The latest installment of the Pocket Picks iPhone review concerns the two most high-profile Web 2.0 apps on the handset: YouTube and Google Maps. They’re both the result of Apple palling up with Google, despite the latter having its own mobile ambitions with the Android platform.
YouTube first, then. It lets you browse the popular video-sharing site by Featured vids, Most Viewed, Top Rated, Most Recent, and using a Search function. In the case of Most Viewed, you can narrow it down to today, this week, or all-time depending on your preference. On the iPhone, you can see how YouTube is a good dip-in dip-out experience, in that you fire up the app, watch a few videos to kill time, then duck out again.
Choosing a video switches iPhone into widescreen mode, and the quality is pretty good (obviously, you’ll want to be using the iPhone’s wi-fi connection rather than EDGE). Once watched, you can bookmark them, share (this sends an email with the link in), and click straight through to a bunch of related vids. The only disappointment is there’s no way to read or post comments, or even ratings.
How about Google Maps then? This is one of the iPhone’s true strengths, in terms of being able to pull up a map when you’re out and about without the fiddliness seen in a lot of WAP-based mobile mapping services I’ve used. It’s a stripped-down version of the Google Maps web service, but all the essentials are there.
Type in a location, and you’ll be presented with a list. Jab the one you want, and you’re taken to a map level, which you can drag around or zoom in or out of in the same way as using the Safari browser or Photo viewer. There’s a button to switch into a Satellite view, and another to call up directions from one location to another.
It just works, first time, and I’ve been using it heavily since getting the iPhone. Even over EDGE, it’s still useful (although obviously, it’d be ideal to have 3G for quicker access). It would be good to have more Points Of Interest features built in, and maybe tie in to editorial sites with restaurant / bar reviews in the future.
So, both the YouTube and Google Maps apps are impressive, which makes me wonder whether Apple will get a move on and sign more deals of this kind to get applications onto the iPhone itself, rather than just accessed through Safari. A native Flickr application would be particularly welcome, along with Facebook and/or MySpace.
Previous parts
Part 4: iPod and the iTunes Wi-Fi Store
Part 3: The camera and photos
Part 2: Email and the virtual keyboard
Part 1: First impressions
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