The major benefits of the iPhone app are that you get to experience a variety of different dial designs in one place, and that it only costs $0.99 (or free for a more limited version), as opposed to the hundreds you’ll spend on an actual Nooka watch.

The Nooka app provides a basic local time clock, with three different faces to choose from, as well as a world clock, stopwatch and timer. For all of the above, you can choose the color of the clock’s background and time indicator elements using a simple color picker. The app works in both portrait and landscape orientation, which makes it a great candidate for a desk or bedside clock, although the presence of an alarm function would really help that, as would an interface tweak to hide the status bar when the clock is active.

Even though I’d like to see those features added in an update, the Nooka app is definitely cool as-is, and fans of good design and visually intuitive time-telling will not regret the $0.99 purchase price.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continues
• How to Market Your iPhone App: A Developer’s Guide
• Controversy, courtrooms and the cloud in Q1

Remarks, like PDF Expert, offers PDF annotation and filling tools, but it’s a much more streamlined tool than that app, with a focus on making it easy to mark up and share documents, as well as create your own notes and notebooks independent of any pre-existing PDFs that can also be marked up and shared with other Remarks users for collaborative work.

Remarks is that rare beast among PDF tools, either on or off the iPad: it features a simple, straightforward interface and everything work very quickly, with speedy response times for turning pages, adding notes, and basically anything else you’d want to do. Tools, including pens, highlighters, preset shapes and text entry, are clearly labeled with simple icons, and there’s no visual clutter or wealth of unnecessary options to distract you from what you actually need to get done.

Sharing may be one of Remarks’ best feature. Using email, you can easily share documents with other Remarks users, including annotated PDFs and notes created in the app itself. But in an upcoming update, Readdle is planning to introduce Dropbox, Box.net and other cloud storage sharing options, too, making it even more convenient for doing collaborative work.

Paired with a Bluetooth keyboard or stylus, Remarks is even more useful. It features effective accidental touch or wrist-detection, meaning you can write naturally with a stylus without worrying about drawing in the wrong place, and regular Mac key shortcuts like Command+C, Command+V and Command+A work with keyboard text input.

Remarks allows flexibility in creating notes and notebooks, allowing you to rearrange pages as you add them or after the fact, but it doesn’t overwhelm with options like other iPad notebook offerings. And since it’s also a full-fledged PDF annotation tool, and one that can be used collaboratively, it’s probably one of the most versatile iPad apps for students, and a fairly inexpensive one at $4.99.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• NewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeout
• A field guide to cloud computing: current trends, future opportunities
• The rise of tablets in the enterprise

Trenches II ($1.99 iPhone, $2.99 iPad) is the latest in a lineup of World War I-themed games from Thunder Game Works. Falling somewhere between Plants vs. Zombies  and Flight Control, Trenches II offers slightly more advanced, compelling gameplay, so much so that it approaches the realm of real-time strategy gaming.

The game’s training mode leaves a lot to be desired, with constant, annoying pop-ups, but you can get the hang of things without the tutorial. The basics are as follows: As time passes, you earn money to buy more troops. Troops advance from left to right with the swipe of a finger or two.  You do need to be careful though, as your troops will need to be directed to bunkers and other objects on the battlefield to take cover.

You can lead British, French or German troops into battle. Game strategy comes in the form of which type of troops you buy when. There are sharpshooters, engineers, medics, spies, and flamethrower units to name a few. Along the way, you earn Perk points, which can be used to unlock new troop types and upgrade existing ones. For the impatient, there are in-app purchases to accelerate the earning of Perks.

The more rewarding part of the game, and what makes it a great game for a weekend, is definitely the Skirmish play mode.  In it, you need to scope out a battlefield with airships, and then decide how to deploy your troops. The challenge comes from knowing when to invest in an engineer, and when to invest in a rifleman. The resemblance to Flight Control comes in directing different groups of troops to different points on the battlefield.  This adds a lot to the overall feeling you get of being a real-time field commander.

