PocketFlix Review: Netflix for the iPhone

If you’re a Netflix user, you know that new movie ideas pop in and out of your head on a daily basis.  Unfortunately, Netflix’s site is hard to navigate on mobile browsers, so changing your queue and finding new movies on the fly isn’t very easy.  However, with the new PocketFlix application from Cyrus Najmabadi recently hitting Apple’s iPhone application store, you can handle all of your Netflix “doings” on the fly.

Up until this point, I have been fairly disappointed with all of the Netflix applications that have hit the App Store.  Going into this review, there was one main question that stood out, “Does this application allow the user to fully, yet easily, manage all of the essential Netflix features on the run?”

Starting up PocketFlix instantly brings you to an online verification page for linking your application to Netflix.  Once you sign in, you are ready to go.  The navigation is a bit different when compared to a typical iPhone applications (no bottom bar navigation), but it seems to work well for the app.  One minor annoyance that was immediately noticed was the fact that the “loading” circle in the top right kept spinning during the entire time that I had the application open, which was awhile.

You are then brought to the main menu, which is pictured above.  As you can see, it allows you to enter nearly every feature of Netflix that you would want to.  Search, Most Popular, DVD Queue, Recommendations, At Home, and Rental History are all listed.  The question was, does each of these function to the fullest ability?  The short answer is, yes, they all delivered.

The search worked as expected.  You simply enter in a movie title and PocketFlix will return the best matches, just as if you would have searched on Netflix itself.  It displays each title with a movie poster, cast information, genre, rating, and Netflix rating.  The only complaint I have about the search function is that there is no “load more” feature at the bottom.  Doing a search for something generic like “baseball” brings up only about 20 movies and you can not load more onto a new page.

The Most Popular menu brings up listings for the Top DVDs overall, Top ‘Instant Watched’, Top New, and then it separates the top watched 25 movies in each genre, which is a really handy feature.  However, there were some issues with the loading of the separate genre categories.  They were stuck on “downloading” for a long time and none of them loaded until I relaunched the application, and then it happened very slowly.  However, the main top lists such as Top DVDs and Top ‘Instant Watch’ loaded with no problem.

The Queue menu is the most important feature for any Netflix user and this seems to be the strong point for PocketFlix.  The queue displays just like the search results, but has an edit feature which allows you to reorder your queue or delete movies off of it.  It also allows you to tap on a green arrow which will put that movie on the top of your queue.  Everything ran very smoothly when changing the queue around and it was instantly reflected in the Netflix queue online.  As a side note, the ‘Instant Queue’ menu works exactly like the normal queue menu.

Next was the recommendations menu section.  This feature works just like the online version, separating each recommendation into certain genres.  When each genre is clicked on, it displays just like the search results.  When you click on the movie, it shows you the poster, quick synopsis, rating, cast, Netflix rating with the ability to rate it yourself, and the option to add it to your queue.

Lastly, PocketFlix will display which movies you currently have at home and will also show you your past rental history.

In conclusion, PocketFlix really impressed when it comes to covering all of Netflix’s available features in one application.  Nearly every Netflix feature seems to appear in this application (besides rating movies for new recommendations and no “friends” feature) which makes it a very powerful tool for any Netflix user.  The application never crashed while it was being put through the review and everything seems to flow very smoothly, besides the minor downloading lag in the Most Popular section even when on WiFi.  After testing nearly all the Netflix managers in the App Store, PocketFlix comes as highly recommended from MacApper for any Netflix user, as it seems to currently be the best option out there.

You can visit PocketFlix’s Google Code page here and you can download it in Apple’s Application Store for $1.99.

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