First there was FAH, now there is a 2.0 of it
Herosoft Ltd is proud to announce a double landmark today: the 750th game featured in Free-App Hero, and the release of two awesome new versions of the app that various sources have described as "fantastic" (Cult Of Mac), "useful" (Pocket Gamer), "wonderful" (iPhone App Review) and "crap" (someone called 'Krakatomato', which we suspect may be a pseudonym).
FAH 2.0 is a major upgrade, offering several much-requested features and some other stuff nobody even thought of asking for. Frankly, it's so stupendously great that we're actually a little bit embarrassed.
The new Core Edition is a free version of the app which now has all the content of the normal one (now known as FAH Gold), rather than being a cut-down Lite like the previous Cheapskate Edition. It's supported by ads, BUT you can disable them for a week at a time by simply clicking on a single one. You don't have to download or install any other apps, you don't have to sign up to anything, you don't need to connect to your Facebook or Twitter account – just one click a week and you get the full FAH experience forever, free.
Both versions now feature the long-awaited addition of multitasking support, so you don't have to go through the tedious business of booting the app from scratch every time you use it to download something. Lists are now also cached in memory so you can flick between them at will without reloading, and there are numerous other speedups and enhancements.
Inexplicably, the App Store is still seeing the release of terrible new freebie-trackers that robo-spew any old garbage at you – Lite versions, freemium crap and just general rubbish. Every time I see a new one appear (like today's awful and very inaccurately-named Best Free Games) I get worried that someone with more time, money and resources than Herosoft has muscled in on the market, and then I see another piss-poor auto-scraped list of Lite junk and breathe another sigh of relief.
Free-App Hero is still the ONLY human-curated free-app guide for the iThings, and if you'd downloaded every game it's featured you'd have literally saved enough money to buy a contract-free iPhone 4. Now it's better, and free. That's all.
Weird. Searching for 'free app hero' gives no results – searching for 'free-app hero' doesn't show the CE version. If this happens to you, go into the item in the App Store and hit 'developer page' and find it from there.
Multitasking, that'll help a lot!
I originally downloaded the free version shortly after it came out, but upgraded to the full version about half an hour later. I still check it daily and download a game occasionally. FAH, Touch Arcade & the Something Awful iOS games thread are pretty much the only iphone gaming news sources I bother with these days. Appshopper's wishlist is handy, but there's too much junk to bother with most of the time.
So if we've already paid for the old version, will we get the 2.0 version free as an update? Or will we have to pay again?
It's a free update.
Yep, the paid version will automatically update to the "Gold" edition for free.
Why isn't this app installed on the device by default? Fantastic, thank you.
A very good question. I suggest you ask Apple.
it gives me a "only buyers of full version get discounted price" sign.. and then spp is being modified..
This app has been great and shoved me in the direction of some real gems. Long may it continue
"it gives me a "only buyers of full version get discounted price" sign.. and then spp is being modified.."
If you had an old promo code, you'll need to update via the US store.
Excellent news indeed. Oh, and congrats on keeping us fed with quality freebies oh Stuart. Off to blog this!
Yeah it's a great app – I don't have time to sort through the dreck on the App Store. That pool game I found via FAH is like crack cocaine (I bought the full version), despite all the things it lacks. Like more granular control of spin.
It's excellent, without a doubt!
Any plans for an Android version? Games are starting to improve now and the Android Market is even worse to navigate than the App Store, if that's possible.
Not unless someone buys me an Android phone. I just spent my life savings getting my car through its MOT…
Weird. For some reason, I imagined you car-less Rev.
Ooh heck no. I'd be lost without my wheels – I've had a car almost since I could drive, and that's a LONG time ago.
The first app I bought when I got my new iPhone. It's just brilliant. Thanks!
Awesome, many thanks. Things you already own getting better is one of the best features of iOS gaming.
I've installed the CE on my old iPod Touch (1g), but it just displays the splash screen for 1 second and then reverts to the "desktop".
I rebooted and also deleted/re-installed but the problem persists.
Every couple of days I make love to this app with my mouth.
"I've installed the CE on my old iPod Touch (1g), but it just displays the splash screen for 1 second and then reverts to the "desktop".
I rebooted and also deleted/re-installed but the problem persists."
Gah. What version of iOS are you running?
Sometimes, when I click on "download free from the App Store" and then the "OK" button, it initially flips to a sort of blank App Store page, but then it just shows the desktop.
If I then tap on the App Store icon, it doesn't take me to the game I chose to download, it just takes me to whatever I was previously looking at in the App Store, so I have to go back into FAH and hope it doesn't happen again.
I'm running FAH Gold on my iPod touch (iOS 4.3.3).
That's an App Store issue rather than a FAH issue. The Store crashed all the time on my iPod Touch (like, literally 50%) until I did a factory restore on it. Once you've left FAH by tapping the Buy button it has no control of anything.
I'm on 3.1.3, that's the newest for the 1st gen devices.
The improvements are great additions to an already essential app.
One (minor) addition that might be useful, however: the entries for each of the quick tips use the same "we've played this and (etc)" placeholder text. That's fair enough, but might it be possible to follow that up with the original iTunes Store description until a full review is put together? While the iTunes descriptions are hardly impartial, it would provide a tad more useful info for wavering downloaders.
(And while I'm making unreasonably fussy demands about iDevice games, WHY hasn't someone put together an updated, online multiplayer clone of Speccy classic Chaos, eh?)
Well, since you have to go to the App Store entry anyway to download the game, you're going to be able to read the blurb there if you're interested. If we put it into FAH it'd make the data file twice as big and slow down loading considerably, for no tangible gain.
"I'm on 3.1.3, that's the newest for the 1st gen devices."
Gah. Two people have reported issues with 3.1.3 and 1G iPods now, so it looks like there's an issue with either the hardware or the firmware. Unfortunately we have no way of downgrading any of our devices (because Apple don't sign 3.x any more), so there's extremely little we can do to detect/fix the error. Um, sorry. All I can suggest is to grab the old version out of your iTunes folder and reinstall that one instead.
is it possible to test it on the iPhone emulator using an earlier firmware version ?
On the iPhone what now?