The first question that many people ask is “what’s the difference between online pokies and mobile pokies?” Remember, the word “pokies” means “slots”. Online pokies can be any slots games found online.
There are also free online casino games and pokies tournaments that can be played – often a small entry fee required. But with this fee, you can play for the chance to win a share of a big prize pool, so it can be beneficial to start playing for real money once you are used to the games.
Mobile pokies refer to slots games played on a mobile device. Yes, all mobile pokies are by definition also online pokies. While more and more new games are coming out that have a mobile version. There are still far more free online pokies than there are free pokies games for mobile phones.
While there isn’t quite as much fervour around them as there was at their peak, apps are still everywhere. In the world of pokies, apps are a great way for online casinos to offer a more personalized experience to punters. Apps offer streamlined experiences at many casinos, and may give a user the opportunity to take advantage of exclusive bonuses.
When it comes to mobile gambling, there are two different methods for Australian players to use: accessing online casinos through the browsers of their mobile devices, and using the pokies apps of these casinos.
While many of us will play pokies on our computers, the majority of online casinos have websites specifically designed for mobile or tablet play. Due to the lack of real estate when compared to monitor sizes, mobile casino websites are scaled-down affairs, with an emphasis on common sections or actions for easy navigability.
As with every website on mobile, online casinos function mostly the same across devices. You can tap on games to access them, though they will often send you to a new page or window as opposed to opening as a frame. Games function as you would expect them to, and in fact, there are some pokies that have been developed specifically for mobile, explaining how to play and learn information about the game within the context of touchscreen controls.
One of the bigger issues we’ve found with mobile casino websites – though it doesn’t apply to all of them – is that despite the simplistic presentation, it can still be convoluted to actually play any slot machine. Whereas many online casinos allow you to easily play any game for free on desktop, you often need to sign in to do the same on their mobile versions. It’s not enough to stop anyone, but it is a hinderance to need to fill in your login details every time, especially when you’re not using the real money in your account.
A similarly annoying issue is the fact that many older games were developed in Flash, which is not supported on mobile devices, and there’s no way to know which pokies will work on your phone or not without manually trying them. Even though the major developers have all moved to HTML5, there are few things worse than not being able to play your favourite pokie on to go, or getting excited over a new game only to find that you can’t access it.
When you play pokies on mobile, you expect that the experience will be the same as though you’re playing on your computer. While the majority of online casinos do you play most of their pokies on the go, the lack of consistency between the two platforms can be uniquely frustrating.
An increasingly popular way to play pokies is not at the website of a casino, but through an app that they provide. While many casinos offer “mobile” versions, these are essentially web apps that aren’t all that different from the version you’ll find in your mobile browser.
As every casino is different, there may be a high level of variance between the feature sets of their apps, such as only letting you play certain games, or not allowing you to bet using real money. While gaming on an app will offer the same security features as playing at a casino normally, having to constantly stream data back and forth to their servers while you play can be hard on your data plan, so it makes a certain amount of sense why some pokies apps might not behave like you might expect.
One of the premiere reasons to use a pokies app is the fact that they offer exclusive or unique bonuses to punters. While these bonuses often aren’t substantial, they are still an extra reward for extending your relationship with a casino, and at the end of the day, $50 is $50.
Pokies apps from casinos can also take advantage of different technologies, like QR codes, that desktop computers or even mobile browsers might struggle with. While some of the overall functionality may be stripped back to compensate for portability, using a pokies app is often the definitive way to experience a casino on the go, as it has been created specifically for their players.
There are also pokies apps available that aren’t tied to any particular casino, instead allowing you to choose from a range of different pokie machines to play. This variety of pokies app exists simply to let people enjoy playing pokies and are standalone experiences, without any of the trappings of a casino, but also without the ability to play for real money entirely.
The most popular apps allow punters to play games from multiple providers, just like at a regular casino, but they also simply might not have the breadth of pokies that are otherwise available. A great pokies app might have 50 games, but that number absolutely pales in comparison to what a full-fledged casino, or even a casino’s app, might offer.
Online casino websites and pokies apps are both very similar, with the goal of allowing players to enjoy pokies no matter where they are. While the pokies app of an online casino may be the definitive way to play at that casino on the go, there are many casinos that don’t offer one, instead relying on the mobile versions of their websites.
Ultimately, which one you might prefer depends on what matters more to you. Would you like a larger casino game selection and the ability to play for real money, at the cost of using a lot of your data? Does your casino of choice offer an app in Australia? Are you okay with having a smaller selection of pokies from only a few developers, but one that you can launch from your mobile anywhere, and at any time, regardless of if you have data or not?
While the mobile versions of online casino websites and pokies apps both have unique strengths and weaknesses, you really can’t go wrong with either, and if you find you don’t like one of them, you can easily switch to the other.