I wrote previously about a workout application that I was going to use on my blackberry. I’ve been using this app for a few days now and I must say I’m quite disappointed. The application itself has a few really handy features and is presented very nicely on the screen, but it’s slow operation and slow syncing kinda kill it for me.
The application takes a little bit to fire up, and then navigation is done with the trackball (as with all apps on the bb). The app is sluggish and extremely slow to respond. When I try to move the selector it will stutter. I have to move around very slowly to make sure the proper item is highlighted. Many times it will look like the right option is selected but that will be caused by the application “stuttering”. You hit the track ball to select and the wrong screen opens up…then you have to go through the frustration of scrolling back a couple of screens in the same stuttery manor.
When syncing the bb client with the web app it takes quite a while. I’m not sure what it does, but I expect it first uploads all data from the hand held, then it looks like it pulls down a package that contains all the information on the website, it must compare the two then add in whatever is different to both locations. I expected this to work very similar to google sync for my calendar as, from my perspective, it seems like a very similar thing. It’s kind of a pain. I would like an option to just “upload” data and then one to “full sync” or something similar.
Like I said in the beginning it is a very nice looking app, things are presented well and if it wasn’t for the “stuttering” issue, it would be very easy to navigate and enter information. It’s a shame they take such a hit in usability. I’m going to continue to use the website but I’ll wait on the hand held app for the next version. Unfortunately, just using the website is free…so without the app they won’t be getting money from me.