The iPhone can seem a little tight in terms of available screen real estate with Trenches II, so if you have an iPad, that’s the way to play.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• 2012: Data, spectrum and the race to LTE
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• Tablet market to hit over 377 million units by 2016

My Xbox LIVE doesn’t have the console-controlling functions of the Xbox Companion app, but it does offer gamers access to their Xbox LIVE account info, including game achievements, your 3-D avatar and friends management and messaging. In fact, if you don’t have a keyboard accessory for your Xbox controller, it makes chatting with friends, managing your friends list and setting Beacons, which alert you to when your friends want to do the same thing as you, much easier.

It’s actually a very handy little app, and it does a good imitation of Windows Phone 7 for people who haven’t experienced that platform’s interface yet. Sounds are taken straight from the Xbox itself, and despite a little lag when switching between some screens as the info is retrieved from Microsoft’s servers, it’s a pretty fun way to navigate content that’s kind of a chore to view on your console.

The app also includes a “Spotlight” section that presents you with video trailers and featurettes normally available through the console. It’s free, so if you’re an Xbox LIVE user, there’s no reason not to check it out.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• Forecast: Tablet App Sales To Hit $8B by 2015
• Controversy, courtrooms and the cloud in Q1

Cross-platform: check.

Touch, has one thing going for it right away (besides a great bargain on a good domain name, touch.com) in that it’s immediately available for Android, iOS and BlackBerry. No “Android version coming soon” or “BlackBerry? Why bother?” for them, and that’s a very good thing in terms of encouraging user adoption. That’s mostly because it isn’t entirely new; it was PingChat, but has been rebranded as Touch, along with the introduction of its new “experience” sharing features. But long-standing leaders in the space like WhatsApp Messenger also have cross-platform access covered, and also boast a lot of momentum, so it alone won’t guarantee success.

Group messaging: check.

Another thing Touch has covered is group messaging. You can add people to group chats, see participants at a glance via profile pics, and leave group chats whenever you wish just by swiping to delete the message thread in your main list view. It all works well, and as advertised (though Touch’s servers are having some sporadic trouble at launch, so there’s been a few issues with messages getting through) but you won’t find too much that isn’t available in Facebook Messenger here.

With one-on-one messages, you’ll get “Sent/Delivered/Read/” receipts, just like you would on BlackBerry Messenger. You can’t, however, turn off read receipts like you can on iMessage if you’d rather not let someone know whether you have or haven’t check out what they said.

Photo sharing: check.

Touch’s major changes revolve around “experience sharing.” Essentially, this is photo sharing, wherein you choose a picture from an existing album or take a new one, upload it to Touch and select friends to share with. You also choose a name for the experience, and then friends you share it with can comment. It also reports whether or not your friends have viewed what you share. In this way, Touch sort of competes with Path, or with Instagram, but with a much more private audience, since you handpick individuals to share with.

A capable product in a crowded market

Touch is a good app; it’s cleanly designed, easy to use and strips away unnecessary features and frills to make conversation the real focal point of the experience. But it’s also in a tough spot; I found it hard to find anyone I know using it, despite its having taken over PingChat’s reported 12 million users. Plus, for photo sharing, Path’s gorgeous version 2.0 has it beat in almost every way, besides the ability to be more selective with who sees your photos, and a landscape mode for browsing and composing.

There are some things that work in Touch’s favor, however, including the ability to limit sharing but in a better way than most dedicated private messaging solutions provide. Also, there’s an HTML5 version in the works, which could open up Touch’s cross-platform appeal to a very broad audience, since it’ll allow desktop and all tablet users to participate, too.

Touch has a lot of polish and a lot of promise, and beats the user experience of WhatsApp in my opinion, judging by my trials on Android and iPhone devices. But its staying power will depend on whether or not it can convince more users to jump on board; tough to do at this stage in the group messaging competition.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continues
• Survey: the next wave of enterprise mobility
• The new IT manager, part 1

If looks could kill

Version 1 of Path wasn’t ugly by any means, but the new Path is positively breathtaking. Little things like the timestamp indicator that floats into view while you scroll through your friends’ activity, and then fades away again when you stop moving, work perfectly. In fact, the small animations when you call up controls, and other bits of visual candy offered by the app all add up to an incredibly pleasurable browsing experience. I mention this up front because it’s that sense of pleasure that is Path’s single-biggest improvement in terms of convincing users to stick around and engage.

