iSoda (iWater, iCola and more)

iSoda Posted in Simulation on 17 Jan 2009

Reviewed by Steve Litchfield

User’s rating: (7 votes, average: 4.86 out of 5)  Loading ...

Editor’s rating:

Novelty or killer application? It’s a tough call. From a computing standpoint, applications like iSoda are utterly trivial and worthless. From a social standpoint, down the pub or hanging out with friends, such applications become the focus of attention and laughter, potentially introducing many more people to the iPhone platform than a more serious and staid application. Perhaps the answer is that both serious and trivial are needed, in order to round things out?

iSoda stands out from simpler versions, such as iPint, by including multiple drinks colours and textures, with a branded front end that mimics a vending machine. Almost all the drinks are fizzy, with animated bubbles and surface froth and – a nice touch – if you shake the iPhone at any point then the virtual drink froths even more.

As you’d expect, tilting your device is the way to ‘drain’ each beverage, pretending to consume it in typical virtual drink fashion, complete with fizzing, drinking and an optional ‘end of drink’ noise (a rather rude burp) if required. The main setting to note is ‘Pay-trick’, where the drink isn’t served up until you’ve tapped the coin slot – this is apparently so you can fool your friends by pretending to stick a real coin into it. Or perhaps you make money from them by palming their coins before serving each with a virtual Coke?

It’s all good, clean fun, but spoilt slightly by laziness on the programmer’s part by the three informational buttons in the setup screen merely linking to web pages rather then displaying text and data in their own right or bringing up an email form. And, as you know, bringing up a web page means the application has to quit. And then be started up again, and so on. Messy.

Still, if I had to bet on any application on your iPhone being the centre of attention tomorrow night, I’d bet on this one. It’s guaranteed a laugh and a moment of jealousy from any non-iPhone-owning friends.