Transformers: Battle Tactics, the latest game in the long running “Robots in Disguise” franchise, is now available for the iPhone and iPad from the App Store. Players can control teams of Autobots and Decepticons in turn-based combat.

The free-to-play game contains a single player campaign plus online multiplayer battles with over 75 Transformers to choose from. Here’s a list of its features:

• Compete in live real-time PVP showdowns with players from around the globe while earning rare TRANSFORMERS characters, valuable resources, and prestige at the top of the leaderboards
• Collect iconic TRANSFORMERS characters while teaming up AUTOBOT and DECEPTICON characters side-by-side.
• Calculate strategic decisions by leveraging unique TRANSFORMERS character modes to take control of the battlefield in any situation and obliterate the enemy.
• Link TRANSFORMERS characters to create powerful Combiners to deal devastating damage in battle!
• Connect with friends to form leagues and seek advantage over the competition. Earn powerful rewards and placement at the top of the leader boards.

Be aware that while Transformers: Battle Tactics is free to download and play, it also has a number of in-app purchase options.

• Free with IAP – Download now

Mail Pilot version 2.0 is now available for both iPhone and iPad and includes a lot of refinements and new features that make your inbox even easier to manage. With the addition of iCloud sync, better gestures, and enhanced navigation, Mail Pilot 2 transforms your emails into individual tasks so you can get things done even faster.

If you’ve used Mail Pilot prior to the new version, you’ll still feel right at home. The overall experience is more refined, more mature even. Mail Pilot 2 supports a few different color schemes, all of which are tasteful and beautiful. The most important feature remains easy access to the inbox — you’e only ever one downward swipe away. Yes, I’ve accidentally triggered Notification Center a few times by swiping to close to the top, but overall its a productivity win.

Mail Pilot works much the same as other email apps that use scheduling and snoozing. You can archive mail, delete it, or save it for later. If you save it for later, you can choose a time and date for it to re-appear in your inbox. However, Mail Pilot takes things one step further and also allows you to create lists. It’s not unique to Mail Pilot, but it’s powerful none the less. With lists you can group emails from any account you have linked. All messages added to these lists then show up in one view, regardless of whether or not they’re saved to the same email account.

The main difference between Mail Pilot and other “getting things done” type mail apps is the level of organization and structure. Since Mail Pilot literally turns your inbox into a todo list, it should mean that less will slip through the cracks. Until you actually mark a message as complete, it will remain in your inbox. Marking a message as complete moves in into the archive. If you want more actions, just hold down on a message and you have several options to flick messages away.

The good

• Clean design that’s easy to navigate
• One swipe away from your inbox, no matter where you are
• Great drafts support
• Multiple ways to organize which makes Mail Pilot 2 even more flexible than ever
• Attachment support for most used cloud storage services

The bad

• If you’re not precise when swiping down, you can unintentionally activate Notification Center
• Bulk edit mode is difficult to find (you have to swipe down on the inbox message view to reveal a select button)
• No native push notifications, background app refresh only
• No oAuth support for Google

The bottom line

Mail Pilot 2 is a decent refinement to what was already a good product. The price point may be a barrier of entry for a lot of people but for anyone who wants complete control of every detail — and are okay sacrificing true push to get it, Mail Pilot may be worth it to them.

To celebrate the launch of Mail Pilot 2, Mindsense is discounting the price to $7.99, normally $9.99. You can also snag the Mac app for $14.99 right now, normally $19.99. If you pick up either, let us know in the comments what you think!

• Mail Pilot 2 for iOS – $9.99, $7.99 on sale – Download Now
• Mail Pilot for Mac – $19.99, $14.99 on sale – Download Now

Apple will reportedly not support Windows Phone for their upcoming streaming music service based on the technology and content that it acquired with the purchase of Beats Music. A Windows Phone Beats Music app launched in January 2014, a few months before Apple bought the company for $3 billion.

Welcome to Smartphone Futurology. In this new series of science-filled articles, Mobile Nations guest contributor Shen Ye walks through current technologies in use within our phones, as well as the cutting-edge stuff still being developed in the lab. There’s quite a bit of science ahead, as a lot of the future discussions are based on scientific papers with a vast amount of technical jargon, but we’ve tried to keep things as plain and simple as possible. So if you want to dive deeper into just how the guts of your phone function, this is the series for you.

This is the final instalment — for now — in our series on the future of smartphone technology. This week we’ll cover the science behind one really important area of smartphone build quality — the glass of the touchscreen. And as we’re wrapping up the series, we’ll also see how the current state of mobile tech compares to predictions made almost a decade ago. Read on to learn more.

The top five carriers in the United States will on Feb. 11 implement new unlocking procedures for smartphones, tablets, and other cellular devices sold on their networks. The new unlocking standards were set forth by the CTIA in late 2013 and, though a voluntary commitment by the carriers, define the conditions under which carriers must unlock your devices — and it’s all looking good for the consumer. Once you’ve paid off your phone, you’ll probably be able to get it unlocked, and it’ll be even easier with future smartphones.

Read More »

République Remastered, a graphically-revamped version of the acclaimed stealth action game, will make its way to the Mac on Feb. 26. The original version of the game, from developer Camouflaj, was first released for the iPhone and iPad back in December 2013.

While the original version of République was developed using the Unity 4 graphics engine, République Remastered was created with the new Unity 5 engine. The developer stated, “Camouflaj has fully embraced the engine’s features, including physically based shading, real-time global illumination, and reflection probes.”

