This review originally appeared within iLounge’s iOS Gems series within the compilation article, iPhone Gems: All 30 Tip Calculators + Meal Splitters, Reviewed. Additional details may be found in the original article.
Tipster ($1) from Raphael Salgado is a nicely designed tip calculator that falls short due to several small feature omissions and one fairly major misstep. The app uses a tabbed interface, with tabs for individual and split checks, as well as a guidelines tab offering common tipping advice. In the individual tab, the user is given a text field at the top to enter the bill amount, a wheel-style picker for the tip percentage, with the tip amount and total bill shown below. The split tab features a similar interface, replacing the tip percentages with party number on the wheel, and with a single field at the bottom showing the amount due from each party member.
Unfortunately, the individual and split tabs don’t work together, forcing the user to calculate the correct tip amount, and then remember the total amount from the individual tab so they can enter it in the split tab. This strikes us as making the entire exercise hardly worth the time; software should work for the user and not the other way around. Tipster’s smart navigation scheme is also hindered by its lack of features such as rounding, and multiple currency support. As it stands, Tipster teeters between being okay and bad but leans toward the latter; a fix for the tab interaction issue, a few added features, and/or a little extra graphical flair would go a long way to help its cause. iLounge Rating: D+.
Our Rating
Company and Price
Company: Raphael Salgado
Website: www.beyondthetech.com
Title: Tipster
Price: $1
Compatible: iPhones, iPod touches
