Review: Vegas Mobile

Vegas Mobile | Published by Ampersand Software | Via This Link | Free

Overview

From the publisher’s site: “With Vegas Mobile, your Vegas destination is just a tap (or two) away. Vegas Mobile has nearly every hotel on the strip and nearby areas, as well as the shops, attractions, entertainment, restaurants, and more services that the hotel selected offers.”

Review

In the interest of full disclosure, I have entirely selfish reasons for writing this review: I might have a short trip to Vegas in my near future. So if you dislike debauchery, sin, nudity, binge drinking, gambling, depravity, mortal sins, showgirls, magicians, spray tans, Swingers references, or neon, you may want to leave now.

*waits*

Everyone still here? Great, let's move on.

Vegas Mobile is a simple database style webapp. You're presented with three categories: Hotels, Shows, and Tours (there's a 'More' option, but it just leads to a bug tracker). I'll break down each category:

• Hotels: There seems to be a pretty good selection of Strip and surrounding hotels listed. Each has a rating, contact information, and a plethora of information: how many rooms, what restaurants are in-house, whether there's a casino or pool or healthclub or chapel (yes, really, chapel is one of the listed amenities - I love Vegas!).

• Shows: The shows screen seems more limited. There were 39 shows listed, which strikes me as not entirely comprehensive. Also, there's no information about the shows as with the hotels - just the show's title and a phone number for reservations.

• Tours: A decent selection of tours are available, though an ATV activity is listed twice. Selecting a tour gives a brief synopsis of what's included, price, reservation number, when and how long the tour is, and any special restrictions.

I feel like the shows category is underdeveloped right now, but I'll forgive it as it's a new webapp. Also, it told me how I could go tooling around the desert in an ATV for less than two bills, so I'm in a forgiving mood. This app is definitely a big step in the right direction for making the iPhone the digital multitool it has the capability to be, and I'd like to see a series of these apps available for different cities. Oh, one more quick mention: the animations of sliding from screen to screen weren't all that smooth, but I believe it may be that I need to clear out some review copies to free up memory rather than a failure of the site to render properly, since it worked well in Firefox. If anyone else notices choppy transitions in this app vs. other webapps, tell me in the comments.

Summary

Needs a little polish, but so does the city. Definitely a step in the right direction, and has the capability to be a powerful tool for visitors.

Usability: 4 / 5 Value: 4 / 5 Utility: 4 / 5 Aesthetics: 3 / 5

Overall Rating: 3.75 / 5

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