Are you tired of drawing on your iPhone only to have it look like a sick dog, rather than a sailboat? Are you fed up with horrible, tedious handwriting on your iPod that would make people cry? Were you wanting to draw a work of art that otherwise could only be done with normal pencil and paper? Well, look no further than No.2 from miniMusic ..
No.2 is a simple but effective drawing application. The one major feature that sets it aside from the others is the fact that you can see where your line is. In other applications, the line is hidden somewhere under your finger with low accuracy. In No.2, however, you control a virtual, onscreen pencil that gives you a complete view of where you’re drawing.
My first impressions, however, weren’t good. I found the controls to be sloppy and buggy, and the interface to be a poor work environment. The app sounded better on paper than it was in action. But after spending some time with the app, I got used to the controls which happened not be to buggy at all. Instead, I realized that there aren’t too many other ways to pull off this sort of app, and this seems to be the best way possible at the moment.
The way you operate the app is, like said earlier, with a virtual pencil. Drag it to move it, and then when you’re ready, tap with another finger to start a line. To stop the line, just tap again. To erase, tap the pencil to flip it over and use the pink eraser. I got used to this very quickly as it simply became very intuitive. After an hour or so, I forgot I was even tapping with another finger at all and instead just concentrating on what I was drawing. I found this especially when I was drawing the header (yes, it was drawn in-app). Each branch of the tree seemed to be drawn so quickly and easily, it was as if I was using a set of real pencil and paper.
Handwriting is also much more accurate than using other apps, but it’s not recommended. With enough practice, you could potentially get quick, but it’s not a good bet if that’s what you’re planning on using it for.
Especially useful is the fact that you can also pan and zoom the “paper”. Zooming in, which is quite nice when doing handwriting or making small details, goes pretty close but loses some integrity and pixelizes. When zooming out, on the other hand, all details look crisp and clear. But drawing when not zoomed at least halfway in results in jagged lines. This isn’t a huge problem, though, as you usually won’t want to be drawing at this distance.
See it an Action:
Of course, you’re also able to save your drawings and come back later. You can either save them to the photo album, or in the app itself. The menu interface contains a main screen which has a list of pre-defined or customizable “books” (folders, basically), each one after clicking containing a visual layout of all the pages.
Even while it does what it says well, more features could definitely be added such as landscape mode; currently, the screen doesn’t rotate and makes you use the pencil sideways. Useable but not ideal. Also, more colors and pen widths would be welcomed, as only one of each is included in the app right now. Anything other than these features would just be icing on the cake. A list of upcoming features is included in the documentation in the app from the developer.
Now, the price may be too expensive for some at $4.99 /£2.99. A large group of people will, for a fact, pass this up because it’s simply too much. But I urge most to try it if you enjoy drawing or sketching. From what I’ve tried, this really is the best way to draw on the iPhone platform, hands down.
Current Status: Recommended
Reviewed at: v1.3
Reviewed on Firmware: 2.2.1
Download size: 1.6MB
Released on: 7th Jul 2008
Retails for: £2.99 / $4.99
Compatible with: iPod touch Gen 1 & 2 / iPhone Classic / iPhone 3G
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