Archive for 'iPhone Reference App Reviews'
PDF Expert iPhone Business App Review
Posted on 06. Sep, 2009 by iPhone App Reviewer.
PDF Expert: The ultimate PDF reader on the iPhone.
| Our Rating: 8.1/10 |  |
[Screenshots] |
Version Reviewed: 1.2.1
Developer: Readdle [iTunes Link]
Price as of Review: $4.99
Current iTunes Rating: 3.5/5
Size: 3.8MB
PDF Expert is a very professional PDF document reader though it mutli-functions as a small wireless harddrive, and other document readers. Unlike other PDF reading or eBook applications such as Stanza [iTunes Link], PDF Experts allows for nearly full support on PDF’s. This means that you can read a PDF and it will look almost exactly like it would on your computer, I mean, on a 3.5″ screen of course. Although you can pan, pinch to zoom in and double tap to focus using the iPhone’s multi-touch capabilities.
The interface is extraordinarly simple, but very effective. PDF Expert acts as a thumbdrive, you can place your PDF’s or other files on your iPhone via wi-fi or your free 512MB of storage on Readdle. When reading you can create bookmarks, search the document, read the entire table of contents, send the document to a friend and even rotate your device to landscape mode and read in a different orientation. If you get interrupted and leave the app it will save your reading progress and open the next time.
There’s a few glitches in the app that can make for an annoying experience, a few noteworthy ones as follows:
- When double tapping to focus, it generally zooms too far and cuts off text.
- No menu in landscape mode.
- Crashing unexpectedly.
All in all PDF Expert is still an exceptional reading application, with the next update hopefully this business app will become a gem. This one will be staying on my device.
Final Ratings:
Usefulness: 7.9/10 – Being able to read PDF’s and other documents without Internet access is a great concept.
User Interface: 8.3/10 – Pretty awesome, some glitches that knock this down some points.
Price: 7.1/10 – $4.99 is suitable.
Technology: 8.5/10 – Great job on online syncing and of course the Wi-Fi access.
Execution of Concept: 8.7/10 – Pretty good job on Readdle’s part.
Overall Rating: 8.1/10
Further Improvements:
- Fix noted glitches.
- Quick access to Table of Contents when scrolling through documents
- Ability to search titles and contents when scrolling through documents.
- Access to popular online office web apps such as Google Docs and Zoho
Screenshots of PDF Expert on the iPhone App Reviewer Flickr Page.
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Lingopal iPhone Travel App Review
Posted on 22. Aug, 2009 by iPhone App Reviewer.
Lingopal: A greatly executed phrasebook but unfortunately limited.
| Our Rating: 4.8/10 |  |
[Screenshots] |
Version Reviewed: 1.0.2
Developer: Lingopal Holdings Pty Ltd
Price as of Review: $9.99
Current iTunes Rating: 4/5
Size: 192MB
Lingopal is a multilingual phrase book which allows you to translate around 300 phrases from one language to another. A wide variety of languages are available for you to choose from for translating to and from. Due to the small amount of actual phrases, Lingopal might not do so well as a real phrasebook app when you’re traveling in a foreign country.
Luckily the developer has done an excellent job on the interface, it’s darkly themed and very smooth. Browsing around all the phrases is a breeze with drop-down phrases, search, favourites and a categorized menu. The interface is controlled via touch, however there seems to be some lag and unresponsiveness in the interface. Each phrase can read and dictated to the user, a huge annoyance is the speed of the dictation and volume. At max volume you can hardly hear the phrases in a noisy environment (i.e. a travel environment), an no my ears aren’t getting old. Mix that with the speed of the dictation, it’s almost useless. Settings for this is definitely a need in the future. To make this truly useful, I think a pronunciation mode would be awesome – select a quip of the text and go through each syllable.
