Snaptu is an app designed (according to its creators) to "Turn your phone into a cool Internet device". Now, we had sort of assumed that our Nokia was already a cool Internet device but lets see if Snaptu can bring anything new to the Internet party.
Starting the app up, it is clear that the 'Cool Internet Device' they have in mind is the Apple iPhone - Snaptu's grid of large, colourful appplets is lawyer-splutteringly close to the iPhone's home screen layout. We can't say we were too impressed with this - it shows a lack of imagination if nothing else - but happily the applets themselves are quite good.
Snaptu has applets for many common Internet services such as Twitter, Facebook, Accuweather and Flickr. It also has a very usable RSS reader that is used to provide 'apps' for news sites like The Guardian, BBC News, etc. You can' create your own newsfeed apps too, by just entering the RSS feed URL and assigning it to an icon. On top of web apps and services, there are a number of games (Suduko, Trivia) and even a TV Guide.
There is very little in Snaptu that you can't get elsewhere using your phone's web browser (or, even better, a 3rd party browser like Opera mini) but Snaptu does a pretty good job of presenting sites and services in a mobile friendly way, using a reasonably consistent interface.
Really, the biggest downside to Snaptu is that it is basically a second home screen - if there was some way to integrate the Snaptu widgets with the rest of your (real) homescreen then this would cross the line from merely good to superb. Another minor niggle is the lack of offline reading - unless you can get a decent connection the app will refuse to start - a particular problem if you want to catch up with news & tweets on the tube.
If you can put up with the lack of offline reading and don't mind the knockoff iphone-esque interface, Snaptu is a great way to catch up with news and social media while on the move. Definitely worth a look.
Size: 0.11 MB
Price: Free
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