Path 2.0 succeeds immediately, without even scratching the surface, by having a surface worth coming back for, time and time again. It’s image-heavy, but not just a straightforward waterfall of pictures; comments and activities notes break up the stream, but never threaten to take over and make browsing paths a text-heavy endeavour.

More friends, but no overload

Path has also upped the max size of your circle, allowing you to add up to 150 friends instead of just 50. It’s a smart change; opening things up altogether would take away Path’s defining feature, taking away its ability to cut through the noise of sites like Twitter and Facebook and offer users a less noisy social networking experience.

The friends limit also makes its similarities to Facebook’s new Timeline feature more apparent. You can pick a cover image, just like in Timeline, and activity presents itself in a time-organized stream very similar to how it does on Facebook. Unlike with FB’s Timeline, however, Path isn’t strewn with apps, updates from relative strangers and other detritus. Its limited circles and limited activity types (location, check-ins with friends, music, simple status messages and photos) makes it so that your stream will stay clean, while still also providing plenty of opportunity for interaction.

Simple

Navigation is handled using the new swipe left/swipe right type interface that has become very popular since first appearing in apps like Twitter, and more recently, Facebook. It’s a good fit, letting you access your own settings and activity with a swipe of one finger to the right, and checking in on friends (plus finding more) with a swipe to the left.

You can add new contacts from your own address book, from Facebook or by inviting them, or by searching for them by name. A Twitter account tie-in would be nice, but for this kind of sharing (closer friends, relatives) I think the options are effective as is.

Areas where it might be too simple include the lack of a landscape navigation mode, which I think could add a lot in terms of making picture viewing more flexible, especially for landscape shots. The app also cries out for an iPad version, where it’s easy to see the interface being even more of a pleasure to navigate. I wouldn’t be surprised if all these options were in the pipeline, however, so it may just be a matter of time before we see them addressed.

The Path to greatness

From checking out who has seen which photos and sharing simple feedback via icons, to letting people know the music you’re playing right now through direct integration with your iPod app, Path no longer feels like a closed book where not much goes on. Instead, it comes across as a much, much more enjoyable version of Facebook, with an interface worthy of design awards and sharing options that actually let a user feel like a simple set of advertising data to be mined. The only time you’ll run into any commerce in the app is when you use the built-in camera, which presents you with live filters, four of which are available as paid upgrades through in-app purchases at $0.99 a piece.

If Path sticks to this kind of freemium setup, as founder Dave Morin suggested it would in conversation with our own Colleen Taylor, while also keeping the base product this appealing and easy to use, I think it will become a shining example of how you can turn a so-so idea into a great one through intelligent redesign.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Controversy, courtrooms and the cloud in Q1
• Facebook’s IPO filing: ideas and implications
• 12 tech leaders’ resolutions for 2012

Based on my quick tests, the app as it stands now is pretty much the same one Kevin took a look at following its first retracted release. This time around, however, you aren’t greeted with a bug notification immediately upon launch, and push notifications appear to be working, although oddly, there’s no way to turn Banner notifications on in iOS 5, so the phone just vibrates and displays nothing when a new email comes in.

Be sure to check out Kevin’s post for a more detailed look at how the Gmail app works. Suffice it say, it’s pretty much like the Android version in a lot of ways, and seems like it could be an HTML5 app in a native iOS wrapper. I’ll stick with Gmail set up as an Exchange account in the native iOS Mail app, but Google’s free native app may be more your speed if you miss things like Priority Inbox icons and labels.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Hyperlocal: opportunities for publishers and developers
• A look back at mobile in Q1
• Opportunities and challenges for mobile deals

Samsung agreed with a suggestion from the court to change its request for a temporary injunction into an expedited application for a full injunction, the legitimacy of which will be determined at a hearing in March 2012.

Samsung released a brief statement (via The Australian) about the decision, indicating that it’s happy with the arrangement:

Samsung is pleased with this outcome as we believe expediting the main proceedings will be the most effective way for Samsung to protect our intellectual property rights and bring about a final resolution to this case.