All in all, Lingopal is a great quick reference, with some of the categories such as Insults and Flirting it might even be entertaining for some (I mean who doesn’t want to ask “Are your parents cousins?” in over 30 languages?). Due to the limited nature and all the annoyances of the app, Lingopal fails to be a good reference. It’s got a great interface to kickstart future development, lets hope the developers continue working on this one.
Final Ratings:
Usefulness: 3.8/10 – Due to the small amount of phrases and the poor dictation mode it fails to be useful.
User Interface: 7/10 – Really slick but unfortunately unresponsive.
Price: 4/10 – Considering that Lingopal is more useful for entertaining, $9.99 is a poor set price.
Technology: 4/10 – Lacks settings and much needed abilities to customize. Poor touch responsiveness.
Execution of Concept: 5/10 – Quite disappointed.
Overall Rating: 4.8/10
Further Improvements:
- Theme settings – optimized readability in any environment (white on black isn’t always great)
- More advanced dictation mode
- Fix misc. glitches such as touch lag
- More phrases. Much more phrases
- Dynamic translator! Even if not for all languages…
- $9.99 isn’t worth it until we get some more features in there.
More screenshots on our Flickr Page.
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PHP Cheat Sheet iPhone Reference App Review
Posted on 02. Jun, 2009 by iPhone App Reviewer.
php Cheat Sheet: Making web developers around the world wanting the iPhone even more…
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Developer: Concentric Sky
Price as of Review: $0.99
Current iTunes Rating: 3/5
Before I start, know that this is actually a mixed review, I’ll be reviewing most of the Cheat Sheet by Concentric Sky series, this includes CSS, PHP, and jQuery cheat sheet apps. If you’re a web developer who’s looking for a portable offline reference to various web coding topics then you’ll definitely want to take a look at Concentric Sky’s apps, well, 
you pretty much have no choice either as these applications are one of a kind in the app store.
As a web developer myself I was quite excited when I found out about php cheat sheet, and ecstatic to find out there was even more. Now I always keep these applications handy when doing web work, even on iPhone App Reviewer itself. The apps are quite simple, they allow you to browse through different categories and subsections about the language, going over markup and functions. Although still very useful (especially for a buck) these cheat sheets only have limited information. Some main complaints from myself are the lack of depth in explanation of functions. A lot of the php function references do not include example or syntax code, simply the function name and a short description. Nonetheless, it’s still useful to have around, especially with the search feature. Let’s say you want to know an array function, you remember what it does but can’t remember the function name. With php cheat sheet you can simply use it’s search feature to find it, and then look up the function at php.net.
The CSS cheatsheet however is great and covers almost every element and attribute there is to know all with a list of values, syntax, description, and example! I absolutely love it, it’s almost better than my Visibone cheat sheets (not an iPhone app)! Everything is categorized nicely just like the PHP version. Lastly we have the jQuery cheatsheet app which covers tons of jQuery library functions and goes in depth for all of them. If only the PHP version was just as good… The one thing that CSS and jQuery lacked was the category menu that PHP had.
CSS Cheatsheet: 9/10
PHP Cheatsheet: 6/10
jQuery Cheatsheet: 9/10
Normal Rating System:
Usefulness: 9/10 – Would honestly get a 10/10 but we have to dock a point for some lacking in the application
User Interface: 9/10 – Clean as a whistle
Price: 9.5/10 – Cannot complain, a buck!
Technology: 6/10 – It works offline but an online mode would be nice too, how about using the tilt controls for a <shake to switch category>?
Execution of Concept: 7/10 – There’s more that could be done….
Overall Rating: 8.1/10
Recommended For:
- Web Developers
Further Improvements:
- More in-depth information for some functions, markup, styles, etc…
- Have each reference page link to the corresponding page about the function, style (or whatever) on php.net or w3schools.com
- An online mode which fetches the most recent data about the functions, then downloads the information for offline reading
- Cover flow mode or a more visual/quicker way of going through functions and categories
- For CSS, a tag category, examples on styling most HTML tags
More screenshots here
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