This review originally appeared within iLounge’s iOS Gems series within the compilation article, iPhone Gems: Every Drawing Application, Reviewed. Additional details may be found in the original article.
ColorTilt ($1) and ColorTouch ($1) are slightly different versions of the same underwhelming application. ColorTilt forces the user to tilt the iPhone or iPod touch in different directions in order to select the drawing color, while ColorTouch offers a only slightly less irritating system of changing the color based on where the user’s finger is placed on the screen.
Both systems are unnecessarily inaccurate, confusing, and poorly thought out, providing a bad user experience. Once a color has been selected by tapping any corner of the screen—the same method is used to return to color selection mode—the user may begin drawing on any part of the screen, save for a small border that runs all the way around the edges, and changes hue based on the currently selected color. Shaking the device clears the screen.
Tapping and holding in any corner brings up an options menu which lets users choose between drawing and erase modes, set the brush size and opacity, toggle the sound effects on and off, and, in the case of ColorTilt, set the rate at which the colors change when tilting the device.
With the same price and virtually the same feature set, the method by which the user sets the color is at once the sole differentiator between these two apps and the main reason they’re so unappealing. Both methods strike us as gimmicky, and detract further from what is already a demo-quality experience. For free, these apps wouldn’t be worth the download; for $1, neither is close to recommendable.
