Chess With Friends

Overview

Chess with Friends is a chess application for the iPhone. It was released in November 2008 by Newtoy, Inc., a company founded by ex-Ensemble Studios staff. There is a free version supported by ads, and a premium version with no ads.
 

Gameplay

You can play chess locally via “pass and play” or over the network. When playing over the network, the game progresses asynchronously; you make a move, your friend sees the update and makes his move, and so on. You can cycle through previous moves in your game. You can resign or propose a draw. When a game is complete, you can suggest a rematch, which immediately starts a new game. There is a chat feature in each game that acts like text messages. You can have multiple concurrent games, even multiple games against the same opponent.
 
When making a move, you select your piece and gray boxes show potential moves. You can either drag the piece along the board or just select the final destination. This brings up a submit button, which confirms the move once selected. The software is able to highlight potential moves for you, so if you’re in check and don’t see how to get out of it, you can highlight pieces until you see a gray box appear around available moves.

Technical Details

The current version (as of 4/10/2010) is 3.05. The app is a 1.3 MB download.
 

Reception

The game currently has a 3/5 rating (60%) on iTunes from 43K users. A common thread in user reviews is bugs, crashing, and that it can sometimes take several minutes for a move to be sent.