Madoka Magica Fone: Greedy Lost Media

This post is just a brief overview of Madoka Magica Fone, since I'm going to be making a video about it.

Why and What

Madoka Magica Fone were a series of apps released from November 2013 to March 2014 to promote the release of Madoka Magica Rebellion. These apps were insanely overpriced, as in really really overpriced.

The main five apps - Madoka ver., Homura ver., Mami ver., Sayaka ver., Kyoko ver. - all costed $12 each. Yes each. The fact that people actually bought these apps is insane to me. Some of the other lost paid apps I've hunted for/found costed like $1-$2 each, so this is just a massive price gap between all the other lost apps.

The apps were first announced in October 2013, along with a myriad of other apps (coming soon in another video) and merchandise in order to promote Madoka Magica Rebellion like I said earlier. After Madoka Version was released in November 2013, Homura Version would be released in December.

In March 2014, Mami Version, Sayaka Version, and Kyoko Version would be released. Immediately after that, another app was made to promote the apps; so a promotion of a promotion. This app was called Madoka Magica fone Petit. This app was free but was set to be removed in April 2014 (it was removed in May instead due to popular demand, I mean this is a free version of 5 $12 apps after all).

I honestly thought Madoka Magica fone Petit would be the version of the apps that would definitely have been lost media, but well thankfully this one was available on HappyMod, unlike Kyoko Version, rip Kyoko Sakura her wallpaper app was also the only one I couldn't find.

An iOS version of these apps called Madoka Magica Fone i would be released on August 5, 2014. I haven't found anything on these apps at all, since they're iOS apps.

The way these apps work are, complicated and roundabout to say the least. There's the main app, but you also have to install two apps made for that specific girl (for example Mami) called "Mami Witch Mode" and "Mami Witch Battle", and a third app called the Kyubey Calculator. As shown later in the Bugs section, this system was incredibly buggy.

What does "Fone" or "Anifone" mean?

anifone is a new coined term for this sort of revolutionary Character Smartphone Application. A wide variety of new fones will be released in the near future. It is for this purpose that we have acquired the domain for anifone (anifone.com).
Anifone is a revolutionary character smartphone application.Anifone uses the new generation [fone] interface that is ableto fully customise existing Smartphones com pletely from the home screen to the design of the tools.

-LEGS Singapore

Basically it doesn't mean anything

How did I find them?

One day back in late February, while I was trying to do research on who made Mami TPS app (whole other rabbit hole), I came across an official set of wallpaper apps for Madoka Magica (another rabbit hole). While searching for those wallpaper apps, I would discover Madoka Magica Fone.

It took me several days of digging and multiple non-working download links to find a thread on 4Chan with a broken download link. Basically, I couldn't find a download for the apps.

On March 1, I would discover a HappyMod download link for Homura Fone and Madoka Fone Petit, which would mean those two apps were never lost, just buried under SEO. Now for the other apps, in my opinion they definitely counted as lost media, as unlike a HappyMod download, I don't think anyone in their right minds would know to look to Baidu to find these apps.

On March 5, I would discover a series of Chinese download links while searching for an unrelated app. These links sealed the deal, as not only did they have Mami fone and the other apps, it also had unrelated lost wallpaper apps, which I wasn't looking for but uploaded anyway.

On August 11, earlier today, I was trying to find info on an unrelated app and ended up finding another one of those Baidu download searchers. Out of curioisty, I would search for Madoka fone and discover that Madoka fone Madoka Version was there. I would upload that app soon after.

As of August 12, the only version I haven't been able to find is Kyoko's Version which is so sad can we get an f in the chat

Edit December 21: While browsing a TestFlight app searcher (searches things from ArchiveTeam's TestFlight archive), I discovered a July 2014 development version of Mami Fone iOS. Very interesting find, it had a Photoshop file in it left from development. The rest of the iOS versions are sadly still lost though.

Bugs

I normally don't mind bugs but these apps are actually unstable.























  • The warning that closes the app appeared around 3 minutes later than it should have

The apps were developed for Android 4 (specifically for API levels 13-14, aka Android Ice Cream Sandwich; reference page). While you'd obviously expect bugs on newer Android versions, what you wouldn't expect is for it to be completely unstable or borderline unusable on every version after Android 4. This app has almost zero future-proofing and even when it isn't borderline unusable, it has some serious bugs and is just generally clunky.

What also confuses me is why they developed it for Android Ice Cream Sandwich in the first place. That version was already outdated by the year it was developed! They could have used Android Jelly Bean, which was released in 2012 and was the latest version at the time (Android Kitkat released after Rebellion did).

When testing these apps, the oldest version I got to test it was Android 4.4.2 (Android Kitkat), where the apps surprisingly didn't crash on startup. Every version higher than 4, the instability of the apps just gets worse and worse, until it just stops launching by Android 12.

Even still, the apps had some massive bugs in them even without the crashing.

Like I mentioned earlier, the main apps use two other apps for the Witch Battle and Witch Mode features. These apps aren't supposed to run on their own, they're supposed to be called by the main apps; the same goes for Kyubey Calculator. Well, the image above shows me running one of the Witch Mode apps without having the main app installed. I managed to do the same with Kyubey Calculator. Obviously, this eliminates one of the core features that Madoka Magica Fone promised, as you can in fact get them without even buying anything.

Where can I get them?

If you have a really old phone or an Android that doesn't use Android 9 above and can bear with horrific crashing bugs, you can get them on the Internet Archive: