The balance between PC and mobile slots customers has never been more equal, and for many casinos the mobile side is actually weighted stronger. There are also quite a few slot sites that only cater to the mobile crowd. Whether it’s through a dedicated app or in a mobile browser, the user experience is pretty much as good as it can get in 2019. For most people, the gaming app experience means standalone games, although PC and browser gaming platforms are something players are familiar with. With mobile slots however, you will usually find online platforms, either through apps or through your browser, with many hundreds of slots across PC and mobile. But, is this the only way?
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Playing Mobile Slots
There’s not really that much of a difference between playing a slots app or just going to the casino home page in your mobile browser. In case you haven’t been keeping up with web development, browsers can now run a lot of the same code as an app can. No downloads required. Slots themselves, in their base form, are a perfect fit for smaller screens. We have seen some pretty extreme variations on the traditional five reels setup since moving onto digital, but perfecting slots for mobile has meant taking a step back. Mobile slots focus more on optimising the screen real estate and making the reels themselves the main characters. The idea is that a new user should find a slot intuitively playable while not alienating experienced players. Finding the best slots can be both hard and easy. Easy because there are so many slot sites, guides and reviews out there, and hard because finding the right one can be confusing. A good place to start is a comparison website, where you can see all the slots ranked by features, and also get a nice overview of bonuses and links to reviews.
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Full Casino or Standalone Slot?
Are there any slots that are best enjoyed as their own slots app? Some would argue that exceptionally popular slots like Mega Moolah or Starburst – slots that are popular on both PC and mobile – are good enough to be their own games. If we’re going only by the games themselves, there are a lot of potential hits for an app store. But slots are also about winning cash, which means it needs a reliable system for transactions between the customer and operator. This is much more cost effective to implement for an entire casino rather than just one game. In the end, full casino apps are easiest for both the customer and the operator when there’s real money involved. If you want to go through finding your favourite slot as a standalone app and set up a new account for only playing that game, it is possible if you have perseverance. You can also play on slot apps that are completely free, with a type of “play money”, and that’s by far the easiest option if you want an official slots app – the implications of “official app” is something we get back to further down.
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App Stores and Casino Licensing
There are so many success stories with Android and iOS when it comes to digital media – from music to books to games. Online casinos have had an equal amount of success, but they haven’t been integrated into any mobile platform economy in the same way as, for example, music and books.
Both music, books and gambling are subject to complicated licensing issues, so why is there a difference? Music licensing has to deal with intellectual property rights-and licensing across national boundaries. If you’ve noticed music disappearing from or finally appearing in your streaming service, these constantly changing licensing issues are the culprit. And it can get incredibly complicated to keep track of for all the companies involved. Gambling, on the other hand, has to deal with the legalities of gambling in all the countries an app will target, AND the complicated world of in-app transactions licensing. In all but a few cases, the mobile platform economies have just said “no, thanks” to all of it and banned gambling. This explanation is the short and sweet version.
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Unofficial Apps
Many serious casino operators get around this app economy ban by simply making an app and having the users themselves install it outside of the mobile platform’s store. Android is by far the easiest platform to do this on. To install an unofficial app on an Android phone or tablet, all you have to do is to go into settings and allow for installation of third-party apps. But keep in mind that these apps are NOT subject to the rigorous safety and security standards that the app store demands. This means that even if the casino operator itself is fair and wants to protect you, the app may still be vulnerable to attacks from outside, make the phone itself less secure or just store your personal data irresponsibly. And if the casino is a scam, you can lose even more. Therefore, please make sure you check as many sources as possible before installing a third-party app.
