This review originally appeared within iLounge’s iOS Gems series within the compilation article, iPhone Gems: Every Movie Finder + Trailer App, Reviewed. Additional details may be found in the original article.
At first glance, OneTap Movies ($2) by Avantar seems to have one of the most Apple-like interfaces of the bunch—twin banners at the top of pages look like the iTunes Store or App Store on the iPhone, and scrolling lists of movies and theaters present plenty of information about what’s available without requiring lots of extra clicks. There are separate bottom-of-screen buttons for theaters, and films sorted by popularity, rating, and newness.
But when you start clicking through the pages, the Apple analogy breaks down, as it becomes obvious that the layout and interface design aren’t really Cupertino in approach. Pages for movies alternate between readable and really small fonts, use hidden scrolling boxes, and sport not so hot layouts for presenting information.
Less than intuitively, clicking on certain parts of the main menu listings will produce different results; one part of a listing will bring up a description, while another part will call up a trailer—viewable on EDGE, 3G, or Wi-Fi—and a drop down arrow could call up showtimes. You also can’t do anything once you’ve found a movie you like, save to know what time to go to see it; there’s no ticket purchasing feature. While the basics of the interface are sound, their execution and conspicuousness could use some refinement.
The omissions and design issues relative to Movies and Now Playing are fairly obvious. Theaters are linked to map details, but not telephone numbers.
There are tiny IMDb links that you might never know were there unless you tried clicking on them. Reviews consist of simple star ratings with no information on how they’ve been deduced, and there’s nothing more future focused than this week to see, either. In sum, One Tap Movie offers little for $2 that the best other apps give away for free, as it has limited information, few links, and a somewhat clumsy interface. We’d call it not so hot given its competition.