea to keep separate Apple IDs for every region because, as Apple states, "After you change the country of your account, you won't see the items you purchased from the previous country's store in the Purchased section."
iOS: Country-Specific iTunes Cards
If you live outside the US and want to make a purchase from the US App Store, you can purchase US iTunes cards online — although finding reliable sources for this is sometimes tricky. (While we make no guarantees, itunesandpsncards has good feedback from users, and we've even used it with success.)
Android: Amazon Appstore
Android's more open nature means that you can install programs without using the Google Play Store, which has led to some good alternate storefronts, such as Amazon's Appstore which gives away a free app or game every day — including some quite high-profile new releases. Amazon also does a better job of promoting apps and games that are currently on sale, which means developers are more likely to drop their prices to take advantage.
Android: Humble Bumble
For indie developed games, it's worth signing up for the Humble Bundle newsletter or just periodically checking out the site's Mobile bundle page. These are Android-centric collections of five or more indie games that can usually be snatched up for under US$5, so if there's a couple of games you've been eyeing off in one they can be worthwhile.
Android: AppSales
In terms of monitoring price drops, AppSales lets you browse the Google Play Store and, when you find something you'd like to monitor the price of, send it to AppSales using the 'Share' button (below the app description), after which AppSales will send you alerts if the price drops.
Android: Google Opinion Rewards
If you've got a spare couple of minutes here or there (and really, who doesn't) you might want to install Google Opinion Rewards. This is Google's market-research app, and by taking short surveys you can earn credit on the Google Play Store that you can then spend on anything you desire — not just apps and games, but books, movies and magazines too. The rewards are often small — they can range from $0.20 to around $1, depending on the length of the survey — but the surveys are all short and can be completed in under 5 minutes.
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Rocksteady steps up to fix broken Batman: Arkham Knight on PC
Following last week’s decision by publisher Warner Bros. to suspend sales of its disappointing PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight, original developer Rocksteady has announced that it has taken the reigns on fixing the problematic port.
Rocksteady originally focused on the PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game, while the PC version was outsourced to Killer Instinct: Season 2 developer Iron Galaxy.
Batman: Arkham Knight’s first PC patch has already arrived, and is said to fix crashes that occur when exiting the game or switching off motion blur, a bug that disabled rain effects and ambient occlusion, and an issue which caused Steam to re-download the game when verifying the integrity of the game cache through the Steam client.
Let’s put a smile on that face
On top of that, Warner Bros’ VP of Development, Gary Lake-Schaal, has posted on Steam to announce several areas that are currently being worked on to fix the game, which will be delivered via a series of interim patches that are still to come.These fixes will include support for frame rates above 30fps in the graphics settings menu, a fix for a low resolution texture bug, improvements on overall performance and framerate hitches, more options to the graphics settings menu, improvements to hard drive streaming and hitches, a fix for the fullscreen rendering bug on gaming laptops, improvements to system memory and VRAM usage, NVIDIA SLI bug fixes, enablement of AMD Crossfire and updated drivers for NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards.
Lake-Schaal said that the work Rocksteady is doing to fix the PC version is “significant and while we are making good progress on improving performance, it will take some time to ensure that we get the right fixes in place.”
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Apple's quadrupling your iTunes Match song limit
If 25,000 songs isn't enough to scratch any and all your musical itches, then it be time to scale back your music collection. Or you could just sign up to iTunes Match.
When iOS 9 and Apple's music streaming service – inventively titled Apple Music – launch later this year, iTunes Match customers will see their iCloud song limit raised from 25,000 to 100,000 songs.
Apple executive Eddy Cue revealed the news on Twitter when pressed on how Apple Music will integrate with iTunes match.
A match made in Cupertino
Cue also re-emphasised that Apple Music subscriptions will effectively include iTunes Match, as the service will match and upload any songs you own so they can be accessed from anywhere.The way it works is if there's a song or album Apple Music doesn't offer, you can buy it from any other source, upload it, and then access it from the Apple Music app alongside all the tracks the service already offers.
