Official Wikipedia Mobile Free iPhone App Looks Nice But Renders Slow: Sticking with Wikipanion App for Now

Wikipanion (left) – Wikipedia (right)

Wow, ReadWriteWeb’s Frederic Lardinois doesn’t seem to like…

Wikipedia Lau[n]ches Official iPhone App

His take on the app is:

The official Wikipedia app doesn’t add anything new here. While other apps at least include features like the ability to easily browse tables of content for apps and include in-page searching or the ability to save posts for offline reading, the official Wikipedia app doesn’t feature any of these functions. The only ‘advanced’ feature in the app is its ability to track your browsing history.

I’ve been using the free 3rd party…

Wikipanion 1.5.5a

…to read Wikipedia articles on the iPhone and iPod touch. I don’t really have a big reason to stop using it. But, I decided to take a look at…

Wikipedia Mobile 0.1

…myself. My general impression is that Wikipedia Mobile does a better job of displaying photos and other graphic material (maps, charts, etc.). However, Wikipanion seems to render pages much faster than Wikipedia Mobile. And, it doesn’t force you to tap buttons to show sections of a Wikipedia article. Overall, I prefer the 3rd party Wikipanion app to the official Wikipedia one.

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