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OpenSudoku: The Best free Sudoku app on the market. Period.

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dieKatze88

Newbie
When looking for a Sudoku app, one expects a few things. They expect the app to do what it says - That is, play Sudoku. They also should expect the app not to distract them. Sudoku is a very thought intensive game, so a simple clean interface is best. The game should also have plenty of puzzles, with the ability to get more. Thankfully, OpenSudoku is all of those things.

Upon starting the app you will see a list of folders, each full of puzzles. The app comes with 90 puzzles, but right at the bottom of this list there's a button to guide you through downloading and installing 400 more puzzles from the Open Source Gnome-Sudoku Project. These are free, and easy to install. From there, the user interface continues to be intuitive. Select a folder, and you are presented a list of puzzles. Each puzzle is presented with a preview of how far in that puzzle you are on the left hand side, followed by some information on the right, including how long you've spent on each puzzle. Long Tap will let you play, edit a note about the puzzle overall, reset it, change the puzzle or get rid of it.

Once you begin or resume a game, you are displayed a very simple interface. A white background with a black grid. The preset numbers have a Grey background and aren't editable. Where OpenSudoku excels is the editor. Three Modes exist. Popup, Single Number, and Numpad Input. Each input mode has a note Editor as well. In Popup Mode, a small window is displayed over the puzzle when you select a cell, touch a number and the number goes into the box. Switch to the note tab, and touch the numbers you want to put a note in for. Single number edit mode lets you choose a single number at the bottom of the screen, then touch any cell to put the number into that cell. A toggle switch lets you do the same thing with notes. Numpad Input is exactly the opposite, instead of selecting a single number, select a single cell and touch any number and it goes into that cell, a toggle switch is also here for the note editing. When you successfully complete the puzzle, a popup box tells you how long you took. You can press back or home at any time to leave the puzzle and it automatically saves your progress.

There is also an easy to use puzzle editor, allowing you to create your own puzzles, it uses numpad mode, and lets you quickly input a puzzle, say, the daily puzzle from your local newspaper. Also included is an Import/Export function, so if you change phones you can save all your progress to the memory card, and move it to your new phone.

Pros:

  • Its Free
    Its Open Source, If you're into that
    The interface doesn't get in your way
    It comes with 90 puzzles, and 400 more are available for free from the app its self
    You can make your own puzzles
    No Advertisements
    Only 650KB or so

Cons:

  • The 400 more puzzles aren't included in the application, they also don't enter the prefabricated difficulty folders when you install them

Overall, its a great application, its free, and it just works. Its simple, small, and does exactly what it should. You won't be disappointed.
 
I have tried all the Sudoku games for the Android OS and found the best of the best to be 'Enjoy Sudoku' by Jason Linhart.

key points:

  • unlimited puzzles at 16 levels
  • skins
  • solver
  • tutorial
  • undo/redo
  • auto or manual pencil
  • statistics
  • compare your time to others
  • one of the few Sudoku games that let you play using Kangi Digits
  • also has Hanzi Digits
 
you can also get a camera app that links with opensudoku so you can take pics of puzzle in local papers and what not to add them to your puzzels!!
 
I agree enjoy sudoku is a really good app, although I always found playing sudoku on a machine kind of uncomfortable, because it did not feel like playing on paper where your attention is in the cell you are writing in, you kind of select the cell and then a pop-up opens or you go all the way down in the screen to select the number from a sort of button panel... That didn't feel right so I decided to develop my own sudoku where you can hand write the number directly in the screen, and named it "Handwrite Sudoku" :)

And I included all the nice things you'd expect like unlimited maps, save/load, undo/redo, check solution, check pencil marks... that was the easy part. But the reason why I like my app better is that you play it and you feel like playing an old fashion sudoku on paper as soon as you play the game three or four times to get used to the fact that is not a pen but your finger what writes.

Please check it out, it is a new app, I think probably the best Sudoku in the Market, but there are so many out there that people just can't find it all the way down in the listings, which is a pity.
 
I myself am partial to Andoku Sudoku, it has 100 puzzles on 5 difficulty settings but each difficulty setting has 10 modes. Thus meaning 5000 puzzles in total.

The modes itself could make you roll your eyes, 5 modes of which is standard sudoku but with extra boundary that has to match as well (9x9 diagonal square for example)

The other 5 is squiggly sudoku, which doesn't use 9 pieces of 3x3 square as boundary but instead using a squiggly boundary, makes you kind of playing sudoku in a snake field.

And there are some help that they provide (if you decide to wuss out).
The one I always turn on is the highlight mode, that highlight any same number that I'm currently writing, makes it somewhat easier to realize if I accidentally put doubles in lines or region without having to check for mistake all the time.

The second tier hint is checking wrong entry, which with a click of a button tells you which number are wrongfully placed (of course this one would be rarely been used except on insane difficulty)

The third almighty hint is elimination mode, which force guess the next logical number to be inserted at a penalty of time.
 
I am a big time fan of sudoku, i used to download sudoku puzzles online and print it so i would have a hard copy... i also want to check if there's any chances of getting exactly the same puzzles.. possible, right?
 
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