This approach will ensure music lovers can satisfactorily plug any gaps in Apple Music's library. iTunes Match currently costs US$24.99 / £21.99 / AUD$34.99 per year.
- Want to know what else Apple's been up to? Production on iPhone 6S handsets, that's what.
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How to save money buying tech
How to save money buying tech
While online shopping can be extremely convenient, it's often difficult to find the best deal or price for a product. Discounts, sales and promotions come and go every day, often even without our knowing. Here we've listed the ways that are guaranteed to help you save on your next purchase, whether it's through comparison sites, price monitoring services or RSS feeds.
Comparison Sites
Several big Australian price-comparison sites are available, including Shopbot, Getprice, and MyShopping. Google even has an Australian-specific price comparing service.
Comparison Sites: StaticICE
For tech-specific items — and computing devices in particular — the best Australian price-comparison site we've found is staticICE. Unlike other sites, it specialises in technology and it indexes sites both big and small, meaning that you'll usually see a great variety of retailers, but also more relevant search results. staticICE even offers dedicated apps for iOS and Android, so you can easily check prices while you're out and about.
Online Stores: Amazon
Buying tech from overseas is a great way to save some cash, but there are some caveats (and big ones) — it's a tricky area — but one of the easiest and most foolproof overseas sites to purchase tech through is actually Amazon. Historically, buying anything electrical via Amazon has been out of the question — it simply wouldn't ship the gear to non-US countries. Over the last couple of years though, those restrictions have been loosened significantly, and it'll now ship a surprising amount of tech and computing gear directly to Australia. Depending on how well our dollar is doing against the greenback, there can be some great savings.
Online Stores: eBay
Though eBay is best known as a free-for-all auction site, many retailers (both big and small) maintain a presence on the site and you can find some of the most competitive prices there. eBay even has its own dedicated area for curating the best deals from reputable sellers (both local and international). In our experience, the prices on offer are usually quite competitive too.
Big Retailers: Email Newsletters
Tech products are often expensive, but big retailers such as JB Hi-Fi, Dick Smith and The Good Guys often have regular sales offering up to 15% off specific product types (major-brand laptops, for example) or even more on specific items. These can sometimes occur a dozen or more times a year, so keep your eyes on the big brand websites and sign up to their email newsletters — these will usually give you plenty of notice on any upcoming sales and, moreover, they can also contain discount codes that can be used at the checkout.
Big Retailers: Computer Brands
Many big computing brands — think Lenovo, HP and Dell — will periodically offer large product discounts (up to 30%) on their own sites. As with the electrical retailers, these are often category specific — Lenovo will discount ThinkPads, for example, while Dell might be running a deal on a certain family of monitors. They're very definitely worth holding out for.
Of course, once a deal is on, it's wise not to waste time in taking advantage of it — especially if there's no end date specified by the retailer. We've missed out on some great deals on more than one occasion simply because of Homer Simpson-like laziness.
New vs. Old
You'll rarely find large discounts on tech products that are brand new — especially when it comes to devices like smartphones and tablets. The latter can maintain their high prices for months after release. If you're shopping for a smartphones, we'd advising waiting at least two to three months, after which you'll often be able to save around 10-15%. If you can hold out longer, say 6 to 9 months, you can often find smartphones for 30%-40% less than their original RRP, and they'll often stay around this level over the life of the product.
Searching: Google
As well as the dedicated price-comparison websites, sometimes you can get discounts through just a little clever Googling. If you've decided on a purchase at a specific retailer, spend 5 minutes doing a Google search for the shop's name along with keywords like 'promo', 'coupon', 'code' or 'discount'.
Searching: Be Specific
It's important to be both specific in your searches and to try different variations. For example, if you know the exact model number of the product you're after, try both that and the more common name — for Samsung's latest phablet, you could try 'Samsung Galaxy Note 4' as well as the Australian model number: 'SM-N910G'.