Apple, for its part, didn’t seem as thrilled with the decision, since its lawyers tried to convince Justice Annabelle Bennett, the presiding judge in the case, to delay the final injunction hearing until July or August, due to conflicts in witness availability owing to proceedings ongoing in many countries overseas to deal with the very same issues. The judge denied this request on the basis that the iPhone 4S may be too old by that time for any resulting ban to have a significant effect.

Samsung is pursuing similar injunctions in Europe and Japan, but revealed on Monday that it would not attempt to secure a ban in its home country of South Korea. The original attempt by Samsung to get the iPhone 4S banned in Australia came hot on the heals of a victory by Apple that saw sales of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 formally put on hold.

Apple at least will be able to sell the iPhone 4S leading up to the holidays in Australia, which is generally a very lucrative selling period for iPhone devices. Samsung has a hearing coming up Nov. 25 in which it will appeal the court’s decision regarding the Galaxy Tab 10.1, in an effort to reverse that injunction and salvage some of the holiday shopping season.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continues
• Tablet market to hit over 377 million units by 2016
• CES 2012: a recap and analysis

Unlike other social music discovery tools, Shuffler.fm isn’t basing its findings on your existing tastes, as Last.fm or Pandora do. Instead, it aggregates and organizes content from popular online music blogs, like Pitchfork, TheMusic.FM, Stereogum and many more. Content is then organized by genre-based channels, which also help populate a playlist of tracks you can play back from the bottom of the iPad interface while you read about the very songs you’re listening to.

The idea behind Shuffler.fm is great, since it provides an alternative to algorithm-based recommendations in services like Pandora that often provide quite a narrow view of a user’s listening habits. By using curated blog-posted content, Shuffler.fm allows users to be much more broad in their approach to music discovery while also providing the advantages of some kind of editorial filter to prevent information overload.

Shuffler.fm’s iPad app design is simple, even more so than its web-based version. But through its simplicity it does a good job of getting out of the way of the music while at the same time presenting it in a visually attractive way. The presence of the blog-fueled radio playback interface, with its bookmarking (with a free Shuffler.fm account) and sharing options (email, Facebook and Twitter), also helps ensure that you agree with what you are reading about tracks and that you can share them with friends if you come across something you think they should hear.

That sharing element could become even more integrated in the future, as Shuffler.fm co-founder Tim Heineke told me that there are plans in the works “to connect [Shuffler.fm] more to your current social network of sharing,” but that there’s nothing definitive he can share at this point.

The only thing I’m not crazy about in Shuffler.fm is that to read full articles about the tracks in question, the app uses an in-app browser to direct you to the website of origin. I’ve been spoiled by nicely formatted reading views from apps like Flipboard (for some articles, though not all) and Instapaper. But at least Shuffler.fm is directing some traffic back to the websites that supply its content, which in the end is better than my selfish desire to read things in a slightly more easy-to-digest format.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Forecast: Tablet App Sales To Hit $8B by 2015
• Controversy, courtrooms and the cloud in Q1
• Monetizing music in the post-scarcity age

As reported, the app now allows you to purchase items directly for in-store pickup, available within an hour if it’s in stock at the local store of your choosing. If an item isn’t available, the expected ship times listed in the online store appear to apply. You can also now order custom Mac configurations (with more RAM, bigger hard drives, etc.) for in-store pickup through the app.

The other big new addition is EasyPay, which allows you to scan the bar codes of items you wish to purchase in-store with your iPhone’s camera (iPhone 4 or 4S only) and then pay for them directly in the app through your iTunes account. The app keeps your EasyPay purchase receipts, which should come in handy if you ever have to provide proof of purchase to in-store security on your way out the door.

There’s a new option to track the status of your orders right from within the app, too, which makes it easier to keep track of your online and in-store purchases in one place. The new Personal Pickup and EasyPay services are limited to U.S. customers only for now, but the update does introduce international support for Canadian and Chinese Apple Store customers for its other existing features. Hopefully Apple will continue to roll out Personal Pickup and EasyPay internationally if all goes well with the U.S. launch.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Forecast: Tablet App Sales To Hit $8B by 2015
• Controversy, courtrooms and the cloud in Q1
• Monetizing music in the post-scarcity age