Everything is neat, simple and well thought out. That’s PayPal for you. It’s a joy to make a transaction, especially with the addictive animation of the exact amount of money you want to send being folded onto the screen. And if you don’t feel like typing your email adress and password into the app every time, you can create a mobile PIN that will make your log-ins even faster.

Next time you pay by PayPal, use this app.

You can configure various settings, such as: points needed to win the game (05/07/09/11/), goal sizes, volume, table air volume, replay and lights.

Gameplay is fairly realistic – both players throw the puck around wildly without much aiming – just as in real life. A small glitch is that the puck often gets stuck in a corner and bounces around wildly. It’s a good idea to stay near your goal and play defensively, as this minimizes the chance of accidental goals scored at you.

The graphics are – like the rest of the game – simple, sharp and attractive. That’s the beauty of 2d – you can get quality, crisp graphics without any blurring.

All three playing modes work great. There is almost no lag on the WiFi multiplayer mode, but both players have to be in the same WiFi network for it to work.

There is also a $1.99 version of the game with no ads but everything else is the same.

Touch Hockey by FlipSide5 is a must-have app for the iPhone and iPod touch. Get it now.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Cube is an excellent demonstration of iPhone’s potential as a gaming device.

But there are a lot of issues – most of which can be fixed:

First of all – the controls. They’re way too sensitive. You’ll easily find yourself running around the levels with no control over where you’re going. When you start the game, make sure you’re holding your iPhone/iPod touch flat and parallel to the ground, or it will calibrate incorrectly.

A great tip to reduce lag on iPhone:

Before starting up a high performance game, restart your iPhone/iPod touch to clear its active memory. Hold down the power button for 5 seconds and slide to turn your device off. Do the same to turn it on again. Voila! Your game should run much better now.

The game also supports multiplayer over both LAN and Internet but I’ve never really had the chance to play with someone, so I can’t comment on that. Not that you would get bored in single player mode… There are almost 50 maps to choose from, all packed with various monsters to kill.

The single player games are fast-paced, bloody and action packed. You run around very fast, shooting the heads off imps with a shotgun, launching rockets at demons and mowing through corridors with a machinegun – which is a lot of fun. And what’s best – it’s all free! Cube is an open-source game.

All-in-all, Cube would make an App Store hit if only Fernlighting would bother to make it feel at home on the iPhone.

Micro has DigiDrummer’s great layout, almost zero latency, the ability to record one track and play along to to your iPod music.

It features 8 full drum sets:

• Classic
• TD88
• Tight
• Bongo King
• Fatbeat
• 1985
• Brushed Jazz
• DD-808

The 8-pad drumset layout is way better for playing than the image of a drumset – seen in most other drum apps – because each drum has much more screen space, greatly reducing mistakes. Of course, the visual drumset is better for showing off, and the full DigiDrummer has kept that in mind.

The DigiDrummer family stands out from the other drumming apps with it’s incredibly low latency. The drum sounds are also very realistic and in quality 16-bit stereo. With a little amplification, DigiDrummer would probably fool most people. Another freat feature is the ability to slide from one drum to another. Play awesome drum rolls.

You can play along to your iPod music, but this is where DigiDrummer’s one fault stands out – it’s awfully quiet compared to most of your songs. While playing along, you can only hear your crash cymbals in most cases. A volume slider would be great, with the drums’ present volume set somewhere in the middle.

Hope to review the full version soon.

You have to slide your finger through a relatively simple maze as fast as you can. If you happen to go out of the maze or miss a corner, you need to continue from where you left off. Also in higher levels, there are various flashing obstacles along the way that need perfect timing to be passed, for example: red squares (which stop you) and skulls (lose a life).

The levels are grouped into sets of 5 and you have to finish a set in a specified amount of time. If you run out of time, you start the set again and lose a life. The game is pretty easy – you have to concentrate on starting at the right time and not going out of the maze. Should get further that set 10 on your first go.

The game itself is a lot of fun and rather addictive, but there are some nasty effects…

When you touch the screen, electronic rays form at the sides and jump to your finger. Looks a little like being electrocuted.

