Just announced at Linden Lab's town hall meeting for the virtual world's 21st birthday:
Second Life for mobile is now officially in public beta, and is now available for all Premium and Premium+ subscribers.
Go to the official site's new mobile page to get it, or find direct app store links below.
Yes, at long last, Second Life's mobile era is officially here.
"Mobile is now entering public beta phase which means it's actually coming to iOS and Android now," Linden product head Grumpity Linden just confirmed after a long build-up. "It is available on the app store. Ready, set, go -- don't go all at once."
Another important point Grumpity made during the launch:
Giving the SL app poor app ratings on Apple's App Store or Google Play is not the best way to send feedback to Linden Lab, but it will hurt the app's launch on mobile. "If you have give us horrible app ratings, it will make it very difficult to surface on the market." (That's due to the stores' discovery algorithms, which tend to bury badly-rated apps on listings.)
Another interesting point: While the iOS version blocks access to Adult regions due to Apple rules, the Android version does not:
"I'd be happy if you had a word with our overlords at Apple" about this policy limitation, as Grumpity puts it.
Here are direct download links:
While the app has been available to Premium+ users for the last few months, this is a much, much larger roll-out. According to SL data analyst Tyche Shepherd, there were just over 68,000 Premium subscribers in 2021. Since more features for subscribers have been added since then, that number has probably grown decently since then, likely even approaching 100,000.
FAQ is available here, including specs:
The mobile app is available for both iOS and Android devices. For iOS, we recommend a minimum of an iPhone X running iOS 16.6.1. For Android, we recommend a mid- to high-end device, comparable to Pixel 6 or later running Android 13 or later.
I'm told this means the iPhone version will run on a device as old as the iPhone 10 (launched in 2017) and may even run acceptably on an iPhone 9.
More on the official announcement here. Downloading myself now. Share your initial feedback in Comments!
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Update, 5:30pm PT: Running well on my iPhone 11!
The graphics are good. Faster loading than speedlight and avatar more accurate. Running is faster than inworld! Getting around with the joystick also faster. As for the Adult content - I don't think it should be blocked for adult avatars, however I changed my sim to Moderate content as there is no one having adult activity on my sim anyway. Some rented sims cannot be changed by the renter however and those may find themselves losing clients because people want to be mobile for the most part.
Seems like it should increase user numbers because more people have mobile phones and tablets than computers these days - except at work where they are blocked from recreation anyway.
Posted by: Sagefairy | Wednesday, June 26, 2024 at 12:37 PM