Devin Snipes, a 15 year old iPhone developer, recently got into contact with us and requested a review for his bluetooth chatting application, uChat. uChat, an application available for both iPhone and iPad, is based upon a simple principle: to allow users with these devices to chat with each other via bluetooth, without the need of an internet connection. Although the app isn’t really much of a graphical wonder and contains a simple user interfacem this app does what it’s supposed to do pretty well. Overall, I’m pretty impressed with what Devin did, and I’m hoping that we can expect more applications from the young developer.

Ratings (Out of 5):

Graphics: 3.0/5

Functionality: 5.5/5

User Interface: 4.0/5

Reuse Value: 4.5/5

Overall Rating: 3.75/5

uChat For iPhone

Category: Utilities
Price: Free

uChat For iPad

Category: Social Networking
Price: $0.99

Graphics:

This app really is useful, and there aren’t many apps in this specific category. uChat is a really good implementation of the bluetooth feature as a chat system, but I think that one of the reasons that his app hasn’t caught on yet is the graphics, or just the look and feel of the app. The app is based upon the color black and really has no graphical pizazz. Spending more time on the graphics (Devin, I would suggest you look at the graphical design of Beejive IM) and adding some nicer-looking screenshots will definitely help improve this app and make it more enjoyable to use. Unfortunately, graphics as of now only receive a 3.0/5.

Functionality:

Aside from the graphics, this app does has some great functionality. It works very well and is highly responsive. Not many functionality problems, although I would really see that the two apps (one for iPad and one for iPhone) be compiled into one application to support chatting from iPhone to iPad or vice versa. This would be a very useful feature.

User Interface:

The user interface isn’t bad, but the poor graphics make it boring. It would really help if the user interface were made more interesting, but there aren’t really any problems with it. 4.0/5, just lively things up a bit.

Reuse Value:

This app, I’m happy to say, does have a high reuse value. It would be very useful for people to chat in a place where there may not be internet. Add a nicer user interface and graphics, and I would definitely keep this app on my iPod Touch, and probably use it pretty often too.

Overall, a great app with lots of potential. Just fix the graphics and add a better user interface!

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