If you’re like me, then you’ve probably already started to plan for your year-end holidays. Some of you might have even booked the flights and hotels for that well-deserved tropical vacation you’ve been looking forward to since last year.
In the process of booking that trip, many of us will have used the usual suspects – Expedia, Zuji, and Booking.com to make reservations, before heading to Sygic or TripCreator to plan your itinerary; while reading up the reviews of place that you plan to visit on TripAdvisor and Lonely Planet.
“To Connect People With Places, Every Day And Everywhere”
That’s what UpNixt wants to achieve with its app. User communities are the main focal point, and through them, recommendations are offered for various popular destinations around the globe. From there, you can create the lists of places you would like to visit, as sort of an itinerary for your next trip.
I downloaded the app to check it out. Who knows, it could be my next go-to app.
It began innocently enough. You will first to be prompted to create an account, either using an email address or by linking up your Facebook account – I opted for the latter.
What welcomed me was a list recommending me places to go to in San Francisco, and its updated-looking information struck me as both relevant and helpful. Not bad so far.
I then did a little prodding around at the locations I’ll be visiting soon, in hopes of boosting my current itinerary.
For this, I went into the explore tab, where I was able to navigate through sub-categories like eat, play, nightlife, etc. I must admit, though, that the segregation of venues did feel a tad too familiar…
I wasn’t really too impressed with the layout either, as it looked like a mish-mash of different app features that many smartphone users have encountered before.
From the integrated Google maps, I tapped on one of the listed locations to find out if there were actual user reviews along with their integrated ratings system.
I was disappointed to find out that they merely took user reviews from Foursquare, judging from the mini icons on the user profiles.
Here’s when I decided to boot up Foursquare for the first time in a long while.
The thing is, if I wanted Foursquare reviews, I would have gone to that app right away; I do not need a third party app to show me the EXACT same thing.
Remember that air of familiarity I mentioned before?
I can also create lists of places in Foursquare after reading its user reviews, so what UpNixt is offering is nothing groundbreaking, or even original.
Well, at least some users are updating their daily moments on the app.
As unimpressed as I am, I went to my profile to do a bit of editing, and to see what other settings are offered there.
This was what happened when I tried to save my changes.
Absolutely unacceptable, seeing that the last update for the app was dated as 2nd July – just last weekend.
“Get The World Going By Being The Best Companion For Exploring And Experiencing Places”
That is their mission, or so they say.
I think that first of all, the app needs to be stabilised first, because it’s extremely annoying when I can’t even update my own profile and settings.
Then there’s content – or the lack of it. If we were to take away the hipster-esque shot of coffee at a local cafe that one or two users are uploaded, there is basically nothing here to make users stay on the app.
And as mentioned, Foursquare can do all the core functions of this app and even more! So by the time this article gets published, know this: this app is already long gone from my phone.
