Smartphones: New apps for the Super Bowl
Smartphones will let you watch the game, get scoring alerts, and view Super Bowl ads from yesteryear. Some Super Bowl apps for smartphones are free.
Want to see the E-Trade Baby Super Bowl commercial from 2008? There's a new $1.99 app for smartphones that offers access to all of them back to 2006.
Business Wire/File
Super Bowl 46 – excuse me, XLVI – presents some new opportunities for millions of smartphone-toting fans, with applications that will track the game, play all the hot commercials, and feed out football trivia.
First of all, Verizon Wireless customers will be able to watch the game on smartphones, under certain conditions, starting with a download of the carrier's NFL Mobile app, but watch your data limits. This show will be a hog. And unless you've got a 4G connection, you'll need a paid subscription to V Cast Videos. Everybody else is out of luck for a live smartphone-video stream.
NFL 2011, free from NFL Enterprises LLC, is for Android and Apple devices. During the game, the app will send scoring alerts, display photos, and provide "Big Plays" and quarterly-highlights audio reports during the game. There's a news feed and a podcast collection. While it promises play-by-play reporting, some reviewers say it can lag very seriously, so if you're not near a TV set, you might do better with a radio.
Want to review the 2011 Super Bowl ad featuring Joan Rivers as the new Go Daddy Girl, E-Trade Baby 2008, or Jessica Simpson for Pizza Hut in 2006? All the ads, including this year's, are collected in the iPhone app Super Ads: Super Bowl Commercials by AppBurst LLC for $1.99.
You can call up ads by the year – though only back to 2006 – or browse them by YouTube brand channels, such as the Bud Light Channel and Snickers Channel.
Super Bowl Winners, free from LightAge Art LLC for iPhone, is a quick rundown of conference champions and Super Bowl winners, from when the Green Bay Packers took the first two Super Bowls in 1967 and 1968 to their latest win last year. There's not much else to it, but if you want to seem like you know some S-B history, this is a quick way to pick some up.