This thread has been viewed by a lot of people. So i'd like everyone whoes enjoyed my reviews to check out my new phone trick. It doesnt require a iphone, but any smart phone. Its a method for forcing a card, simple method, but great fun to use. check it out.

http://www.penguinmagic.com/p/3198




I've purchased many iphone magic apps and i'm going to review each one. I didnt purchase every single one cause, well some of them look really bad. Some of them have the words "Magic" in them but are not magic tricks but rather pranks or optical illusions or the princess card trick, so i'll skip them in this review.

Magic Card
Effect is you take a photo of a card on a table, and your able to shake your phone and change the card on the photo to any predetermined card. Its pretty cool, you can do a force and reveal or like a transpo with the card photo in the phone. Cons are that card must be on the table (cant be someone holding a card), must be straight and lined up properly. It does your a false screen at one point and it is NOT customizable for some reason.

7/10


Card Vision
I know the maker of this, he's a cool guy but this app is i think a little too ambitious. Its attempting to use sorta a augmented reality of a card box on a table to do a card reveal. Basically you have a card box on a table and you move around your iphone (presumably with its camera apparently on) and you can see through the box and reveal a card. The reality is that it doesn't function quite as well as that sounds. Iphone's technology isnt quite that good with this sorta augmented reality yet. Also the table surface needs to match the ones in the app which is really hard even with its colour chooser.

5/10


Card2Phone
This is great. Make a card (or a variety of objects) appear in the phone, then you can take it out. There's another app thats similar, but i like this. Its simple, easy to use and gets better with each update.

9/10


Magic X-Ray Card Scanner
Originally advertised by one of the members in these penguin forums. Basically you "X-Ray" the spectators hand and the card is revealed in the X-Ray. I once played with this idea over 7 years ago with the first generation of MP4 players but didn't like this app. It doesn't have the functionality of other X-Ray apps such as "Amazing X-Ray FX" does, so no accelerometer at all. Also inputting the card value is a little awkward. Pros are there is no force, free choice.

4/10


iForce
Really good. Buy it now. This is a 8-way out style app that allows you to reveal anything (up to 8 possibilities) in a doodle style iphone app. I've used this with a Drawing Duplication thats killer. Come up with your own stuff, i think the preset tricks are not all that great, but a essential tool for any iphone magician.

9/10


Invisible Deck
Made by Ellusionist. I didnt like this. I dont care if all the E fanboys love this. Its a very pretty interface and it looks great graphically. But like the way you "input" what card you want to be "upside down" in the invisible deck is awkward at best. I think Carl Andrews NFW (reviewed below) is a much simpler and direct app if you want a 53 (+plus joker) way out/revelation for cards.

5/10


Irene's Spirit
This is a strange app. Its like a spiritualism style app where you can sorta text a spirit and that spirit can tell you specific information about a friend your performing it too. This has potential to be really really amazing for one person, method is very sneaky and clever. However this is not something any magician can do at any gig really. Its a fairly long procedure to do and long winded. Slightly difficult to use as well.

4/10


Mental Killer
Awesome sauce. Basically you call a person and they tell you what card your spectator is thinking of or selected (answering machine). At the moment its all British and American accents which is a shame (also there's Chinese and German languages). I wish there was a more Accent neutral voice or a way to input my own voices. Still method is great, its a awesome card reveal, call a random person (oh it can also be a random phone number, so you can get spectators to dial a number at random sorta). Its all self contained and your not really calling anyone but it looks pretty real.

9/10


Mind Magic
Meh, this is one of those magic symbol thingos you see on some Flash websites and around the place. Might amaze yourself once or twice but thats it. Basically some symbols are shown and you follow the instructions and it knows what symbol your chose.

3/10


No Freakin' Way
Spectator thinks of any card at all (or one is chosen), and the iphone scans their finger and determines what card they are thinking of. Great app, one of the best 52 outs if you need one. Also works with the Joker. I use this with a marked deck, its very strong just by itself to my surprise. Bit buggy since the update though. Still its a must buy.

9/10


Magic SMS (aka Top Talk)
Derren Brown and some other top names has given this a good review. I think its good but i think the Mental Killer app is better. Basically a colour and a playing card is chosen and you SMS you friend or pyshic and they tell you what the colour and card is. It looks really really convincing, theres some details on this that looks really real. The method to input information is also pretty solid. The major down side for me is that you have to adjust your iphone settings and your home screen to really do it. I really did not like adjusting those things just to use this ap.

7/10


101 Deck
Made by another Penguin forum member. This is very pricey i think. It is a 5-way out but using your photos. You can make any one of 5 possible photos appear in your camera roll, the other 4 will not be there or in any of the albums at all. Inputting information will take practice, sorta weird i think, cause they are trying to make it so you don't touch the iphone. However i think that just touching the iphone would be easier to use and allow for more than 5 outs which the guy says he's working on. Photo revelation is strong and i have used it for other effects such as Cataclysm or non-card effects. However as it stands, limited to only 5-way out and pricey.

6/10


Magic Slate
Basically you can guess the number 1-4 of what a spectator has chosen without ever going near the iphone. Problem is, it will probally only work once on a smart spectator. And thats only a 4 possibilities. There is a companion app called "Assistant" which allows a 2nd iphone to communicate information. Interesting idea but not very good app overall.

