Loquiz iPad public test

We have just run a public test using iPads. Well it turns out that iPad is an amazing piece of hardware
Alar prepared a short 40 minute game in chilly Tallinn. Four iPads were used – four teams went out. Tallinn Old Town has narrow medieval streets, so this is quite a challenging area for devices and applications that utilize GPS.

Overall experience

Participants described the overall experience as “smooth”. You can start the game from inside a building, location fix is almost instant, and very stable. You always know in which direction to move, map zooming is really smooth and questions consistently pop up exactly according to the radius the game designer has defined.

Usability

This is about the same. The app is rock solid. When for any reason you hit “the” button and end up in the home screen the game continues. If you close the game by accident the default is that your old game continues. And if you lose your device you can just grab a new one and continue your game anyway.

Differences

While the user interface is 99% the same, there are some subtle differences between the Android and iOS versions of Loquiz.The most obvious difference being the maps. Android uses google maps and satellite imagery, iOS naturally uses Apple maps and photos. However, as a user you would most probably not notice this unless we specifically told you.
The biggest difference that a user notices is how much quicker the location fix is and how much smootherthe compass is. So instead of relying on GPS data as we do on Android we can use GPS – Compass combo on iPad. In reality this means that the ARROW TO NEXT always points to the right direction as opposed to the arrow works best when you are moving on Android.

Battery

It seems that while being more responsive in general the battery also lasts slightly longer. We did not run any tests on the battery but it certainly seems that after the game is over iPads have more battery left.

Conclusion

Now it is official – Loquiz works better on an iPad. We are continuing development on both platforms but for now iPad has the edge.

We are now submitting it to Apple Store and will let you know when it can be downloaded for free.