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Earlier, I spent a couple hundred words complaining about the state of mobile gaming and probably coming off like some sort of horrible combination of a whiny baby and an old man shaking his fist at the youngsters congregating on his lawn. I fear, more than anything, that a post that is composed of paragraph after paragraph of complaints and warnings and doomsaying makes me sound like I’m down on mobile gaming…because I’m not. At all! I love mobile gaming! I’m just a little picky. I would say “Maybe you should be a little picky too since it would help you find and enjoy better games,” but that sounds really snobby and elitist and I actually want you to keep reading as I endorse some of my favorite mobile games and encourage you to throw money at them.

So, without further ado, here are a few games that I’ve sunk more money into than I have most others…and I don’t feel bad about it at all.

More after the JUMP…

You’d think that Apple and Samsung would eventually just get tired of beating the stuffing out of each other on a daily basis, but nah, these two are pretty much mortal enemies locked in a death grip while tumbling off a cliff at this point. Even if one of them does “win,” it’s going to emerge battered and broken and unable to compete. I’ve long been of the opinion that the ongoing legal and patent war between the two companies is absolutely toxic for the mobile industry and is stifling innovation all over the place, but it genuinely feels like it’s worse than ever. It’s been too long since we’ve been genuinely blown over by a new device (although Google Glass may change that) and I place the blame squarely at the feet of these two dueling giants.

But what both companies have gotten especially good at is cultivating their respective images, images so powerful that’ll be hard to knock them off their pedestal even if (or when) something truly superior shows up.

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Unlocking your smartphone may be illegal now, but you wouldn’t know it. When the iOS 6 jailbreak “evasi0n” was launched earlier this month, the tech community responded by using it to unlock seven million iPads and iPhones, definitive proof that the internet wasn’t kidding when it managed to wrangle up over 100,000 signatures asking President Barack Obama rescind the law. Evasi0n was always going to be successful, but there’s something unique about this success: it’s doubling as protest.

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When I think about the future of mobile apps, I tend to think about the things that I find inherently exciting. I imagine having a library of incredibly mobile games on my smartphone, for instance. I imagine someone finding a way to top Summly and deliver the new Best Newsreader App Of All Time. I imagine a top notch Twitter client that leaves all of the others in the dust. You see, when I think about what apps will be able to do in the future, I have a fairly narrow view of what’s possible — I selfishly daydream about apps that will benefit me and only me.

By doing this, I find myself ignoring the obvious: as more and more people gain access to mobile devices and smartphones, apps are going to become more and more important to people who have different priorities than me. The coming years won’t just bring apps that will make me happy and allow me to kill some time, they’ll bring apps that will simply dull tasks and make the world a faster, easier and more efficient place in ways beyond finding a cool new restaurant.

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Freemium gaming is broken.

Okay, that’s a little harsh. I’ll be more specific, in many cases, Freemium gaming is broken. And I’m not just talking about the system of charing people a few bucks here and there to play a game (which, when handled properly, is completely tolerable), I’m talking about how the freemium style is actually causing developers to create actively bad and painful gameplay experiences that would not be improved even if they were free. People are looking at games with optional micro-transactions and learning the wrong lesson entirely. A good freemium game demands extra money because it’s addicting and fun to play, but many free to play games offer an interminable experience while allowing you to pay to skip levels or to get through the the rough sections of the game.

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We’ve been hearing about the possibility of an iWatch since the Golden Age of Steve Jobs, but there’s never been any hard evidence that such a thing was actually being seriously considered. In many ways, it feels like the natural evolution of mobile technology (your apps will always be readily available on your wrist!), but at the same time, it seems really, really dumb (I imagine people talking into the watches like a junior spy in a ’70s children’s cartoon and I giggle a little). But now, for better or for worse, we now have our first piece of hard evidence that the Apple folks are working on iWatch: they’ve filed a patent for a “Bi-stable spring with flexible display.”

In English: a slap bracelet with a touch screen.

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Is there room in the already crowded smartphone market for another operating system? With Apple and Android grappling for dominance while Microsoft and BlackBerry duel for third place, you’d think that another company would have a hard time getting a foothold, let alone becoming an actual competitor.

So, on the outside, it looks like Mozilla is heading toward certain destruction with their recently announced mobile operating system. But once you read their pitch, you can see where they’re coming from…and you’ll see why they may very well succeed.

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The Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 (which was recently revealed at this year’s Mobile World Congress) isn’t just a large smartphone, it’s the world’s largest smartphone. It’s stupidly large smartphone. It’s enormous. It doesn’t even resemble a phone anymore. It dwarfs the iPhone 5′s 4.7 inch screen. It’s so ridiculous that it stops being dumb and circles back around to being kind of amazing. The only thing more shocking than seeing the Galaxy Note 8.0 in promotional photographs is imagining someone actually carrying it around in their pocket and taking it out every time they want to make a phone call. Aren’t phones supposed to fit easily in your hand?

Which brings me to the question asked in the headline of this article. If you see a large cat that barks and fetches, you’d call it a dog, so when we see a “smartphone” this absurdly large, why don’t we just go ahead and call it a tablet?

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It’s hard to believe that YouTube is less than a decade old. Seriously. Outside of Facebook, has there been a website or web service that has changed the landscape of our culture more? What began as a place where you could upload videos has transformed into the internet’s library, the place you go when you want to see, well, anything. It’s the place to go to educate yourself. It’s the place to go to entertain yourself. It’s the place to go to watch episodes of that obscure TV series you used to watch as a kid but thought had vanished off the face of the planet.

And will it soon be a place where you can watch pay per view movies and listen to pay per view music streaming channels?

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There’s only one thing worse than buyer’s guilt after you plunk down a couple hundred bucks on your brand new smartphone and that’s the sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach after it mysteriously vanishes. That horrible numbness is soon replaced by anger when you realize that your warranty doesn’t cover a stolen device and that the police have no way of tracking down the thief and your missing property. And that’s a huge problem. Smartphones and tablets are becoming increasingly vital to our day to day existences, but their personal value is matched by their monetary value and they’ve become some of the most solen objects in the world.

But there are ways to protect your property…and it looks like the authorities are stepping up, too.

More after the JUMP…