Dodge Landmines With The Grenade Survival Kit
Grenade Survival Kit ($0.99) by CVSoft is a universal app that offers photo taking and whistle blowing entertainment.
For the review, I worked with the app primarily using my iPhone.
There are two primary functions the app provides with the “grenade meter” and “grenade whistle.”
To use the grenade meter, you snap a picture (or select one) to see just how much of a "situation" you are dealing with.
The ranking system is on a scale of one to 10. If the results return a 10, you may want to "frag out!" Ultimately the grenade meter is a random ranking, but fun to use on friends.
After capturing the photo, you can save the image, but can’t share it just yet. Facebook and Twitter integration will be added in version 1.1.
The other feature the app provides is a pretty cool grenade whistle. To use the whistle, just blow into your microphone to trigger it, alerting your friends a grenade is near. What does it sound like? Think vuvuzela.
Though I had fun with the app, it definitely needs some work. It crashed a few times and the photo elements are very buggy and confusing.
The app is designed to be used in portrait mode, but the screen transitions with the device. If you rotate it to landscape, the display will be out of whack.
After taking a picture, the recorded image zooms in. Since there are no guides showing you how to frame the ideal picture, I had difficulty determining how much to zoom in/out when taking the photo. I kept cutting my head off in the pictures.
The “select photo” option also had a problem. I chose images already in portrait mode, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t get the photos to display correctly. After testing out a few, I found the trick was to rotate images (in an external program) to the left (90 degrees) before uploading. I contacted the developer about the issues I found, and they are working to resolve the problems. They plan to push an update in a week or so.
The grenade whistle makes creative use of your iDevice and I like the concept. However, the issues I had with the camera and the photos took some of the fun away. Keep an eye on this app. Once the bugs are resolved, and more sharing options are in place, Jersey Shore fans will be dodging grenades in no time.