Coupon Sites
Product Alerts: Versionista
Some stores offer ways to get an alert if a price drops on a specific product — either by adding it to your wishlist or by simply filling in your email address in a dedicated 'price drop' box on the product's page. If they don't offer this, third-party sites are available that send you email alerts if a specific web page changes. Versionista for example, lets you assign it up to five different product web pages to monitor, shooting you a daily email if something changes on one of them — a great way for getting alerted to price changes.
Product Alerts: camelcamelcamel
For some of the web's biggest retailers there are actually dedicated third-party sites for monitoring price changes. For Amazon, for example, there's camelcamelcamel, which despite the oddball name offers an awesome set of tools for monitoring the prices on specific products and even checking price history. If you're buying anything at all on Amazon, it's definitely worth visiting camelcamelcamel first to see how good the current price is, historically speaking.
Facebook/Twitter
Following a site or brand on Twitter and/or Facebook can alert you to any sales or bargains, while many also do competitions and other special 'social only' promotions that you'll only find through these channels, which can make following them pay off.
Forums: OzBargain
OzBargain does a great job of tracking current and previous deals on offer by Australian (and even international) retailers. It's a user-driven site, so ever deal is submitted by the community, which means you won't find absolutely *every* deal in Australia on there, but chances are good you'll at least see the most interesting one. Also worth checking out are the specific pages for both retailers and products which will show you whether there're any current discounts on offer, as well as any previous deals.
Forums: Whirlpool
The Whirlpool Forums aren't dedicated to bargains directly, but if you drill down into the subforums you can often find price discussions (as well as product recommendations) within them.
RSS Feeds
Using an RSS reader allows you to subscribe to feeds such as product-specific pages on OzBargain, Gift Cards on Sale, or bargain-based subreddits on reddit. Services such as Feedly allows you to view new deals as they're posted, and once you've marked one as 'read' it's dulled out and will disappear, so all your view isn't cluttered up with old news items. It's an extremely quick and efficient way to get all your news in one place.
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Relaunched SBS On Demand website lets you stream before soccer
Fans of subtitles, nudity and Lee Lin Chin (though not necessarily in that order) have much to celebrate today, as the SBS On Demand streaming website has been redesigned, reinvigorated and relaunched.
The website, which is now much more responsive and optimised for touchscreen devices, is available on 22 platforms – more than any other Australian broadcaster (and probably more than most streaming services, for that matter).
SBS On Demand, which now sports a Netflix-style look, will also automatically scale down to any device that it is accessed from – simply visit the SBS On Demand website in your device’s browser and start watching.
¡Ay dios mio!
SBS is also kicking it up a notch in terms of content, with some big-time shows hitting the service, including season three of Rectify, express from the US and exclusively premiered on the streaming service, Bosch, Masters of Sex, and catch-up titles such as The Principal, 12 Monkeys, Glue and Orphan Black.Australians can now stream over 600 films from around the world, as well as over 350 documentaries and factual shows, totalling over 4000 hours worth of content (plenty of time to learn several new languages) – all for the price of free.
SBS On Demand also has an extensive back catalogue of titles, from B-Grade schlock horror to the best of queer cinema, and exclusive collections of curated material, such as The Way of the Dragon and IP Man in the Martial Arts Mayhem Collection, and Tiny Furniture and Frances Ha in the Hipsters Collection.
- Not sure where to access SBS On Demand? Why not check it out on Telstra's T-Box
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Apple Music will be beating its way to Sonos speakers this year
From Spotify to Tidal, every music streaming service is judged not just on its music library or its ease of use, but whether you can access it directly via a Sonos speaker.
While Sonos confirmed it was more than willing to get on board with Apple's streaming service when it was announced at WWDC, up until now we had no idea whether the service would actually make its way to Sonos speakers around the world.
But now we do, with Apple Music senior director Ian Rogers confirming on Twitter that while the service won't be available on Sonos devices at launch, they're working on launching compatibility "ASAP".
Meanwhile, Apple has confirmed to Buzzfeed that they are working with the wireless speaker company to deliver streaming music by the end of this year, putting a very definite timeline on the integration.
Admittedly, Sonos support isn't going to do as much for Apple's service as having Taylor Swift's latest album available, but it will definitely be a big selling point for current Sonos users.
