Osmo Newton vs Differ By Kind
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Osmo Newton
Engage with creative physics puzzles by drawing or placing physical objects. Guide falling balls into target zones using everyday items. Experience a blend of physical and digital play.
- Draw lines to solve puzzles
- Place physical objects to interact
- Guide falling balls into targets
- Works with everyday items
- Hands-on learning experience
- Promotes creativity and problem-solving
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Solve creative physics puzzles by drawing lines or placing items in front of the screen. Play your favourite Osmo Newton on both iPhone and iPad! Use your iPhone with the "Osmo Base for iPad" which can be found at playosmo.com. * Please see our device compatibility list here: https://support.playosmo.com/hc/articles/115010156067 "..games that interact with just about any physical object—pen, paper, blocks, even toys your kids already own. - The Wall Street Journal "This interplay between the physical and digital realms looks and feels like magic." - Forbes "Osmo has been a revolution in our family." - Wired Awarded: **Best Design** - Good Design, 2016 **Best Product Designs** - Fast Company Finalist, 2016 **Innovative Toy of the Year** - TOTY Finalist, 2015 **Best Inventions** - TIME, 2014 Works with any object or drawing – Mom’s keys, hand-drawn basket, even toys you already own. Simply place the object/drawing in front of the screen and manipulate it to guide the falling balls into the target zones. About Osmo Osmo is using the screen to create a new healthy, hands-on learning experience that promotes creativity, problem-solving and social interaction. We do this with our reflective artificial intelligent technology.
Differ By Kind
This educational game helps children aged 2.5 and up develop visual differentiation and cognitive skills through fun, simple activities. It focuses on categorization, matching, and sorting, making learning engaging.
- Develops visual differentiation skills
- Enhances cognitive and perception skills
- Teaches categorization, matching, and sorting
- Progress tracking for teachers and therapists
- Accessibility features for users with disabilities
- Safe for children with no ads or external links
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- Full version. - No in-app purchases. - No ads. - Safe for kids. Welcome to “Differ By Kind”. This educational app is designed for children aged 2.5 and above. Here children can learn to differentiate among items according to visual characteristics. It is fun, and it helps them develop visual differentiation skills, visual perception skills, and cognitive skills. STEP BY STEP is a professional EdTech studio that focuses on developing educational apps for children aged 1 to 5 years old. During these critical years, children enter a new learning stage every few months. Our apps support and strengthen the development of crucial skills for each learning stage. This way we guide your children, step by step, throughout this entire age range. Our key values are perfection and simplicity. We believe that small details make a big difference, so we give great attention to every detail — both in content and design. Most importantly, we keep our apps simple — simple to understand and simple to use. While playing our games, children will engage in simple activities, such as matching, pairing, ordering, grouping, and sorting. This allows them to practice essential skills, such as: categorization, conceptualization, generalization, abstraction, memory, language, math, visual perception, fine motor, accuracy, attention, and focus. They will learn about shapes, colors, animals, fruit, vegetables, clothing, tools, vehicles, furniture, professions, toys, etc., — all while playing. The levels are generally arranged by difficulty. The first levels are usually quite simple — their main objective is to teach players critical thinking and problem solving. However, the exercises become increasingly challenging as the child advances within the game. Our applications avoid distractions such as popups, unnecessary animation, and noisy feedback. We keep our applications safe for children — no advertisements, no unsafe links to external content, no popups, etc. Furthermore, our experience indicates that our apps can be very helpful for children with special-needs¹, and that they can function as useful tools in both speech-language therapy² and in occupational therapy³. In addition, our apps have been found useful for adults with disabilities or dementia⁴. For this reason, we added two important features: the first one was designed for teachers, therapists, and speech pathologists, which allows them to track the progress of their students; the second feature makes our apps also accessible for users with disabilities, and on this matter we would like to thank the Technology Consulting Center at “Beit Issie Shapiro”⁵ for their professional guidance and consultation regarding accessibility. ________ ¹ Special needs - Learning difficulties due to learning disabilities, communication disabilities, emotional or behavioural disorders, physical disabilities and/or developmental disabilities, which may be caused by Autism (Autistic Spectrum Disorders), Down Syndrome, Dyslexia, Tourette Syndrome, etc. ² Speech-language therapy - Treatment of communication disorders by speech-language pathologists (SLP). ³ Occupational therapy (OT) - Treatment meant to develop, recover, or maintain daily living and work skills for people with a physical, mental or developmental condition. ⁴ Dementia - A condition caused by brain injury (BI), brain damage or brain diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Lewy bodies (DLB), Vascular dementia, etc. ⁵ "Beit Issie Shapiro" is a leading non-profit organization that develops therapies for people with disabilities, and also acts as a ‘Special Consultant’ to the United Nations.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Differ By Kind at 5.0 against Osmo Newton's 4.1. Differ By Kind also leads on review sentiment (100% vs 65%) and monetization model (free vs free with in-app purchases). Osmo Newton's advantage is ratings volume (384 vs 3) and device support (3 vs 1). On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Differ By Kind holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.1. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Osmo Newton has 384 ratings behind it against 3, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 65% of Osmo Newton's written reviews are positive against 100% of Differ By Kind's.
Osmo Newton ships an update every 2 months, Differ By Kind every 6 weeks. The most recent releases landed on November 6, 2026 and November 2, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Osmo Newton | Differ By Kind |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.1 (384 ratings) | 5.0 (3 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 65.4% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 384 — better | 3 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Every 6 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPad |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 | 7.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 451 MB | 76 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Tangible Play | STEP BY STEP |
Customer experience
Osmo Newton
Differ By Kind
Bugs and requests
Osmo Newton
Reported bugs
10 issues- App crashes on launch or during gameplay
- Unresponsive app after recent updates
- Lorem Ipsum placeholder text stuck on screen
- Achievement page frozen preventing gameplay
- App incompatible with iPad Air 2 and 11-inch iPad
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- Camera permission prompt issues on newer iOS
- Line detection fails to recognize drawings
- Game slows down significantly with multiple balls
- App fails to load or gets stuck on loading screen
- Whiteboard compatibility issues
Requested features
8 requests- Back/front camera option for better positioning
- Pause menu functionality
- More levels beyond the current 61
- Grid screen option for better line detection
- Adjustable camera sensitivity settings
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- Better instructions and tutorial for beginners
- Start button before gameplay begins
- Support for older iPad models
Differ By Kind
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Osmo Newton
No in-app purchases
Differ By Kind
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Osmo Newton free?
Is Differ By Kind free?
Which has better reviews, Osmo Newton or Differ By Kind?
Do Osmo Newton or Differ By Kind have ads?
Which is updated more often, Osmo Newton or Differ By Kind?
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