Trumblog

The Snaptu BlackBerry application  is a challenger to Viigo for the top do-everything application for the BlackBerry. It aims high, with a long list of applications, but comes up short across the board with limited functionality.  It’s worth keeping you eye on this challenger, but not time to make the switch yet.

Like Viigo, Snaptu has a variety of modules, Snaptu calls them applications, that extend Snaptu’s functionality from just an RSS reader into a complete information aggregator.  So in addition to reading the news and RSS feeds with Snaptu you can access Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, check sports scores, weather and movie show times, watch videos on YouTube, look at pictures on Picasa and Flickr, etc. Snaptu lays out these applications in a iPhone style tiled layout, which contrasts well against Viigo’s more functional list of modules.

Snaptu sets it’s sights high with an extensive set of applications. Here’s their list at the time that I am writing this, but I expect that there are more by the time that you read it.

• Facebook
• Twitter
• AccuWeather.com
• My Movies
• The Guardian News Reader
• Picasa
• Flickr
• TheSportsCampus
• LinkedIn*
• YouTube*
• Reuters News Reader
• Lndon Tube
• BBC News Reader
• Google Calendar
• Sudoku
• Live Football (soccer to us in the US) Scores
• London Pub Guide
• Europe Concert Tickets
• Cricket Scores and News
• Dictionary
• UK TV Guide
• Google*
• Photobucket*
• MySpace*
• Orcut*
• GetJar*
• Multiply*
• Netlog*
• Yahoo!*
• ESPN*
• NBA*
• Ask*
• Friendster*
• OpenTable*
• Last.fm*
• Gmail*
• hi5*
• Wikipedia*
• eBay*
• Bebo*

Now, many of these applications (as of this writing the ones with asterisks) are just links to these services mobile webpages, but clearly Snaptu’s goal is to be a universal application for the  BlackBerry.  Unfortunately though Snaptu is an excellent example of “Jack of all trades, master of none.”  For example:

• In the Flickr application you can’t upload a picture
• In the Twitter application you can’t search on a term
• The Facebook application requires a few too many clicks to get to a profile page
• In the RSS reader there is no indication if a specific article has been read or not

In other words, without exception Snaptu provides an inferior version of the application that they are trying to replace.

The RSS reader is the most important of the applications to me personally and here they have most of the features that you expect, but miss some basics  and don’t go above and beyond.  For example, the reader comes with a great set of feeds plus it allows you to import feeds from Google Reader, but it doesn’t seem to allow a separate OPML file to be imported.  You can select which feeds from Google Reader are to be added, which is nice, but there’s a trade-off because it means that new feeds you add to Google Reader are not automatically added to Snaptu.  Once you start reading you run into the biggest gaffe, which I mentioned above, but will repeat again, the application does not show which articles have been read.  I can see which feeds have unread articles in them, but not which articles those are.  That is an enormous usability issue.  Articles can be emailed, sent to Twitter and posted to Facebook, images load quickly, but links do not show up in the articles and you cannot bookmark them on Del.icio.us. Last year I reviewed all of the available RSS readers on BlackBerry last year and made charts of their functionality which  I’ve updated for Snaptu below.

Snaptu Application

	Type	Size	Import OPML	Export OPML
Snaptu	Application	148kb	yes, from application	no

Snaptu Functionality

	View Full Text	View Images	Access Links	Clip/ Save	Blog	Email	Bookmark	Flight Mode
Snaptu	yes	yes	no	no	no	yes	no	No

Snaptu Functionality

	Keyword Search	Email Feeds	Friends Clips/ Feeds	Aggregators	Cost
Snaptu	no	no	no	Google Reader	Free

Finally Snaptu requires a wireless connection to work, which I don’t fault them for, it’s a legitimate choice, but it makes a huge difference for folks like me who like to catch up on news during their subway commute.

Snaptu seems to be focusing too much attention on the breadth of their offering rather than the quality.  Until that is done I won’t be giving up my individual Facebook app, UberTwitter, Flickr and Viigo for Snaptu, but when they do I’ll excitedly take another look.