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OnePlus 2 sketch, screen size details leak out
We do know the OnePlus 2 is going to be unveiled on 27 July; we don't know exactly what to expect when it gets here. Fortunately, there are a few people willing to give us a preview.
Take @KJuma on Weibo (the Chinese Twitter), for example - he's provided what he calls a "spy sketch" of what the phone's going to look like. It's not particularly revealing but it's better than nothing.
The tipster also claims the OnePlus 2 is going to feature a screen between 5.5 and 5.7 inches, so it sounds like it might be slightly larger than the 5.5" OnePlus One released to widespread acclaim last year.
Set your watches
We already know from OnePlus itself that the phone is going to feature a USB Type-C connector and will have the Snapdragon 810 processor running everything under the bonnet.It's not the first early glimpse we've had of the incoming 2015 flagship from OnePlus - users have spied what could be the OnePlus 2 in some promotional materials released by the company.
When the 27th of July rolls around, OnePlus is going to make the launch event available to everyone via the magic of virtual reality. The action starts at 7 p.m. Pacific time, which is 3 a.m. on the 28th in the UK.
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Samsung says it's worked out how to double smartphone battery life
We all know that smartphone battery life could be better, and Samsung reckons it's on to something with its latest engineering efforts - the company says its new tech could double battery life without increasing size.
Business Korea has the news of a new graphene-coated silicon that could replace the graphite cathode in existing batteries. Essentially, that chemical mixture can hold a much bigger charge.
It would mean having to charge your phone every other night rather than every night, but of course this would extend far beyond phones to reach laptops, tablets and all the other gadgets we rely on.
Safety first
Don't get too excited yet though - Samsung's report says the technology could take two to three years to make it into consumer products.For a new battery technology to work it needs to hit certain safety standards and be inexpensive enough to be commercially viable. It also needs to be able to withstand thousands of recharges, like existing lithium-ion packs.
Getting that balance right is incredibly hard, which is why a lot of experimental new battery technologies never see the inside of a smartphone. Let's hope Samsung can make this one a reality.
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Versus: Readly vs Readbug vs Flipboard vs Apple News
When it comes to entertainment and information, we tend to like the all-you-can-eat model: whether it's streaming music on Spotify or watching shows on Netflix, more and more of us expect to get everything for a flat fee. Could that work for other kinds of content too, such as magazines and newspapers? Readly and Readbug say yes, while Flipboard and Apple's imminent News say "hmmm."
The four services are very different, but they all have the same aim: to give you something interesting to read. Readly and Readbug take the Spotify Premium model with flat fees giving you access to all their content, but Flipboard and Apple News are ad-funded. Have any of them got reading right? Let's find out.
Readly
We reviewed Readly back in 2014, and while we liked the app we had some reservations. In particular, the catalogue wasn't as big as we'd like. The catalogue is much, much bigger now and includes pretty much every magazine you might see on a newsagent's shelf including T3, Total Film, Marie Claire, FHM, Empire, Car, Top Gear, cooking magazines, specialist magazines, trashy supermarket titles, kids' comics and so on, with unlimited access for just £9.99 per month. It's available for iOS, Android, Windows and Kindle Fire.
Readly's catalogue doesn't just include current issues but back issues too, and new issues appear almost as soon as they hit print. The issues are perfect reproductions of the print editions, so they work best on Retina/HD screens. Expect to do a lot of zooming in and out if you're using a small or low-res device.
One of our concerns last year was that Readly didn't have parental controls, so Kids' National Geographic could be racked next to trashy tabloids with appalling cover lines. That's changed and the app now supports multiple accounts.
Readly is exceptional value for money. With magazines typically costing around five quid per issue, if you read just three titles a month you're saving cash. We've put our money where our mouths are with this one: we're happy subscribers using our own cash, not a PR-provided account. On a Retina iPad or similar Android tablet, it's a superb way to read magazines.
