CS 491 – Virtual Zippo Lighter Critique – Eric Hutter
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- Main Screen of App
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- View of the apps internal store. Currently showing Best Sellers
The app pictured above is “Virtual Zippo ® Lighter” by skyrockit (never appears capitalized on their website). skyrockit’s website is http://www.moderati.com/. The version of this app i futzed around with was the iOS version, though there is a version for android. The app is very much as one would expect from a virtual lighter, with the distinguishing factor being the Zippo branding.
I have to admit that i was surprised how well the app uses the mobile platform. In the first photo the flame is at an unusual angle because I was holding the my iTouch at an angle. Also, while the lid of the lighter and be ‘dragged’ open and closed, it can be ‘flicked’ open using a wrist jerk motion. Another use they supposedly make of the mobile platform is the use of the microphone. The About page that the app contains claims that you can demonstrate that your virtual Zippo is windproof by blowing into the microphone, but I wasn’t able to get this feature to work (I guess it’s possible that the lighter is so windproof that blowing on it make no impact whatsoever, but I suspect not). In terms for other controls, navigation of the internal lighter store and setting is all very standard iOS.
While the app is free, there is a store where you can purchase premium skins for the lighter, all of which appear to be $.99. There a quite a number of free skins, 28 currently, 7 of which can be ‘engraved’ like the one pictured. The most popular of these premium skins are things like pictures of Bob Marley and Harley-Davidson logos.
Learning the app was fairly straight forward. There was a how-to-ish message the first time the app was loaded, though it was for the most part intuitive. While the operation of the lighter itself was simple, there were some features, such as the lock icon on the top left, that didn’t seem to do much until I read the manual of sorts on the About page. The other icon above the lighter was a microphone symbol that also made very little sense. However the most cryptic setting appears on this About page the I keep mentioning. There is a little on-off iOS slider labeled Show Splash that I can’t for the life of me divine its purpose.
I tested another lighter app, Virtual Lighter by iHandySoft, that seemed to be a much lower quality. It was missing the surprisingly satisfying ‘flick’ open and closed feature, the flame was less real looking and responded poorly to being turned upside down, there are ads on the main screen, and there are far less free skins, none of which are personalizable. The one feature Virtual Lighter had that Zippo didn’t was a mute option.
As far as reviews go, Virtual Zippo Lighter has a 3.5. Reviews for the app seem to come in to flavors, overwhelmingly positive, or basically reporting that it crashes. I was able to cause some minor problems with the app. Once when I attempted to launch the app, all I got was a black screen. When I closed the app I did see the main screen appear on the window closing zoom out. I got essentially the same error when i tried to launch the app as it was connecting with the computer, though to be fair I do recall other apps stalling from the same action.
On the whole it was a much better experience than I expected from a free lighter simulation.