Orkut Mobile Application – Hands on Review

This is a Guest Post by Ricky Shah

Few days back Google released their much awaited Orkut application for mobile users. Later, I managed to try my hands on this mobile application and I thought of providing a review on it to the readers of Technically Personal!.

Well, to be frank it is a nice move by Google (too late actually) to provide an application for mobile users as there are so many problems with the wap version (especially opera mini users are not able to send the scraps at all).

Features of Orkut Mobile Application

• You can check your orkut scraps, photos and friend’s status via this application.
• You can change your status and see the latest update from your friends.
• See the mobile contacts and orkut friends in one list.
• You can make a call, sms or share your album with your friends.

Deeper look into the application:

Let us start with the size. For a mobile app, 736KB (on Nokia 6300) is a bulky deal and it might create some problem for lower end mobile users. It is rightly said that the first impression is the last impression, I am not at all impressed with the black and white (dull) look of the application (minimalistic look).

There are five different tabs namely

1. Home
2. My scrapbook
3. My contacts
4. My photos
5. My profile

On the “Home” page you will find your status message and latest updates from your friends (just like the web version). Navigation between the menu is smooth. The image size is very small which is quite understandable for a mobile application.

In the “My scrapbook” option you can check the scraps from your friends.You can easily reply to the scraps by pressing 9 or using the menu list. Deleting of scrap took more time than expected. One can also visit the profiles of friends from here.

In “My contacts” tab you can see your mobile and orkut friends in a single list. For the phone contacts, small phone icon will appear so you can easily differentiate your orkut and phonebook contacts. You can also search for your friends from here.

In “My photos” tab you will find your album collection. The best feature provided by orkut application is you can share your album with your friends too. I tried to share the album to my phone book contact also. They didn’t charge for the sms.

In “My profile” you will find your orkut profile.

Uploading of photos is also a good feature. I tried to upload a photo from my mobile cam and it did take lot of time to upload the photo, but that is probably due to bad GPRS connection!

Some useful shortcuts:

0 Home
1 Check scraps
2 Set you status
3 Upload photos
4 Share album
9 Write /Reply to scrap

Few suggestions

• Photo uploading takes too much time and throws an error

“Photo uploaded” “Internal error. Try again. Restart the application if problem persists”.

After this error my phone got hung and it forced me to restart my phone.

• There is no way that you can check the communities
• Provide better customized themes.
• Provide an option to “edit” the profile.

Download Orkut Mobile Application for FREE

This application is absolutely free and you can download it from here http://m.google.com/orkut

Did you try out the new orkut application on mobile? Share your experience with us!

This is a guest post by Ricky Shah. Ricky is a part time blogger who blogs about mobile technology, blogging tips/tutorials, ethical hacking, windows tweaks and more. You can also share your tips by writing a guest article on TechPP..