Here’s a quick reminder of the game’s storyline:

In RÉPUBLIQUE REMASTERED, players assist Hope, a desperate young woman struggling to escape from a secret, Orwellian state. Communicating using a stolen phone, Hope contacts the player and asks them to hack into the nation’s surveillance system, assume control, and guide her out of the clutches of the omnipresent Overseer. Literary works such as 1984 and Brave New World, and current geopolitical events including global surveillance and Internet censorship serve as key sources of inspiration for both the narrative and the stealth-survival gameplay. Players expand their control over surveillance cameras and other network-enabled devices, growing into an active threat to the Overseer and his grip over his shadowy nation.

République Remastered will be priced at $24.99 and will contain the first three episodes of the iOS version, along with a pre-purchase of the upcoming final two episodes. Camouflaj will also sell a Deluxe version of the game for $34.99 that adds “the complete soundtrack, an hour-long making of documentary, and two early prototypes” (we don’t know what they are, but they sound cool).

Source: Camouflaj

The recent public multiplayer beta test for Halo 5: Guardians generated tons of data and feedback from its players. All of that information will be used by the game’s developer 343 Industries and publisher Microsoft to change and improve the multiplayer experience when the final game is released later in 2015 for the Xbox One console.

SwiftKey’s trace-typing “Flow” feature is now available to iPad users, part of an update that’s bringing emoji support, new languages, and more to iPhone and iPad users. SwiftKey has been one of our favorite custom keyboards for iPhone and iPad from the start, but the lack of trace typing on the iPad was maddening. That’s no longer an issue.

In addition to Flow on the iPad, SwiftKey now offers support for more than 800 emoji:

We’ve built emoji right into SwiftKey Keyboard so you can now express yourself when words don’t quite cut it. Just as it learns the words and phrases that matter to you, SwiftKey also learns and predicts which emoji you use most often so you can spend less time looking for that perfect smiley (or slice of pizza – whatever you’re into).

You can find more than 800 fun emoji by tapping the “smiley” button on the bottom left of the keyboard. The more often you add a fun icon to your messages, the more SwiftKey will learn to offer it to you in the prediction bar.

Additionally, 11 new languages have been added to the SwiftKey library, bringing the total to 35. Options now include Bulgarian, Croatian, Greek, Hinglish, Icelandic, Indonesian, Latvian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Turkish. As before, SwiftKey users can run two languages at a time for beautiful bilingual input. SwiftKey is also working on adding support for right-to-left languages like Arabic, Hebrew, and Farsi.

Lastly, SwiftKey’s added support for keyboard click sounds for those that prefer to tap away instead of swiping words into existence. Blessedly, they’ve disabled the clicks by default, so don’t worry that you’ll start making noise the next time you try typing.

• Free – Download Now

The top five carriers in the United States will on Feb. 11 implement new unlocking procedures for smartphones, tablets, and other cellular devices sold on their networks. The new unlocking standards were set forth by the CTIA in late 2013 and, though a voluntary commitment by the carriers, define the conditions under which carriers must unlock your devices — and it’s all looking good for the consumer. Once you’ve paid off your phone, you’ll probably be able to get it unlocked, and it’ll be even easier with future smartphones.

Here are the broad strokes of what you need to know:

• AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, and Verizon will all adopt these standards starting February 11, 2015.
• Post-paid devices will qualify for unlocking as soon as the device is paid off or the service contract ends (depending on your specific plan, naturally).
• Prepaid devices will qualify for unlocking no later than one year after activation.
• Military personnel can have their phones unlocked upon presentation of deployment orders, regardless of payment status.
• Unlocking for current customers will be performed at no cost, and at “a reasonable cost” for non-customers and former customers.

There are, naturally, some restrictions on all of this. Owners of both postpaid and prepaid devices will need to ensure that their devices have been fully paid off and that their account is in good standing with the carrier. Devices must also not have been flagged as stolen, lost, or associated with fraudulent activity. Additionally, there are two different kinds of devices that we’re looking at here, Master Subsidy Lock (MSL) and Domestic SIM Unlock-capable (DSU), and that will affect how the unlocking process happens:

• MSL devices have been manufactured and/or launched prior to February 2015. They will require an MSL code from the carrier to override the restrictions keeping that device locked to the carrier’s network.
• DSU devices will launch starting in February 2015 and will be capable of receiving an over-the-air unlock command from the carrier. Very few (apparently only one) devices have been manufacturer before now with DSU capability.

The last two generations of iPhone, including the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus will be receiving DSU capability on February 19, 2015.

Either way, MSL or DSU devices that are unlocked will have their SIM card slots unshackled and free to take a SIM card from whatever carrier you so choose. Of course, the device still needs to actually support the frequencies used by your carrier of choice, though thankfully most modern flagship smartphones and tablets support a wide range of frequencies for easy interoperability. Older phones and mid-to-low-tier devices won’t necessarily have support for your carrier of choice, but it won’t hurt to unlock if you’re eligible.

We don’t have exact details on how all of these carriers will implement these new standards, but we can tell you a bit about what Sprint has planned. Sprint will include a message on the appropriate month’s bill for MSL devices when they’re eligible for unlocking. DSU-capable devices on Sprint will be automatically unlocked over-the-air once they’ve become eligible.

There’s a brave new world on the horizon for unlocked devices in the United States. Soon it will be easier and clearer than ever to get your smartphone, your tablet, your hotspot, or even your laptop unlocked from the carrier. And that’s a very good thing indeed.

Thanks to anonymous for all the details