The game is accompanied by a hypnotic electronic beat and robotic sound effects, which are pretty annoying. And if you did well in a level (happens most of the time) you have to listen to the robot say “AWESOME – AWESOME – AWESOME – AWESOME – AWESOME” at the end. Good luck.

BatteryStatus is a useful little app that tells you exactly how long your iPhone or iPod touch can keep rocking. It shows your remaining battery percentage and how long it will last in various usage modes:

• Talk (3G/2G)
• Standby
• Internet(WIFI/EDGE)
• Audio
• Video

And in case you’re not sure, BatteryStatus can also tell you whether you’re charging your device at the moment or not.

It’s a simple app that does what it says but nothing else. BatteryStatus might come in handy on a long flight when you’re wondering if you have enough power left to watch that movie or not.

Waterslide Extreme is a fun game from Dare Digital Ltd.

You control a character (Male/Female) through a series of waterslides amidst a city center background. The aim is to collect as many diamonds and speed boosts as you can, while making sure you don’t fall of the slide.

In your way are also various obstacles -  such as crabs and ducks -  which slow you down when you hit them. In higher levels, you might also lose a life for going too slow, so watch out!

The controls might take a while to figure out, but when you get used to them you’ll enjoy it. Also, it’s a good idea to change the view to 3rd person from the options. The default, 1st person view makes it hard to see where you’re going in steep turns.

The full version game is free, and as it turns out -  an ad for Barclaycard! The menu has a very unobtrusive logo, which I failed to notice until playing the game for over 10 times. It’s surprising they didn’t litter the cityscape with endless banners like most corporate businesses would do. Thanks, barcleycard!

The graphics are great and gameplay doesn’t fall far behind. Well worth a download.

Once activated, Fake Caller will make your iPhone (or iPod touch) look like it’s locked and neutral. When the timer period runs out, it will wake up, play your ringtone and display a really authentic-looking caller screen – you can answer or decline a call. Once answered it switches to a fully functional call screen. You can put the call on hold or mute, you can add fictional calls, browse through your (real) contacts, etc. Once you end the call, the app automatically closes itself and you’ll be left with your iPhone’s home screen. Slick.

Everything can be configured:

• The timer (both by delay or time)
• Wallpaper
• Contact’s image
• Caller name / number
• Ringtone

Fake Caller is another free, ad-supported full app – so get it. You might find it useful someday.

TapDefense is a classsic tower defense game for the iPhone.

You are in charge of defending Heaven’s gates from the hordes of monsters escaping from hell. The enemies travel on a winding road across the screen and you have to build various towers beside the road to stop the monsters from getting into heaven.

All tower types (Arrows, Bombs, Water, Ice, Magic, Storm and Earthquake) have different ranges and damage rates, which can be improved by upgrades. The arrow, bomb and water towers are the basic towers. You can unlock the others using halos, one of which is earned every 10 levels or so. The halos can also be used to updgrade interest rates of your gold. You get gold for killing monsters and after every level you get interest from 14% to 25%. You can spend the money on new towers and upgrades.

There are various types of enemies -  each with their own strong and weak sides, which are often displayed before the start of a level. For example: firecats are very fast, but easily cooled down with water towers. Some monsters are resistant to a specific tower type. What’s great is that you can also build new towers while the enemies are moving, so if someone gets too far, you can build a tower in the right place to stop them.

TapDefese is part of a growing trend of  free, ad-supported games (has small banner ad between levels) like Lemonade Tycoon, which I will be reviewing next week.

The problem is that everyone’s handwriting is different and WritePad has a very hard time getting even one sentence right. At least it has a spare, “normal” keyboard for correcting errors. Just touch the button at the top-right corner of the screen. You can also save your WritePad notes, but you can’t open them in iPhone’s Notes or the other way round.

I made a little test to see if I could write a sentence  faster in Notes, using the normal (vertical) keyboard, or by drawing out the letters with WritePad. It took me 19 seconds to write “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”  in Notes and a poor 37 seconds to draw out something like “The Quick bro in fox jumps over the Lazt dog..” in WritePad. Judge for yourself.

And as I already had my stopwatch ready, I had a go in Notes with the new horizontal keyboard. 17 seconds. Almost 15% faster! Precision saves a lot of time.

Even though it makes a lot of mistakes, Write Pad is a fun way to write shorter notes and show off.