Australians letting their iPhone finger do the walking with Yellow Pages app

Stephen Withers
Friday, 21 August 2009 09:57

Your IT - Mobility

The Yellow Pages app is proving a favourite among Australian iPhone owners.

The official Yellow Pages iPhone app was released earlier this month by Telstra subsidiary Sensis. It's gaining strong traction, and has hit the maximum popularity rating on the Australian App Store.

Yellow Pages is currently the top free app in the Lifestyle category of the store, and number two in the overall free app chart.

Features include search by name or type, with the latter using GPS location to help identify nearby businesses.

Searching by type can take advantage of an auto-complete feature, though this could be described more accurately as auto-suggestion as the listed categories don't necessarily start with the letters already typed.

For example, the suggestions for Garden include Lawn Cutting and Landscape Contractors as well as Garden Equipment and Gardeners.

Once an appropriate business has been found, the app delivers click-to-call capability, and maps and directions are available (using the Sensis Whereis service).

The app works with the iPod touch as well as the iPhone.

User feedback is polarised. Of the 168 ratings submitted at the time of writing, over one-third (59) gave the app the maximum five stars. Yet the second highest number of rankings (39) went to the other extreme with a one-star rating.

The numbers of two, three and four star rankings are approximately equal, giving an average rating of 3-1/2 stars.

Judging by the comments, those giving it a low rating seem to feel that it is just as easy - and perhaps even quicker - to use the Yellow Pages website in the Safari browser, or that alternative services or maps are superior.

Another complaint is that the maps can be neither zoomed by pinching or re-centred by dragging.