On the dawn of the movie release Star Wars: The Force Awakens the new Star Wars app in collaboration with Google has made a very enjoyable mobile experience and I’m not even a Star Wars fan.
I found the Star Wars app on the front page of the Google Play store and I also visited the Google Star Wars website after reading Nick’s Star Wars article to create a custom light or dark side user experience.
About the Star Wars app for Android
This cool Droid app has a handful of features including a fun soundboard with different voices and catchphrases, a light saber game, three different forces to join like the dark, light and droids, virtual reality experience with Google Cardboard, selfie shots, and delayed content to keep you checking back in to the Star Wars app to see what’s new.
Likes about the Star Wars app
The Star Wars app is a well built app, because it has more than one function. It’s not just a game, it’s not just a soundboard app, it’s not just a VR experience; it’s all of those and more. My favorite part about the Star Wars app was the selfie shots, because there were different background with different characters and you could line your face up to be a few different characters as well.
The Force Trainer game was fun too. The training sessions were the only levels I made it through and it was a bit of an augmented reality experience. In the game, my phone’s rear camera is turned on and there’s droid on the screen that helped me get acclimated with a light saber and how to use it for self defense.
To be honest, the main reason I downloaded the Star Wars app was because I saw that it had watch faces available for my Moto360. I love trying out new watch faces, almost as much as I enjoy changing themes every week. The watch app has three different skins to apply: one for the dark side, the light side, and the droids. It also gives unique weather updates with a bit of slang references to where the cold weather may be coming from.
I did try all three themes for my phone and watch, but I really liked the red themes even if it represents the dark side I was still attracted to the color scheme.
A few dislikes about the Star Wars app
I mentioned earlier that the selfie shots were a favorite feature, but that doesn’t make it a perfect feature. Although it was fun to place my face in the middle of fun looking character the pictures captured were not quite the same as they appeared in my camera. I had to put my face so close to the camera that it filled up the area my face was supposed to fit in, but the photo always came out with my face further away than it appeared before I pressed the shutter button. It also seemed like my face was flipped so if my chin was tilted to the left the captured photo would have my chin tilted to the right.
Another thing that bothered me was the data intensive downloads. It seemed that every time I wanted to try out the a new feature I had to initiate a download that took longer than the time I spent trying out the feature. For the dedicated Star Wars fans I recommend downloading as much of the content that you think you’ll use upfront so you have more time to enjoy the media before others beat you to it.
The Star Wars Android app is a great bit of publicity for the upcoming movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I’m sure the die hard Star Wars fans are really enjoying this app since I liked it and I’m not even a fan of Star Wars.