Readbug
If Readly is a supermarket magazine rack, the iOS-only Readbug is your local indie emporium, stuffed with niche titles the wider world might not even have heard of with a friendly expert telling you about the good stuff. It reproduces photography perfectly but the text is rendered separately, so it's a lot easier on the eyes than Readly, and there's a daily, hand-picked best-of to show you interesting content. The digital text isn't always perfect – the typography is a little inconsistent and we'd have liked the option to specify our own fonts and sizes – but Readbug does a great job of preserving the print layouts (and the magazines' ads). Readbug uses algorithms to analyse what you read and help find related content too.
Like Readly, Readbug is £9.99 per month, and like Readly you get access to back issues as well as current ones. And like Readly, Readbug is great value for money – with one major caveat, which is that its catalogue is relatively small and definitely won't appeal to everybody. The catalogue currently contains 37 titles including Dazed, AnOther Magazine, Under The Radar, Sight & Sound, Little White Lies and Things & Ink. It's very pretty and a joy to use, but if your tastes are firmly mainstream this isn't the app for you.
Flipboard is an odd thing: it's partly a good-looking RSS feed reader, partly a place for you to share the things that interest you and partly a social media-powered recommendation engine. It shows you content from the sites you've chosen as favourites and from other users' Flipboard magazines (if you wish) and it can also grab content from your Facebook and Twitter feeds, creating what in theory should be the perfect magazine.
Flipboard is available for iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows, Windows Phone and (since February 2015) online in your web browser. Rather than charge a subscription fee, Flipboard pays its way with ads.
Flipboard looks good (although we prefer the rival app Zite it bought last year, and whose recommendation system is now part of Flipboard), but its success largely depends on you: if you choose your interests wisely, follow good user-created Flipboard magazines and don't connect Facebook if you like lots of companies' pages then you'll get a much better experience.
The Flipboard app on iOS has just been updated to make it more social. Magazine creators can ask readers questions, comment on the stories they link to, add images or request others get involved. If you prefer reading to be a passive activity that won't be of much interest, but it's great if you want to share what you see online.
Apple News
Apple News is a bit of a mystery at the moment. We know it's going to be ad-funded, we know it's going to be based around RSS news feeds, and we know that human curation is going to be a key part of it because Apple is busy hiring journalists and editors. But until it actually launches in Autumn 2015, we don't know whether it's any good.
We know some of the partners who have already signed up, a list that includes Wired, ESPN, the Guardian and the Atlantic, but it's unclear whether you'll be able to add your own feeds to the app or whether you'll be limited to the content Apple chooses for you. The demo certainly looks good, but then so did the original iPhone demo – and we know now that the phone Steve Jobs was waving about was barely functional.
News might be the death of Flipboard and the future of newspapers. Then again, it might just be another Ping. We'll let you know in the autumn.
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Updated: Netflix introduces its pay-as-you-go gift card
Netflix has just announced it's own Netflix Card, offering a pay-as-you-go-a-like service for any of its three tier subscriptions.
Coming in three flavours - £15, £25 and £50 - you can get your binge-viewing on without needing either a credit/debit card or a PayPal account.
Just scratch and sniff the code on the back of the card and add it to your existing account or start afresh.
You can use it on any of Netflix's streaming plans; so if you want to get a quick fix of 4K fun for your brand new Ultra HD tele you can get it up and running in a trice. The cards can be picked up in the usual places, like supermarkets and newsagents, making them widely available with more being added over the next few months.
It's a smart move by Netflix; its free trials are all well and good - they're free after all - but how many of us have gone through the process of signing up for a free month of some funky new service only to have stalled at entering our credit card details?
This no-strings-attached approach may be more enticing for a lot of people in terms of their trialing of the service afresh.
Update:
It appears the new gift card is even more pay-as-you-go than we initially thought.
The value on the card can be used towards any of the different subscription types - from SD all the way through to it's Ultra HD 4K streams - but isn't just aimed at the standard monthly rates.
The value on the card is applied to your account for as long as the chosen £15, £25 or £50 would last on that particular subscription model, on a per day and not just on a per month basis.
As long as there's money in the account the service will continue to run. When it does run out you can then top up with a new card or choose any of its other payment options.
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