Mobile History

Summary

Mobile History Pro is just the ticket for history buffs in Germany, particularly those who are interested in castles, fortresses, ruins, monasteries, manors, strongholds and remnants of Roman history.

The app provides information related to the types of sites mentioned above, as well as a navigational tool to help you reach specific sites or just check out the locations on a map.

Let's find out how the app did in today's review.

Test device:
Samsung Galaxy Nexus 4.1.1

When you start up the app you will see a list of sights in your vicinity. A compass is located above the list, pointing in the direction of whatever it is that you have selected. A bunch of buttons are also displayed; use these to add sites to your watch list, mark them as “visited”, add notes or access the information provided for a given site. The latter is opened in the browser and displayed via the app's website. This is a bit of a pity, IMO, seeing as this issue could've been solved differently by opening the information within the app using WebView. This would've been a simple solution and make for a smoother, more elegant user experience.
I should also mention that the texts are 50% based on Wikipedia; the other half is edited by the Mobile History Pro team.

The navigation option is pretty nifty. Choose Navigon, Sygic, Google Navigation or any other pre-installed geo software to help you get to one of the listed sites. I used Google Navigation during my test runs and it worked very nicely.

A map view with coordinates is also available, displaying your current distance in regards to the targeted site. What's missing here for my liking is a satellite view of the map on top of the already provided standard Google Maps design.

A few more options:

• News
• Settings
• Home
• Map
• List

All changes and updates are listed under “News”. For instance, we tested the app on 09/07/12 and the data was from 09/03/12, with a list comprising over 12 000 sites.

Go to settings to update data, change some aspects of the app (e.g. selecting a location manually, though this can only be done if you have the exact coordinates as a name does not suffice).

The lsit tab comes with an integrated search function, which helps users select sites easily. You can also access favourites and visited sites here.

Bottom line:

Mobile History Pro provides a lot of interesting facts and infos to historic sites, even small castles and ruins. Thanks to the app I was able to discover a number of places in my immediate surroundings that I was entirely unaware of beforehand.

The main drawbacks I see is that the app's final touches are somewhat sloppy. The aforementioned browser vs. WebView issue bothers me, especially considering that this app does cost EUR 1.59.

Mobile History Pro's design isn't bad and the app is easy enough to navigate—but I would like to see bigger buttons that are spaced in away that's more user friendly.

No cause for complaints here—Mobile History Pro runs well in both departments. Brief waiting times when the app is loading the info texts, otherwise it's quite speedy.

Mobile History Pro is yours for EUR 1.59 from the AndroidPIT App Center as well as the Google Play Store.

I find the price to be a bit steep when one considers that the app draws certain data from Wikipedia and displays them in the browser (accessible by everyone). The location and map functions are very handy, though.