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Online restaurant and events guide, Burrp has launched an iPhone app, extending information on Restaurants, night life, shopping, and events, available on its website, to mobile phones via the native app. Location based apps offering hyper-local information are on the rise, with apps such as TaazzaGo, Times Poynt and Zomato coming up with new features and apps for different platforms. We’re infact surprised that Burrp did not have an iPhone app, although it was tightly integrated with Nokia Maps on Symbian devices for POI(points of interests) info. The app is a free download on the iTunes App Store.
Review
– Location detection glitches: The app looks good, with the entire interface in a white text on black background scheme. On launching the app, it detected our location as Kamla Nagar, about 3 Kms off, but there is an option to select one’s location manually. It was kind of strange that the app did not offer any restaurant options for Kamla Nagar, which actually offers a considerable number of eating joints. We obsereved that even in other places the automatic location detection was not accurate.
– Listings Highlights: The app’s first section, ‘Discover’, showcases random listings for restaurants, nightlife, events,movies, shopping, beauty & spa, art & culture, and sales, near the user. Similar to Zomato’s app, one can get more reccos by shaking the phone, but the ones that were displayed were at times in the other parts of the city. This is understood in case of events and sales, but for someone looking for a restaurant in North Delhi, a recommendation in South Delhi would be of no use. However, after selecting the option to ‘view more’ listings, Burrp offered restaurants sorted and classified under categories such as Newly Opened, burrp! Certified, Editor’s Pick, Home Delivery, Pure Veg and on the basis of various cuisines.
– Listings: For a selected restaurant listing, the app offers contact info, ratings and user reviews, location check-in by logging in through a Facebook or Burrp account, photo gallery, ability to share the listing on Twitter, Facebook, or via E-mail and SMS, in addition to allowing the user to rate and write a review for the restaurant through the app.
The listings can also be browsed through a map view by simply tapping the Map button. Under the Discover section, the Nightlife sub-section offers listings across Bars & Pubs, Discotheques, Lounges, and Wine Shops. Events can be browsed by category or by specials. Movies offers a listing of the latest movies with Show timings for major cinema halls. Shopping is essentially category wise directory listings of shops.
There is a bit of inconsistency here, with some categories displaying only nearby listings, while others offering listings all across the city.
Beauty & Spa lists salons and spas, with editor’s Pick and ‘newly opened’ categories included. Art & Culture and Sales include related listings.
– Search: The Search feature allows users to search for Places, Events and Movies, for current or custom location. At times it worked, at others it returned a ‘Not Found’ error. One peculiar problem in the search that we noted was that it returned results which were not near to the location that we specifically asked for. For example, when we searched for a Mocha cafe in Civil Lines, the result was at the sixth spot preceded by the chain’s other cafes.
– UI Problem: A problem with the UI as well: Hitting the ‘Back’ button takes the user to the Discover section.
– Locate on Map: The Map feature allows users to locate or search across Restaurants, Nightlife, Beauty & Spa and Health & Fitness on Google Maps and pin their location.
There are some elements which make browsing a little cumbersome, for example, in the ‘Map’ view if a user selects the search bar to enter text, he is asked for the location again, and the current location, although is given as an option, is not the default option. As a user, I don’t want the app to ask my location again and again, instead that could have been included as a separate ‘ change location’ or ‘another location’ button. Overall, the app has a lot to offer, however, the interface should have been more intuitive, and glitches with location detection and inconsistencies with search results, need to be taken care of.