2/10


RanDOM No
This looks like a random number generator, but allows you to force one of three numbers (you CAN NOT set those numbers). The spectator themselves press stop on the iphone generator and your not near the iphone at that point. There are far better ways to force a number but this one is simple and charming since its a really fast trick. Maybe combined with a book test or a ACAAN it could be good. Still there are better ways to force a number.

6/10


iPredict
Same guy who made Doodle, Greg Rostami made this. Effect is similar to Mental Killer, basically you phone someone and the recorded message has their playing card mentioned. Inputting secret information is good, a little different from other apps but still good, may take some practice. Major downside is your actually making a REAL PHONE CALL to somewhere in Las Vegas. As a Australian i dunno how much this would cost so i chose not do it and use Mental Killer instead. The real benefit of a real phone call is the spectator can call up the "Psychic's" phone number themselves on their own phone once you've inputted our playing card secretly. This is really only good if you live in the US i think. Otherwise pick up Mental Killer instead.

6/10

iGuessCard
by SM productionz
This is pretty cool. Basically you can force a card on the spectator at will, sorta similar to Curveball by Oz Pearlman. There are presets that allow you to chose what force card you want. But once the application is closed it will revert back to default force cards. Its also possible to have two force cards in a row set up in advance. I find this not to work very well, the presets often return to defaults instead of the ones i select. So if you happy to just force the two default force cards the App itself works well. The method for setting the force card is a bit weird since there's no confirmation that your actually setting it, you just have to hope that you've done it right. Overall a good app, some room for minor improvements in my opinion so i cant give it a 9. Did i mention its only 1$US?

8/10

Street Magic: See A Card by David Blaine
This is basically the old riffle peak force thing (dont know the name of it) that david did on one of his early specials. It essentially works the same way. Much like using a real deck of cards, this will not work all time either (since a sharp eye can see many cards and might see one that isnt the forced card). Which is a bit stupid actually, if its a iphone app, it should be idiot proof. Although u can change the settings to riffle faster. Force card can be random or preset. I think its not that good graphically. It could of been more simple instead of using this 3d deck that's borderline low resolution and a tad laggy. WHy???? Looks awful on the retina display. Although the idea of having the ability to force a card without a deck of cards is a good idea for me but it looks a bit too much like a app for my liking. Many potentials for the creative magician in terms of ways to reveal a force using the app but as it stands dont bother.

6/10

Card Now
Simple, Elegant and Easy way to produce a business card from your phone. Watch the trailer. Really there's no real surprises here. It works just how you think it would work. Excellent and practical.

9/10



Missed anything? Let me know. Just Rising card is one i'm missing but i hear it isnt that good.

Max dropped the Mental Killer price from $20 to 99 cents. Which is awesome!

Yeah i know! I bought it straight away after that.

updated with three more reviews. I'll update if i get any more magic apps.

good review ^___^ *thumbs up*

If i have an Ipod touch can I use mental killer? Wouldn't the spectator realize that it must be fake and that you can't call from it?

I think it will work on a ipod touch. And sure your spectator might realize however the ipod touch looks exactly like a iphone anway. You could probably get away with it unless your performing for someone who knows you dont have a iphone.

The new version of Mental Killer supports the iPod Touch. Instead of looking like an iPhone, it looks like the Skype layout. Genius!!

Thanks!

hey, thanks for your review.
btw, i like "coin trick" and "math magic ms".

i'll be waiting for another review, thanks.

Good stuff mate. do you own trick photography? its not bad also.

I do own it. Though i dont use it. To do his routine, its not really impromptu cause you have envelopes, pens and lighters. Which sorta defeats the point of using a borrowed iphone in the first place. But yeah u can adapt the concept to other things like coins or business cards but its not as good i dont think. I prefer the Card2Phone app especially since its been updated this week (finally).

Yeah, I agree. great effect, but just not that practical really. you and akira really want me to convert back to iphone and get mental killer!!! I've changed my iphone to an android phone recently.....

Well i love the iphone. In terms of magic its really practical. With a deck of cards, my phone and my wallet. Just those three things are enough for any strolling gig. I mean any! Though i'd usually bring more stuff as a contingency.

The other day at uni we were introducing ourselves since its the first day for some classes. I mentioned i was a magician but I had nothing with me but my phone. I was asked to do something. So thinking quickly i did Richard Osterlind's business card peak thing combined with the NFW app by carl andrews. I had never done that particular combination before and it turned out to be pretty good. If i had a watch on me i would of done that watch trick that osterlind does, but i didnt. So for those pure impromptu situations its great. Though i dont really like to be in those situations lol.

Another thing you can do, and this will work on your android as well. http://www.penguinmagic.com/product.php?ID=S11806 This is a product i use. But it didnt fit in my wallet, so i've taken a photograph of all the gimmicks. So now its portable on my iphone. Photograph looks innocent, as opposed to a graphic or otherwise. Also i have a card2wallet that i use normally. Its the Anthony Miller triple threat. After doing powerball, and i know their number, i load it into the wallet so its a prediction. I think as a prediction it makes it much harder to backtrack. There's something similar on Journey into the Abyss by Oz Pearlman.

Great reviews man i pruchased Iforce finally and it was definitely worth it



Hmm i think theres david blaines app? not sure if its good though.